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Title: Undoing Fate (Part 5/9) -- A Future Abandoned
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Pairing(s): Mycroft/Jim
Rating: T
Warning: Temporary Character Death
Summary: Mycroft would do anything bring Sherlock back, even if it means rewriting history itself. However, preventing Jim from becoming his arch-enemy is more difficult than it seems.
Notes: Written for this time travel prompt on the kink meme.
<< First Part << Previous Part Next Part >>
~*~*~*~*~
Mycroft awoke tied to a chair. He was still in the same room, to his surprise. He could feel his 'watch' still on his hand, but couldn't activate it with his hands tied.
Jim was there, relaxing in a chair across from him. His smile was pleasant, even happy – but not remotely sane. “You're back,” he said.
“I am,” Mycroft replied.
“You aren't going away again,” Jim added, voice practically serene.
Mycroft couldn't help but wonder if Jim had been anything like this after killing Sherlock. Bile rose in his throat at the mental image of Sherlock's body, in pieces, shoved into a display case. He closed his eyes.
“No... no!” Jim grabbed Mycroft's chin and pulled his face roughly upwards. “You look at me.”
Mycroft did as he was ordered.
“That's better,” Jim replied.
“How did you find me?”
“I set a little trap for you,” Jim said. He gestured toward the wall.
Mycroft saw a small, almost unnoticeable motion sensor near the floor. It couldn't have been more than two years old at the absolute latest; Mycroft estimated that Jim must have installed it around the time of Sherlock's death. Mycroft glanced around the room, taking in the pair of small vents that had been altered to release the gas, as well as the security camera in the far corner of the room.
“You know, you appeared out of nowhere on the camera footage,” Jim said. “There was nothing in the room, but then poof!” He waved a hand. “--there you were. How did you manage a trick like that?”
“I'm sure you're clever enough to figure it out,” Mycroft replied.
Jim scowled at him. He fingered the gun in his waistband, but then stopped, smiling broadly. “Yes... yes, it's a puzzle, isn't it? A puzzle just for me. Not for Sherlock.”
Mycroft saw no reason to contradict him. “How did you learn about this building?” Mycroft asked.
“I followed you back here from the hotel, after I...” Jim's face scrunched up for a brief moment, then went blank. “You walked inside and never came back out. I checked the records and found that this place had been purchased by the current owner a few days before you came to see me the first time.” He laughed. “Of course, he was nowhere to be found, and no one knew anything about him. All very mysterious.”
“The gold...” Mycroft frowned. “Why did you store it here?”
“It was supposed to be a present for you, but Sherlock--” Jim cut off, snarling, eyes hard. “Sherlock found it and the police took it all.”
“You still use this place, even though the police know about it?” Mycroft asked.
“Why not?” Jim replied. “They had no idea there was anything special about the building.”
Mycroft sighed. If he'd been able to move his arms, he'd have buried his face in his hands. “Is that why you killed Sherlock?” he asked. “Because he took your present for me?”
“No. I killed him to send you a message,” Jim answered. He held up Mycroft's mobile, still showing the article about Sherlock's death. “A message you apparently didn't get if you were only reading about it now.”
“There are less violent ways to send a message.”
“I tried less violent ways!” Jim shouted. “You didn't respond. I stole the crown jewels and you still didn't care!”
“But why Sherlock? Why... that?”
Jim paced in front of him. “Because he kept interfering, thinking my messages were meant for him. Can you imagine?” He stopped, scowling at the wall. “That original message really was for him, wasn't it?”
“Yes.” Mycroft saw no reason to deny it at this point. “How did you figure that out?”
“You left right after he solved it,” Jim replied. “I didn't realize it until a few days later, but it was obvious.”
“Ah.” Mycroft had been hoping he might be able to go back and prevent Jim from learning of Sherlock at all, but that was looking less and less likely.
“Of course, he had no idea. He thought I was the one who sent it.” Jim clenched his teeth, his whole body quivering with anger. “I told him about you, about the effort you put into making a puzzle just for him, and he just... laughed at me. He didn't appreciate it the way he should have.”
Mycroft cringed. Sherlock had never been very good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut. “He had no way of knowing who I was,” he replied. “I never visited him the way I did you.” It was true, in a sense.
Jim certainly looked pleased to hear it. “You know, his brother looks almost exactly like you,” he said. He smiled, as though remembering something amusing.
“I'm not their father, if that's what you're thinking.”
“I know that,” Jim replied. “I've seen photos of their father. You look similar, but not the same. Another relative, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” Mycroft didn't have the patience for making up a plausible story just then.
“You still won't tell me anything, will you?” Jim said. He tapped the gun at his waist irritably.
“You could try deduction,” Mycroft replied.
“Deduction is useless with you,” Jim said, sounding frustrated. “Deduction tells me that you haven't aged at all in 20 years, and that your clothing and hair are exactly the same as the last time I saw you.”
Mycroft shrugged – or shrugged as much as he could while still tied to the chair, anyway. “Nothing of interest has happened to me since the last time you saw me,” he replied. “I'd really prefer to hear about what you've been up to while I've been away,” he added, smiling at Jim fondly. He had to pretend Jim was his 11-year-old self to manage it plausibly, but he was able to do it.
It helped that Jim's nervous energy was closer to that of the boy he'd left behind than of the master criminal he'd known in the original timeline, at least at the moment. A series of conflicting expressions flitted across the man's face, anger warring with an almost puppy-like devotion.
The devotion eventually won. “Yes. Yes, I'll tell you all about what I've been doing, but first...” He pulled out a knife.
Mycroft watched the knife carefully, but didn't say anything.
Jim sawed through the ropes binding Mycroft to the chair. “There. That should be more comfortable. You'd better not even think of trying to leave, though.”
“I won't,” Mycroft replied, not even getting up from his chair. He rubbed his hands together to renew the circulation.
“Good.” Jim returned to his chair and began to tell Mycroft about everything he'd missed.
Jim had started his new life of crime in late 1991, several months after Mycroft had disappeared. Inspired by what Mycroft had pulled off at the museum, he'd gone after several priceless treasures of his own.
“I didn't actually steal anything, if you'll recall,” Mycroft pointed out.
Jim shrugged. “You wanted Sherlock to find the insect without you,” he said. “I wanted you to come and see me. Big difference.”
By 1993, Jim was stealing entire collections of valuable items. Later that year, he pulled off his first serious theft, relatively speaking – he'd stolen a whole shipment of automatic weapons from the military. They still had no idea who had done it.
Or most of them had no idea, anyway. Jim seemed to think that Mycroft's other self had figured it out at some point. Jim had first come onto his radar in 2005, though only as a phantom criminal responsible for an untold number of security breaches. He'd only learned of Jim by name after Jim's first confrontation with Sherlock in 2009.
He'd pulled Jim in for interrogation in 2011, an event that Jim seemed to remember almost fondly. “I still have the video. It was amazing.” He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen several times, then held it up for Mycroft to see.
The video showed Jim, sitting in a room Mycroft remembered disturbingly well. He was bruised and dirty, staring blankly into space as one of his guards slapped him over and over again. The guard wasn't one of the men who had worked for Mycroft in the original timeline, but he might as well have been for all the difference it made.
The words 'COME BACK' were scrawled all over the walls.
Other Mycroft stepped into the room, waving the guard away.
Jim's blank expression faded, a huge smile covering his face.
Other Mycroft took the seat across from Jim, folding his hands neatly in his lap. “You're certainly very intent on seeing me again,” he commented, glancing around the room.
“Oh, honestly. You and that brother of yours, always assuming every message has to be for you.”
“Who is it for, if not me?”
“Your doppelgänger.” Jim held up a hand. “No, wait... the man whose doppelgänger you are. You look like him, not the other way around.”
“I see,” Other Mycroft replied, though it was obvious from the look on his face that he didn't see at all. “And just who is this man?”
“If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you.”
“Very well,” Other Mycroft replied. He pulled out a photo of a dark-haired man with a beard from his jacket pocket and held it up in front of him. “I would much rather hear about this man's plans, as it happens.”
“Would you?” Jim asked pleasantly. “I don't know what makes you think I know anything about him.”
Other Mycroft pulled out a stack of other photos and handed them to Jim. The one on top showed Jim talking to the man with the beard. Jim flipped through the stack, revealing dozens of other photos of himself going about his day. He gave Mycroft an adoring look. “You've been spying on me,” he replied, in much the way a normal person might say: 'You remembered my birthday!'
“Does that bother you?” Other Mycroft asked. His tone aimed for intimidating, but fell a bit flat.
“No,” Jim replied. “I know how to properly appreciate being spied upon. Unlike your brother.”
Other Mycroft stiffened. “You've been spying on Sherlock?”
“Please. I don't care enough about Sherlock to spy on him,” Jim replied, voice full of disgust. “I meant that he doesn't appreciate the spying you do. You have cameras tracking him everywhere he goes. He has no idea how good he has it.”
Other Mycroft just stared at him, not even bothering to hide his confusion anymore. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, then dropped them. “If I agree to continue spying on you, will you give us the information you have?”
Jim sighed dramatically. “If we did it that way, I would know it didn't come from the heart,” he replied sadly. “Although...” He perked up a little. “I might be willing to exchange a bit of information, if you are.”
“What sort of information?” Mycroft asked warily.
“Don't worry, it's nothing dangerous,” Jim answered. He leaned forward. “I just want to know about you.”
“About me?” Other Mycroft repeated. “What do you want to know about me?”
“Everything,” Jim whispered. He scooted his chair closer to Other Mycroft, so that their knees were touching. “I want to know everything about you.” He rested his chin on his hands, watching Other Mycroft with interest.
Other Mycroft glanced at the one-way mirror on the wall, then back at Jim. “I suppose that there would be no harm in an information exchange of the sort you are proposing.”
“Oh, good,” Jim replied cheerfully. “Let's start from the beginning. What were you like as a child?”
Other Mycroft made an expression that was half attempted-smile, half grimace. “I was a quiet child. Studious. I loved my brother dearly.”
“Come on. You're going to have to do better than that,” Jim replied. “Tell me something that I couldn't figure out just by looking at you. Who were your friends?”
Other Mycroft swallowed. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He took in a deep breath. “I didn't have many friends until I went away to school.”
“You mean you didn't have any friends, don't you?” Jim replied, expression almost predatory.
Other Mycroft continued to meet his gaze, though he looked like he would have turned away if he could have. “We agreed to an exchange. If you don't intend to--”
“April.”
“What?”
“The first attack is scheduled for the second half of April,” Jim said. “Now, what was it you were saying about not having any friends?”
Other Mycroft stared at him for several seconds, body tense. “The other children didn't like me very much,” he replied eventually.
“Who hated you the most?” Jim asked eagerly.
Other Mycroft paused. He forced a smile onto his face, then began to speak. “Tom. There was a boy named Tom...”
The interrogation – or information exchange, as they were calling it – continued on and on. Mycroft watched as the Jim in the video slowly and painstakingly pried into every corner of his other self's childhood, bringing up things that even Mycroft himself had nearly forgotten. His other self had held up as best as could be expected, given the very personal information he was forced to expose.
Watching his secrets being revealed in such a manner made Mycroft's skin crawl, and they hadn't even gone beyond the age of seven when the real life Jim stopped the video.
Mycroft supposed it was a fitting punishment for what he'd done to Sherlock in the original timeline.
“It keeps going like this,” Jim said as he pocketed the phone. “But it would take weeks to show you all of it.”
“I don't need to see it,” Mycroft replied.
“No, you don't, do you?” Jim said. “He vanished a month after I killed Sherlock, and there's no reason to talk about him when we can talk about you instead.”
Mycroft remained silent.
Jim abruptly turned and kicked the wall, hard, then strode back over to Mycroft and waved a finger in his face. “At least tell me one thing. Just one.”
“What thing?” Mycroft asked. Predicting another demand for his name, he ran through several plausible answers in his mind.
Jim stared at nothing for a long moment before responding. “What did I do?” he asked, uncharacteristically subdued.
Mycroft blinked. “What?”
“What did I do? Why did you stop watching me?” Jim was shaking now.
Guilt stabbed through Mycroft's chest.
Many people could look back on a course of action and speculate on where they'd gone wrong, how things could have turned out differently if they hadn't done a certain thing at a certain time – but Mycroft was probably the only person in history to know for certain. He knew for a fact that Jim would have become a happy, productive member of society if not for that last trip back to 1991.
“It wasn't anything you did,” he replied eventually. “I'm sorry.” Feeling he was unlikely to get any more useful information out of Jim, Mycroft quickly set his 'watch' to 1993, not even bothering to change the other settings.
“What are you--”
“I'm sorry,” Mycroft repeated. He stood, activating the device at the same time. He saw Jim's face freeze in an expression of utter shock for just a moment before the world began to rewind.
~*~*~*~*~
<< First Part << Previous Part Next Part >>
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Pairing(s): Mycroft/Jim
Rating: T
Warning: Temporary Character Death
Summary: Mycroft would do anything bring Sherlock back, even if it means rewriting history itself. However, preventing Jim from becoming his arch-enemy is more difficult than it seems.
Notes: Written for this time travel prompt on the kink meme.
<< First Part << Previous Part Next Part >>
~*~*~*~*~
Mycroft awoke tied to a chair. He was still in the same room, to his surprise. He could feel his 'watch' still on his hand, but couldn't activate it with his hands tied.
Jim was there, relaxing in a chair across from him. His smile was pleasant, even happy – but not remotely sane. “You're back,” he said.
“I am,” Mycroft replied.
“You aren't going away again,” Jim added, voice practically serene.
Mycroft couldn't help but wonder if Jim had been anything like this after killing Sherlock. Bile rose in his throat at the mental image of Sherlock's body, in pieces, shoved into a display case. He closed his eyes.
“No... no!” Jim grabbed Mycroft's chin and pulled his face roughly upwards. “You look at me.”
Mycroft did as he was ordered.
“That's better,” Jim replied.
“How did you find me?”
“I set a little trap for you,” Jim said. He gestured toward the wall.
Mycroft saw a small, almost unnoticeable motion sensor near the floor. It couldn't have been more than two years old at the absolute latest; Mycroft estimated that Jim must have installed it around the time of Sherlock's death. Mycroft glanced around the room, taking in the pair of small vents that had been altered to release the gas, as well as the security camera in the far corner of the room.
“You know, you appeared out of nowhere on the camera footage,” Jim said. “There was nothing in the room, but then poof!” He waved a hand. “--there you were. How did you manage a trick like that?”
“I'm sure you're clever enough to figure it out,” Mycroft replied.
Jim scowled at him. He fingered the gun in his waistband, but then stopped, smiling broadly. “Yes... yes, it's a puzzle, isn't it? A puzzle just for me. Not for Sherlock.”
Mycroft saw no reason to contradict him. “How did you learn about this building?” Mycroft asked.
“I followed you back here from the hotel, after I...” Jim's face scrunched up for a brief moment, then went blank. “You walked inside and never came back out. I checked the records and found that this place had been purchased by the current owner a few days before you came to see me the first time.” He laughed. “Of course, he was nowhere to be found, and no one knew anything about him. All very mysterious.”
“The gold...” Mycroft frowned. “Why did you store it here?”
“It was supposed to be a present for you, but Sherlock--” Jim cut off, snarling, eyes hard. “Sherlock found it and the police took it all.”
“You still use this place, even though the police know about it?” Mycroft asked.
“Why not?” Jim replied. “They had no idea there was anything special about the building.”
Mycroft sighed. If he'd been able to move his arms, he'd have buried his face in his hands. “Is that why you killed Sherlock?” he asked. “Because he took your present for me?”
“No. I killed him to send you a message,” Jim answered. He held up Mycroft's mobile, still showing the article about Sherlock's death. “A message you apparently didn't get if you were only reading about it now.”
“There are less violent ways to send a message.”
“I tried less violent ways!” Jim shouted. “You didn't respond. I stole the crown jewels and you still didn't care!”
“But why Sherlock? Why... that?”
Jim paced in front of him. “Because he kept interfering, thinking my messages were meant for him. Can you imagine?” He stopped, scowling at the wall. “That original message really was for him, wasn't it?”
“Yes.” Mycroft saw no reason to deny it at this point. “How did you figure that out?”
“You left right after he solved it,” Jim replied. “I didn't realize it until a few days later, but it was obvious.”
“Ah.” Mycroft had been hoping he might be able to go back and prevent Jim from learning of Sherlock at all, but that was looking less and less likely.
“Of course, he had no idea. He thought I was the one who sent it.” Jim clenched his teeth, his whole body quivering with anger. “I told him about you, about the effort you put into making a puzzle just for him, and he just... laughed at me. He didn't appreciate it the way he should have.”
Mycroft cringed. Sherlock had never been very good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut. “He had no way of knowing who I was,” he replied. “I never visited him the way I did you.” It was true, in a sense.
Jim certainly looked pleased to hear it. “You know, his brother looks almost exactly like you,” he said. He smiled, as though remembering something amusing.
“I'm not their father, if that's what you're thinking.”
“I know that,” Jim replied. “I've seen photos of their father. You look similar, but not the same. Another relative, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” Mycroft didn't have the patience for making up a plausible story just then.
“You still won't tell me anything, will you?” Jim said. He tapped the gun at his waist irritably.
“You could try deduction,” Mycroft replied.
“Deduction is useless with you,” Jim said, sounding frustrated. “Deduction tells me that you haven't aged at all in 20 years, and that your clothing and hair are exactly the same as the last time I saw you.”
Mycroft shrugged – or shrugged as much as he could while still tied to the chair, anyway. “Nothing of interest has happened to me since the last time you saw me,” he replied. “I'd really prefer to hear about what you've been up to while I've been away,” he added, smiling at Jim fondly. He had to pretend Jim was his 11-year-old self to manage it plausibly, but he was able to do it.
It helped that Jim's nervous energy was closer to that of the boy he'd left behind than of the master criminal he'd known in the original timeline, at least at the moment. A series of conflicting expressions flitted across the man's face, anger warring with an almost puppy-like devotion.
The devotion eventually won. “Yes. Yes, I'll tell you all about what I've been doing, but first...” He pulled out a knife.
Mycroft watched the knife carefully, but didn't say anything.
Jim sawed through the ropes binding Mycroft to the chair. “There. That should be more comfortable. You'd better not even think of trying to leave, though.”
“I won't,” Mycroft replied, not even getting up from his chair. He rubbed his hands together to renew the circulation.
“Good.” Jim returned to his chair and began to tell Mycroft about everything he'd missed.
Jim had started his new life of crime in late 1991, several months after Mycroft had disappeared. Inspired by what Mycroft had pulled off at the museum, he'd gone after several priceless treasures of his own.
“I didn't actually steal anything, if you'll recall,” Mycroft pointed out.
Jim shrugged. “You wanted Sherlock to find the insect without you,” he said. “I wanted you to come and see me. Big difference.”
By 1993, Jim was stealing entire collections of valuable items. Later that year, he pulled off his first serious theft, relatively speaking – he'd stolen a whole shipment of automatic weapons from the military. They still had no idea who had done it.
Or most of them had no idea, anyway. Jim seemed to think that Mycroft's other self had figured it out at some point. Jim had first come onto his radar in 2005, though only as a phantom criminal responsible for an untold number of security breaches. He'd only learned of Jim by name after Jim's first confrontation with Sherlock in 2009.
He'd pulled Jim in for interrogation in 2011, an event that Jim seemed to remember almost fondly. “I still have the video. It was amazing.” He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen several times, then held it up for Mycroft to see.
The video showed Jim, sitting in a room Mycroft remembered disturbingly well. He was bruised and dirty, staring blankly into space as one of his guards slapped him over and over again. The guard wasn't one of the men who had worked for Mycroft in the original timeline, but he might as well have been for all the difference it made.
The words 'COME BACK' were scrawled all over the walls.
Other Mycroft stepped into the room, waving the guard away.
Jim's blank expression faded, a huge smile covering his face.
Other Mycroft took the seat across from Jim, folding his hands neatly in his lap. “You're certainly very intent on seeing me again,” he commented, glancing around the room.
“Oh, honestly. You and that brother of yours, always assuming every message has to be for you.”
“Who is it for, if not me?”
“Your doppelgänger.” Jim held up a hand. “No, wait... the man whose doppelgänger you are. You look like him, not the other way around.”
“I see,” Other Mycroft replied, though it was obvious from the look on his face that he didn't see at all. “And just who is this man?”
“If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you.”
“Very well,” Other Mycroft replied. He pulled out a photo of a dark-haired man with a beard from his jacket pocket and held it up in front of him. “I would much rather hear about this man's plans, as it happens.”
“Would you?” Jim asked pleasantly. “I don't know what makes you think I know anything about him.”
Other Mycroft pulled out a stack of other photos and handed them to Jim. The one on top showed Jim talking to the man with the beard. Jim flipped through the stack, revealing dozens of other photos of himself going about his day. He gave Mycroft an adoring look. “You've been spying on me,” he replied, in much the way a normal person might say: 'You remembered my birthday!'
“Does that bother you?” Other Mycroft asked. His tone aimed for intimidating, but fell a bit flat.
“No,” Jim replied. “I know how to properly appreciate being spied upon. Unlike your brother.”
Other Mycroft stiffened. “You've been spying on Sherlock?”
“Please. I don't care enough about Sherlock to spy on him,” Jim replied, voice full of disgust. “I meant that he doesn't appreciate the spying you do. You have cameras tracking him everywhere he goes. He has no idea how good he has it.”
Other Mycroft just stared at him, not even bothering to hide his confusion anymore. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, then dropped them. “If I agree to continue spying on you, will you give us the information you have?”
Jim sighed dramatically. “If we did it that way, I would know it didn't come from the heart,” he replied sadly. “Although...” He perked up a little. “I might be willing to exchange a bit of information, if you are.”
“What sort of information?” Mycroft asked warily.
“Don't worry, it's nothing dangerous,” Jim answered. He leaned forward. “I just want to know about you.”
“About me?” Other Mycroft repeated. “What do you want to know about me?”
“Everything,” Jim whispered. He scooted his chair closer to Other Mycroft, so that their knees were touching. “I want to know everything about you.” He rested his chin on his hands, watching Other Mycroft with interest.
Other Mycroft glanced at the one-way mirror on the wall, then back at Jim. “I suppose that there would be no harm in an information exchange of the sort you are proposing.”
“Oh, good,” Jim replied cheerfully. “Let's start from the beginning. What were you like as a child?”
Other Mycroft made an expression that was half attempted-smile, half grimace. “I was a quiet child. Studious. I loved my brother dearly.”
“Come on. You're going to have to do better than that,” Jim replied. “Tell me something that I couldn't figure out just by looking at you. Who were your friends?”
Other Mycroft swallowed. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He took in a deep breath. “I didn't have many friends until I went away to school.”
“You mean you didn't have any friends, don't you?” Jim replied, expression almost predatory.
Other Mycroft continued to meet his gaze, though he looked like he would have turned away if he could have. “We agreed to an exchange. If you don't intend to--”
“April.”
“What?”
“The first attack is scheduled for the second half of April,” Jim said. “Now, what was it you were saying about not having any friends?”
Other Mycroft stared at him for several seconds, body tense. “The other children didn't like me very much,” he replied eventually.
“Who hated you the most?” Jim asked eagerly.
Other Mycroft paused. He forced a smile onto his face, then began to speak. “Tom. There was a boy named Tom...”
The interrogation – or information exchange, as they were calling it – continued on and on. Mycroft watched as the Jim in the video slowly and painstakingly pried into every corner of his other self's childhood, bringing up things that even Mycroft himself had nearly forgotten. His other self had held up as best as could be expected, given the very personal information he was forced to expose.
Watching his secrets being revealed in such a manner made Mycroft's skin crawl, and they hadn't even gone beyond the age of seven when the real life Jim stopped the video.
Mycroft supposed it was a fitting punishment for what he'd done to Sherlock in the original timeline.
“It keeps going like this,” Jim said as he pocketed the phone. “But it would take weeks to show you all of it.”
“I don't need to see it,” Mycroft replied.
“No, you don't, do you?” Jim said. “He vanished a month after I killed Sherlock, and there's no reason to talk about him when we can talk about you instead.”
Mycroft remained silent.
Jim abruptly turned and kicked the wall, hard, then strode back over to Mycroft and waved a finger in his face. “At least tell me one thing. Just one.”
“What thing?” Mycroft asked. Predicting another demand for his name, he ran through several plausible answers in his mind.
Jim stared at nothing for a long moment before responding. “What did I do?” he asked, uncharacteristically subdued.
Mycroft blinked. “What?”
“What did I do? Why did you stop watching me?” Jim was shaking now.
Guilt stabbed through Mycroft's chest.
Many people could look back on a course of action and speculate on where they'd gone wrong, how things could have turned out differently if they hadn't done a certain thing at a certain time – but Mycroft was probably the only person in history to know for certain. He knew for a fact that Jim would have become a happy, productive member of society if not for that last trip back to 1991.
“It wasn't anything you did,” he replied eventually. “I'm sorry.” Feeling he was unlikely to get any more useful information out of Jim, Mycroft quickly set his 'watch' to 1993, not even bothering to change the other settings.
“What are you--”
“I'm sorry,” Mycroft repeated. He stood, activating the device at the same time. He saw Jim's face freeze in an expression of utter shock for just a moment before the world began to rewind.
~*~*~*~*~
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