The Eternal Cage
Strangely, the day after this seemingly pointless exchange, Owen returned to Germany. Meanwhile, the Holmes family signed a decade-long contract for his shipping business, asking for nothing in return. Rose was puzzled by the lady's unusual behavior, but thankfully, she was no longer bound to marry Owen.
What on earth happened to make the usually strong-willed lady relent? It was almost impossible. In this airtight estate, Rose couldn't think of anyone who could easily persuade the lady to change such a momentous decision in such a short time. Not even Mycroft.
Her doubts lingered for months, yet no one revealed the slightest sign of anything amiss. The suspicion didn't dissipate; instead, it festered in some corner of her heart.
Until one day, the truth was suddenly and completely revealed to Rose. She finally found the answer, in the most tragic and devastating way. Only then did she realize that time had not diluted the mystery, but rather etched and dried it in a more profound way. In this long river called love, everything had already been traceable.
That autumn, Rose escaped a troublesome engagement, and in the same year, Mycroft resigned from his position in the Mathematical Society to join the civil service. He was practically the perfect key to this political machine, and now, deeply embedded within it, he thrived. It didn't take long for him to become deeply entrenched and adept at navigating the bureaucracy. Even though he always introduced himself with the humble phrase, "I hold a minor position in the British Government," those who knew him well understood that he was the British Government itself.
In contrast to Rose's rollercoaster emotions, Mycroft remained calm. He never spoke harshly, nor did he ever laugh heartily.
“He’s a born cold-blooded politician,” Sherlock said to Rose in a low voice, “Do you think someone like Mycroft could have a delicate heart inside his body?”
Rose's heart skipped a beat, and after a slight pause, she said, "I don't know..."
"That guy is incredibly arrogant. In his eyes, the world is nothing more than goldfish swimming around recklessly." He shrugged.
“So, please stop sleeping in shelters—or under overpasses where drug addicts congregate—okay? After all, it’s quite a struggle for him to find you among a group of ‘goldfish’ every time.” Rose winked at Sherlock, and Mycroft raised an eyebrow, complaining, “You’re siding with him. —It’s just been a bit more frequent lately.”
Rose's smile froze. She frowned, grabbed his hand, and pulled up his sleeve. Sure enough, there were many scattered needle marks from morphine injections, some even showing signs of bruising.
She was a little angry, but he seemed indifferent, pulling his sleeves down again: "You want to see it again, and then you worry. Only escaping to that dream world can give me a moment's respite. Rose, do you want to take it away from me too?"
Sherlock had innocent, almost childlike eyes, and whenever he wore that expression, both Rose and the servants would feel a softening in their hearts. She had been fooled by that look countless times since childhood; it was a trick he never tired of.
“So that’s the reason you convinced Mycroft.” Rose suddenly realized, straightening his trench coat collar. “No wonder he stopped restricting your purchase of addictive drugs.”
“Of course, there were conditions,” Sherlock pulled a thin list from his pocket, detailing the medications he took and their dosages. “Mycroft ordered me to write this down, and to carry it with me even when I was high. Once I forgot, and the next day when I sobered up, he immediately berated me severely—I’d never seen him like that before. The worst part was that he cut off all supplies. Rose, you have no idea, I practically had to beg him to get those things back.”
Although Sherlock complained verbally, he didn't really mean to complain. After all, he understood that Mycroft was acting out of some kind of brotherly care—even beyond the scope of duty, although he himself had been avoiding showing this warmth directly.
Rose lowered his head. It turned out that his rare, intense, and blazing concern could truly shine upon them both.
For many years, the Holmes family home has been shrouded in a gloomy and eerie atmosphere, and its location is particularly fitting for this: it is perpetually shrouded in clouds and damp and rainy.
What's different this year is that the torrent that has been dormant for years is on the verge of bursting its banks. It seems that only a thin layer of paper is needed to bring about a cataclysmic event.
Suppressed minds, strangling souls, illicit fantasies... Rose and Sherlock have become invisible munitions ready to explode at any moment. Although they come from different sources, their fate may be the same: to burn and then to be destroyed.
Most desperately, Rose was consumed by the desire to confirm Mycroft's perception of her, or more precisely, his emotions. She wasn't unaware of the impending, inevitable, cataclysmic collapse. Yet, she didn't even pause, consciously moving towards it.
Hearsay was obviously inappropriate, and secretly, I didn't want Sherlock to know about it. Simply put, I wanted to maintain my image as his sister in his heart, lest I further damage the "spiritual sanctuary" he relied on for survival. Apart from Sherlock, there wasn't a single person I could trust in this swarming mansion.
However, things took a dramatic turn. That winter, the lady died. She passed away peacefully, simply leaning against the rocking chair, as if asleep. Such a quiet death seemed unbecoming of her.
She left no last words, and with her eyes closed, perhaps she never looked back on the obsessions and efforts of her life. After Mr. Holmes's death, the young widow raised two children and maintained the precarious aristocratic system, even though beneath this veneer of prosperity lay a young and pure soul and a body covered in wounds.
Standing before the coffin, Rose thought to herself that she and Sherlock were the stain on her life, yet the exceptional Mycroft could at least bring some solace to her heart. Sure enough, the family lawyer, holding a thick stack of documents, precisely targeted him among the three, and said ingratiatingly, "The title page contains Madam Holmes' will. From this day forward, everything in the Holmes family is to be inherited and controlled by you."
Mycroft took it, but didn't look at it. "Everything..." he seemed to be chewing on the word.
Rose turned her gaze to Sherlock. Surprisingly, on his lifeless face, she saw neither the sorrow of losing a loved one nor the joy of escaping his prison. She saw only a numbness, a blankness, as his wife aged naturally, and as he was finally about to welcome the dawn of freedom, he was forced to watch that dawn slip away.
The price of love and hate disappearing simultaneously.
Rose thought sadly that after this moment, he would probably completely lose the ability to love or hate someone.
“She hated me, so she punished me this way. I destroyed something she cared about, and she wants me to live with the guilt of matricide for the rest of my life.” Sherlock’s eyes became stagnant and confused. He looked at his pale hands and added, word by word, “My mother succeeded. Her body perished, but her soul has trapped me forever. I will live with hatred and guilt for the rest of my life.”
The next day, Rose arrived at Mycroft's room. As the new head of the family, he had moved to the central office of the family estate, the "heart" of the manor. Through the window of this room, one could see the entire exterior of the manor.
At that moment, she was apprehensive, but no longer filled with fear. After all, Mycroft was not the lady. This apprehension contained a sliver of anticipation: with the shift in power, what changes would occur at the manor?
At the same time, Eurus's shocking pronouncement echoed in her ears. Eurus's expression at that time was so calm, so compassionate, so sorrowful. She simply sat in the space enclosed by the air curtain and said softly, "How desperate it is to be loved by a monster like Mycroft."
...Love? Mycroft's...love?
As she pondered this, Rose unknowingly arrived here. She knocked on the door, trying to make her knocking as orderly as possible.
"Rose or Sherlock? — Please come in."
She pulled the cold silver doorknob and went inside.
Mycroft didn't seem to sleep much last night; his eyes were still a bit bloodshot. There was a cup of coffee on his desk, probably with an extra energy booster added.
Rose was about to state her hypothesis when Mycroft cut to the chase: "It was suicide. No need to ask anymore."
"So it really was retaliation against Sherlock." Though she died peacefully, her death stirred up a monstrous storm in the world. What kind of hatred and despair could drive someone to turn against even their own bloodline? "Poor brother Sherl, the lady is dead, yet he couldn't escape her grasp as promised. Instead, her grasp is forever holding him."
Mycroft narrowed his eyes. Then, he changed the subject: "Is there anything else? I think you came to see me for more than just to verify this."
"Well, I'm planning to move out of the house and settle down in a smaller place. I just have one wish: to be as far away from London as possible. And then there's my career. Although I've never worked before, I should be able to support myself. Even if—"
“No.” The crisp, decisive word interrupted Rose. Mycroft had almost never been so ungentlemanly. He rose from the old, elegant office chair, a symbol of power passed down through generations of the Holmes family, his posture no longer languid but utterly serious.
Rose felt a strange surge of emotion. He hadn't tried to stop her, but he was at least surprised by her departure. Or rather, her next step should be to ascertain whether he was reluctant to leave. Of course, she had to make sure Mycroft was completely unaware of these absurd inferences and attempts to verify them.
Such a deliberate test would not be easy to conceal from Mycroft, but it wasn't entirely impossible. While he was exceptionally astute in practical matters, he was emotionally dull. The source of this dullness lay in his indifference to emotions. Of course, this couldn't be blamed on him; if one were infallible in everything, what would be the difference between a man and a god?
It is precisely this "flaw" that reveals Mycroft's human side, while at the same time leaving her a glimpse through which to observe.
“Brother Mycroft, even under the Iron Curtain of Reason,” she paused, “there are still… ripples of emotion, aren’t there?”
The atmosphere froze, and the wind blowing in from the window was damp and cold. Rose looked up, meeting Mycroft's gaze for the first time in her life.
But he lowered his eyes. After a moment, he raised them, his deep gray pupils seemingly never having been touched by any warmth: "Emotion is the appendix of personality."
He went back to work. He casually flipped through the documents, reached for a pen, and quickly signed his name. She glanced at them; almost all of them were files related to property transfers.
Rose's pupils trembled, and she almost lost all her strength just speaking: "Brother, I'm wondering if this room really has magic, capable of twisting people into something else—even something they once hated. I thought at least you were different, because you already hold the power of a more magnificent palace and an empire. How could someone like you be corrupted by the power of a small family?"
A cruel sentence pierced her eardrums: "Rose, the only person in this world who could speak to me like this is dead. And you, clearly, do not have that right."
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