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❛ There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with brogues. ❜

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( cleverq )
❛ There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with brogues. ❜
"—And a MERRY NEW YEAR to you."
( but will no one DELIVER HIM from the wretchedness of social conventions-- ? what had compelled him into town on a blasted holiday he couldn't say, but he was rapidly coming to regret the decision. )
Holmes Brothers AU: The EAST WIND ↳ ( feat. Sherrinford/Q, Sherlock & Mycroft. )
wherein the Holmes boys grow up to find themselves a little less inclined to allow the whole of their individual talents to be directed by Queen & Country, and instead go into business ( so to speak ) for themselves. Collectively.
And oh, no, it's not that obvious, of course -- because they are so very good at finding other things to occupy themselves with, functional covers to while away the time. Mycroft takes a minor position in the British Government ( & what a prime vantage point it is, by sheer coincidence ). Sherlock continues to perfect his art of deduction on the streets for anyone who can afford it ( & for the ones who aren't boring ). And Sherrinford flies the coop as soon as he can manage to set up shop half a world away, where he gets into all sorts of secret, supposedly-secure places he shouldn't be, and does things the authorities should never find out about.
And they don't talk much, except for the occasional short back-and-forth text, or a succinct phone call late in the evening -- but they have plans, you see. They've always had plans.
( & no -- no one talks about the organization called the East Wind, but they whisper about it. Quietly. Privately. You don't find them, people say; they find you. And God help the ones who find themselves caught in it.
Those ones, people say, no one ever sees again. )
Because the world is a sometimes-vile proof of the indiscrete, unforgiving nature of mankind, led by troublesome political leaders, governed by corrupted officials making ill-use of faulty systems. And such weaknesses might be exploited by weaker men, oh, yes -- but they're the EAST WIND, and they pluck the unworthy from the earth, and they sweep over the void that's left, to put things to order with cool, relentless efficiency. So much of the world's current structure is like an obsolete, faltering machine in need of updating, of streamlining. There are vulnerabilities, like badly healed fractures which cripple their host; which make new, healthy growth impossible.
( But they will tear apart the old to rebuild it anew, better than before & they will find the weakened bones and break them, to set them again and watch them heal up, reforged twice as strong. )
They will strip the malicious ones from the world and put what's left to rights, because someone really must, and they do it together because no one man should have all that power.
And because, if not them -- then who?
( & because -- frankly, they've always been BORED. )
[x]
"With copious amounts of Mummy's eggnog and a saint's measure of patience, like as not. But man cannot survive the holidays on liquor and fortitude alone—
—Well, 'least not ours."
fic: entrust;
"You'll look after him for me, won't you? "Yes, Mycroft."
"——If you're attempting to tail me discreetly, you're doing an exceptionally poor job of it."
Describe your character’s relationship with their mother or their father, or both. Was it good? Bad? Were they spoiled rotten, or ignored? Do they still get along now, or no?
Q is neither parent's favorite child, but that has less to do with him directly and more to do with the timing of his birth. (He's the third child after all; in some schools of thought he is practically superfluous.)
It's no secret between the brothers that Sherlock has always been their mother's boy, bright of eye and indomitable in temperament; Sherlock is the distillation of their mother's fire, the kinetic passion that drove her to the top of her field and then later led her away from it. And Mycroft—calculating, impossibly intelligent and politically savvy—was their father's hope; on his eldest son did Father Holmes lay all his aspirations, rightly judging Mycroft to be ambitious and yet never understanding quite how spectacularly inadequate a descriptor something as simple as ambitious might be in regards to the sort of measured infamy Mycroft cultivated.
Nevertheless, qualifying the variables does not change the sum of them: Mycroft is their father's favorite; Sherlock, their mother's.
But Q is their third living child, their youngest, and despite not being the favorite, he was still undeniably cared for. He wanted for nothing, in material or in support; his mother loved him no more or no less than her other children, and his father struggled with Q's temperament as strongly as he had Sherlock's, though in a different vein. (Still, when Q fled the country, it was his mother to whom he addressed his goodbye letter.) But he loves his parents well enough, and respects them in degrees.
He exchanges emails with them periodically, more often with his mother than his father; it's his method of keeping in touch, and it does the trick. Q considers his current relationship with his parents healthy, though not overly close; he doesn't come home often, except when he can't find an excuse to avoid it.