When the Past Returns - BBC Sherlock Fanfic

Chapter 11 - Blast from the Past

Penny stormed into Mycroft's office and took a seat opposite him without uttering a single word. She sat there, patiently waiting for him to finish his phone call though underneath she was seething. Mycroft glared at her for interrupting him. Penny didn't care about the consequences, she had known Mycroft long enough that she wasn't scared of him anymore. Once he had finished his call, he stared at Penny, watching her, undoubtably deducing her.

"So," Mycroft's voice broke the silence in the small, stuffy office. "I believe there was a matter you wanted to discuss."

"A matter I wanted to discuss?" Penny repeated. She couldn't quite understand how he was so casual about it. He must have known why she was there and who she wanted to talk about. 

"Well yes, you sounded rather distressed on the phone," Mycroft said rather monotoned. 

"Mycroft please. You know why I'm here. It's Moriarty." Just saying his name out loud made a chill run up Penny's spine. 

"What about him?" Penny let out an exacerbated sigh. Mycroft was avoiding the topic completely, but come to think of it, so was she. She didn't really know what she wanted to say to him. She was only there because of a fit of anger which was still bubbling inside her. Yet she could not think of one thing she wanted to say.

"Why?" She asked bluntly.

"Excuse me?"

"Why save me? Why drag me out of the pit you found me in. Bring me back to London, give me all the help I needed to get me back on my feet and forget the absolute trauma I went through, only to throw me back in when I was finally ready to get on with my life?" 

"To keep an eye on Sherlock," Mycroft replied, matter of factly. 

"Yes you keep saying that but we both know that you are fully capable of doing that yourself. Hell, you've been doing it for years! So why all of a sudden do you need my help?" Penny gripped the arms of her chair, raising her voice slightly, letting all her anger slowly seep out of her. 

"You make an excellent point Miss Morris but there is one thing you have that I don't. You have knowledge of this case that neither I nor Sherlock posses. You have understanding of my brother on a more personal level than I and he trusts you." As Mycroft explained, an aching grew in her heart.

"If only that were true," she almost whispered causing the eldest Holmes to give her a confused stare.

"Yes I may have knowledge about the madman behind all this but that hasn't helped us at all. And now, someone else has died because of him and I couldn't stop it. I'm not solving these puzzles any faster than Sherlock, I am completely helpless. And on the matter of Sherlock, I don't understand him. The person I thought I knew is gone, he doesn't exist anymore and he certainly doesn't trust me," Penny's eyes grew sad, her anger slowly slipping away as she remembered her encounter with Sherlock earlier that day. 

"I never wanted any of this Mycroft," She said, sinking into her chair, as if the life was slowly being sucked out of her. "I just wanted to live my life and forget any of it happened at all, including Sherlock. I went through months of therapy and counselling to get over the horrors that I endured and for what? For you to drag me back into the path of the very man that caused all of those horrors in the first place. Why would you do that to me? Friends don't do that to each other." Mycroft sat in shock. Had she just said friend? It definitely sounded like it. He had never been considered as someone's friend before. 

"I'm your friend?" He asked, wanting to clarify what he had just heard.

"Of course you are. You've been there for me more times than I can count," Penny smiled at him, noticing his struggle to understand the concept of being her friend. Eventually, his features softened.