Where Voices Speak Out

All his life, it seemed, he’d been putting things right – or things to rights, which was just as dreadful an occupation.  Entropy and human nature ensured he never lacked for something to do, and that meant he never suffered Sherlock’s devastating encounters with boredom.

(Except that he did because everything and nearly everyone was incredibly dull. However, if he ignored the people and simply focused on the things gone wrong, or about to go wrong, he could generally ignore the feeling of dull in his chest.)

He put the country to rights, attempted to put his brother to rights, well,… he endeavored the best that he could but sometimes he was very nearly sure that he was only mucking it up.  They had done best when he was away to school, after all, communicating via written word or music.

Sherlock still spoke to him through music – dischord.

The one thing he could not put to rights, however, was one of the few things he deeply desired to set straight.  That was the Detective Inspector’s rather miserable domestic situation.  If Mycroft could have paid her to be faithful, or threatened her to do so, he would have, because his was not a love that could be given directly, it wrapped around individuals as a protective blanket and never touched.  He could not touch Gregory Lestrade, and any attempt to fix what had broken in his family would only crush Gregory and destroy him if found out and he was too clever a man to be fooled into thinking that his wife loved him when she did not.

So he did the best that he could, and never touched him.