New Fic: Five Times Mrs Holmes’ Heart Broke Over Her Younger Son
Title: Five Times Mrs Holmes’ Heart Broke Over Her Younger Son (and the One Time He Tried To Make It Up To Her In His Own Unique Way)
Author: jupiter_ash
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes owned by ACD, Sherlock created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss
Summary: Ever wondered about Mrs Holmes and what sort of a woman it would take to raise someone like Sherlock? Well, here’s one version.
Warnings: Mentions of domestic abuse and drug abuse, allusions to a same sex relationship, and lots and lots of angst
Author Note: My first 5 + 1 fic in this fandom. Partly used as an excuse to explore some of Sherlock’s past and upbringing. The +1 has been re-written more times than I would care to admit. I hope at least this time it works. This story has also been sat on my computer for far too long. I also haven't posted anything for a shockingly long time.
Thanks to trillsabells for the beta. Any other mistakes are mine.
*-*-*
One
When people passed comment about Mycroft they always drew attention to his obvious but totally overwhelming intelligence. In doing so they ignored his other, less than positive, attributes - his weight, his arrogance, the way he could look right through you. She supposed they deemed them less important or at least more acceptable when dealing with a child genius.
It therefore always came as an unpleasant surprise when, despite his matching brilliance, the comments about Sherlock were always the opposite.
“I’m sorry to tell you,” her sister said one lunch time over sandwiches and tea, “but there’s something… well, wrong with this one.”
Mycroft had been their only child for such a long time that she had more or less given up hope of having a second. Of course the chances of a second child had been severely hampered by the miscarriages and the limited amount of time her husband spent in her bed. Until Sherlock had been born Mycroft had been enough. In fact he had been more than enough, far more than they could have hoped for with his natural brilliance and extraordinary intelligence. Everyone agreed that Mycroft was destined for greatness - Oxbridge certainly and then perhaps a government post, maybe even Prime Minister. Nothing was impossible for him.
Then she had fallen pregnant again, six and a half years after Mycroft had been born, two years after their last failed attempt. She had barely dared to hope that they might be gifted with another child. It had ended in disappointment so many times, but as the months passed and the baby grew she started to think that maybe this time, if they were really lucky, Mycroft might find himself with a younger brother or sister.
The baby came early, only by a couple of weeks, but it meant he looked so much smaller than she remembered Mycroft being at the same age. So small and skinny, all long limbs and dark hair, and then his eyes had opened and they had been such a pale grey that they had even taken her by surprise.
What she first realised was that he was prone to watching everything. He never liked going to sleep as if he knew he was going to miss something by not being awake. He got distracted easily while being fed and was prone to screaming for no apparent reason. It took her a while to work out the pattern and was shocked when she realised it was because there had simply been too much; too much sound, or too many things to look at, too many people or just too much of anything. He liked the quiet and stillness, soft classical music, muted colours and familiar faces. She strove to keep him content as much as possible, if only for her own sanity, sure as she was that he would grow out of it.
He never did grow out of it.
He was barely two when her sister made the comment. Perhaps it had been the way he had been playing earlier, or maybe it was his ability to sit still for considerable stretches of time. Most likely, she concluded later, it was the way he had simply stared at them while eating, his big pale green grey eyes made more obvious by the white and turquoise outfit she had him in that day. He certainly had a stare on him, little Sherlock, a stare that could be quite unnerving as her sister discovered.
“That child is strange,” her sister said once Sherlock had quietly climbed his way down from the table and returned to reading a book far beyond his age. “Mark my words, there’s something almost unnatural about him. He’s going to cause you problems when he gets older. No doubt about it. Problems.”
Her heart clenched at that and as much as she wanted to tell her sister otherwise, to put it down to sibling jealousy or spite, she knew she couldn’t. There was something different about Sherlock, and it wasn’t just the way his intelligence made him stand out. Sherlock wasn’t Mycroft and considering the intelligence they shared she could not help but fear what that might mean in the long term.
*-*-*
Two
“The truth is, Mrs Holmes, that autistic or not, your son shows clear signs of sociopathic behaviour. He sees no reason why he should refrain from aggressive behaviour, nor understand why it is hardly appropriate. You yourself witnessed his assault on his older brother. There was little to no provocation for it, he has shown no remorse and refuses to see what he did as wrong or offer any justification for actions. He has a distinct lack of empathy, to the point where I fear he would have no qualms about hurting other children or animals.
“It is obvious that he is incredibly intelligent, possibly too intelligent. This makes him an outsider but unlike his brother he makes no attempt to integrate himself with others. All of these things add up and I fear that should something not be done now he will be a danger to society by the time he reaches adulthood. Do you understand what I am saying, Mrs Holmes?”
The psychiatrist was looking at her from across the large, probably oak, desk, the files through which he claimed to know her son were open and littered with long words scrawled in a slanted hand. If she turned her head she would probably be able to make out some of the words but instead she kept it held high and looked the psychiatrist right in the eye.
The psychiatrist, a Doctor Van Something-or-other, a well respected man in his field and the choice of her husband, looked at her with an expression of part exasperation and part sympathy. He had spent less than ninety minutes with her son, talking and assessing him. She was more than aware that Sherlock could be incredibly trying when he wanted to be but despite that she felt the doctor had no right to either of those emotions. She neither wanted nor accepted his sympathy. Sherlock was who he was and he was her son, she did not want to feel as if there was anything wrong with that. He was just… different, that was all, and there was nothing wrong with being different.
“I believe,” she said slowly, her hands clutched tightly together in her lap, “that you and my son may have not gotten off on the right foot. Sherlock has many faults, perhaps more than most children his age, but he is not a bad boy. Intense, perhaps, obsessive, certainly, anti-social, undeniably, but he is a child lumbered with a brilliant mind. Is it any wonder that he undergoes extreme frustration at times?”
It was clear that the good Doctor was not impressed by her diagnosis. Removing his glasses, he made a point of polishing them before replacing them and leaning forward, his fingers stapling in front of his face.
“Mrs Holmes,” he said slowly but firmly, “your son,” he glanced down at the pages, “Sherlock, lacks many of the restraints and emotional connections that make us human. In the time I spent with him he showed aggression, frustration and anger. He point blank refused to answer many of my questions and just stared at me when I suggested he should not have resorted to physical violence regarding the altercation with his brother. His lack of remorse is as shocking as it is disturbing. Combined with his outstanding intelligence he could become a danger to society. People use the phrase ‘getting away with murder’ rather lightly, but in your son’s case, Mrs Holmes, I have little doubt that should he put his mind to it he could do just that. If he doesn’t change he’ll be dead, in prison or in a psychiatric ward by the time he is thirty, mark my words.”
She did mark his words but in her heart she knew he was wrong.
She left the office without another word. She kept her head high as she walked back to the room where her youngest son was being observed.
None of this had been her idea, but after Sherlock had sent Mycroft to hospital in need of stitches her husband had put his foot down and demanded that Sherlock be checked out by a specialist. She had known it would do no good.
She found Sherlock by one side, away from the observation window, lying across the bench. His knees were curled up to his chin and his hands were covering his face and ears. He looked so small and fragile with his skinny body and the mop of dark curly hair. It was incredible to her that he could have been described in such horrific ways. Sociopath, autistic, special, he was just her Sherlock and he would always be her Sherlock.
Ignoring the curious looks from the observers, she crossed the room and crouched down beside him, softly calling his name. He acknowledged her presence with a slight shift which allowed her to see the pale slit of one of his eyes looking up at her.
She didn’t bother to ask if he was alright. He so hated obvious questions and it was clear that he was not alright. Instead she slowly reached out a hand and stroked it across his hair while whispering soothing words to him.
He responded by reaching out to grip her jumper and falling into her arms, his head burying itself into her chest.
“Head hurts,” he said his voice muffled against her. “Too much. Too bright.”
They had over-stimulated him. Too many new things, too many new people, too many questions. No wonder he had responded so badly to the doctor. They just didn’t understand. They simply wanted to slap a label on everything and so saw what they wanted to see. Pointless questions, repetition, lack of the familiar, no wonder he had gotten aggressive. They didn’t understand and he lacked the ability to make them understand.
“I know, sweetheart,” she said softly, gathering him in her arms so she could lift him up and they could finally leave. He was technically too big to be carried now, but she owed it to him and his skinny build made him lighter than most of his age.
They were not to come back to this place again. She would make sure of that. She did not care what they claimed, she was not about to lump her son with a diagnosis that could haunt his entire life.
She understood more about his violent outburst against his brother than any doctor or physiatrist ever could. Had she realised just how much his little robot had meant to him she would never have sent Mycroft to call him down for dinner. Mycroft who could be so heavy handed, so arrogant in his being right, so unable to understand his own brother’s motives that he simply had not realised that by breaking Sherlock’s toy - accidentally or otherwise - he was destroying something that meant more to Sherlock than any other thing.
Mine, Sherlock had screamed as he had thrown himself at his brother. Mine, mine, mine.
Sociopathic tendencies indeed. Sherlock made emotional connections, but they were so few and so deep that he became possessive. It was something they would have to work on, but the elements were all there.
He could be normal - or at least as normal as his intelligence and personality would allow him. She had to believe that, especially when it hurt.
*-*-*
Three
Sherlock loathed lies and liars. For the most part he could see through lies so easily that he became annoyed that people would even attempt to fool him.
She had made a point of never lying to the children. She hid things from them, she informed them that she did not need to tell them everything, but she tried her best not to outright lie.
Sherlock was ten when she dearly wished he was anyone but himself.
She had hidden the truth from him for so long that it had become second nature. She and Mycroft had discussed it and decided that Sherlock simply did not need to know. He would not understand anyway.
It had worked for so long, but then Mycroft had left for university and then there was no one now to stand between her and the drunken fists of her husband.
Until Sherlock had tried.
He was ten and still so small. With his big eyes and his wayward hair it was hard not to see her little baby when she looked at him. Then he would say something that would go some way to destroying that image forever.
“I know what he does to you.”
He spoke so softly, hovering in the doorway of her bedroom.
The finger marks were still red on her arm and she quickly pulled her sleeve down to make sure they were covered.
“What was that, dear?” she asked giving him an innocent look.
He just stared back at her, all baggy clothes and slightly chubby cheeks. His stare was penetrative to the point of being disturbing. He did not repeat what he had said. He knew she had heard and he did so hate repetition. Rather he walked carefully over to her sliding his fingers under her loose sleeve to gently brush against the marks. He spoke not another word, but after a long moment in which she fought the urge to either apologise or to lie he then bent forward and pressed a kiss to her temple.
Then he left.
In hindsight she should have realised what he was to do, he always was so possessive, but it simply did not crossed her mind.
Mycroft had always been the bigger one, in stature as well as age. At six foot one he was already a commanding presence, but Mycroft wasn’t here and it was a different body that next got between her and the fists.
It started with a shouting match, names thrown at her little boy such as freak and psycho. She tried to stop it, tried to protect her baby as she had always fought to do, but this time she was unable to.
The punch left Sherlock dazed and surprised. In defence of the situation, he wasn’t the only one.
The door slammed shut by the time she reached him and her arms shook as she pulled him close to her, holding him where he had fallen.
He wasn’t crying, wasn’t doing anything more than staring blankly at the floor, the blood from his split lip dripping down his face. She wiped at it with her sleeve, pressing kisses to his head as she held him.
“Tell me I’m not like him,” he said softly after a long period of silence.
He had his father’s eyes and hair colouring, his intelligence and some of his nature, and yet her response hadn’t even been close to a lie. “You’re nothing like him, Sherlock, love,” she said, willing him to believe her. “Nothing at all.”
It broke her heart to know that he thought he was.
*-*-*
Four
She worried about him constantly, but when he was like this she worried about him all the more.
At fifteen, Sherlock was all long limbs and awkward movements. His legs were too long for his body, his arms weren’t always under control and she knew he hated the way it made him that little bit clumsier. He was still skinny but it was clear that he was going to be about the same height as his brother.
He had been sat in the same position for over two hours now. This in itself was not wholly unusual, but there was something about the slump of his shoulders and the frown lines of his forehead that made her concerned that perhaps something had happened that she didn’t know about.
She knew there were a lot of things that happened - particularly at school - that he did not tell her about. For the amount that he could and often would talk, he was still a very private boy, but she knew that when the time was right he would tell her.
Knocking his door, she entered with a tray containing a mug of tea and a couple of his favourite biscuits. She set them down beside him without comment knowing he loathed idle chatter. If he wanted to talk then he would do. He had always talked to her in the past.
He needed a hair cut, she noticed with a small smile. Reaching over she brushed her fingers through his curls and placed a soft kiss to his cheek before reminding him that dinner would be on the table in an hour.
She hadn’t expected a response but was stopped quickly by the door at the sound of his newly deepening voice.
“Would you still love me if… if I was even more of a freak?”
She winced at the flatness of his tone and at the use of the last word. His father had not been the only person to have called him a freak and despite her best efforts it was a word that was starting to stick. She wondered if it would be a name that would follow him around for the rest of his life.
“I will always love you, Sherlock,” she said firmly. “And you’re not a freak, no matter what anyone else says.”
He said nothing more after that, just continued to sit and stare as he had been. She often wondered what sort of thoughts went round his head but had resigned herself to never knowing that sort of thing.
Searching him for clues as to the reason for his question her eyes fell to a magazine lying haphazardly on the floor half hidden by his feet. She recognised its type immediately, fallen as it was open on a page where a pretty blond was baring her breasts and sucking her finger in a rather provocative manner. She wondered for a moment where he had gotten it but realised that it hardly mattered. What mattered was how it did, or in this case didn’t make him feel.
She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. What she most wanted to do was to go across that room and gather him into the biggest hug she could, to hold him and tell him that it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, that she would still love him regardless of who he did or didn’t like, who he was or wasn’t attracted to. She couldn’t though, not because she was unable to but because he wouldn’t have accepted it. She would simply have to reassure him in other ways. He would see through it of course, he always did, that was one of the things that made him who he was, but she hoped he realised that he was far more than the freak other people thought of him and that one day someone else would realise that too.
She hoped that day would come soon but could not help but suspect it was still a long, long way off.
*-*-*
Five
It was the call she had been both expecting and dreading.
It was Mycroft that found him in the end. He didn’t say how but she knew he had his connections. Of course it wouldn’t have been easy because he wasn’t using his real name, but then again Sherlock had never made anything easy.
She glimpsed him first through the window. He had his own small private room. Once again she had not asked, just accepted the small favour Mycroft had been able to do for his little brother.
It wasn’t Sherlock that she got to meet first though.
The young man sat outside the room looked almost as bad as the one in the bed. His light brown hair was lank and unwashed and he had the pale, sallow, blood shot look of one who spent more time under the influence of drugs than out in the fresh air. She had never met him before, had not even known of his existence, but in that moment she hated him.
“Mrs Holmes?”
She didn’t respond as the young man rose unsteady to his feet.
“I’m Paul,” he said holding out a shaking hand, “I’m Sid’s, uh, friend.”
Sherlock wasn’t even using his own name. He was booked into the hospital as Sydney Holmes, no doubt because that was what his ‘friend’ knew him as. That’s why it had taken Mycroft that little bit longer to find out, a mistake that would not happen again.
She knew nothing about this Paul but she knew what he meant by ‘friend’.
Anyone else and she would not have minded. She was his mother, she had loved him through the screaming fits, through the psychiatrist reports, through the spiteful comments from others, through the ridiculous feuds with his brother. She knew him better than he knew himself and she knew he was nothing like the other kids, she had accepted that a long time before. He had never shown any interest in the opposite sex. He had barely shown an interest in any other people so she was not going to love him any less because his first real emotional bond was with another man.
Paul though represented everything that she hated. He was a leech and an emotional user. She knew Sherlock was no angel, but the man before her had introduced a vulnerable, confused young man to a world of drugs and hedonism, a combination that had led them all here.
It was her son she was here to see though and politely ignoring his so called friend, she pushed the door open and went to sit by his bedside.
Her baby looked so pale and skinny lain out as he was on the bed. It had been over a year since she had last seen him, but he had changed so much. All his baby fat had disappeared leaving his cheek bones even more prominent. He never had been particularly large - one of the main differences between him and Mycroft - but now he looked little more than a skeleton. It pained her to see him like that.
The doctors said it had been an overdose. Cocaine was the drug mentioned and she wondered what had driven her brilliant son to the point where he would risk damaging his beautiful mind with such a pointless drug.
“Oh, Sherlock,” she said brushing a wayward curl away from his forehead and pressing a kiss to his face.
Later he would awaken briefly and tell her he did it to make his brain stop, in an attempt to starve off boredom, in the need to feel normal, if only for a short time. Later still she would hold him as he shook himself through the withdrawals and begged her for something, anything to take the edge off and didn’t she love him for god’s sake? But for now she would sit by his bedside, hold his hand and ignore the track marks that ran up the inside of his arm.
*-*-*
And the Other One
Mycroft’s present arrived by black car, something that had not surprised her in the slightest, especially since he had called that morning and warned her. It had been very thoughtful of him, especially considering he had been half way across the Atlantic at the time, but in all the years he had never forgotten her birthday.
His present had included a large and very beautiful arrangement of flowers made artfully up out of her favourite blooms, a bottle of perfume that looked frightfully expensive, tickets to a play she had been wanting to see but had been told had been fully sold out for weeks, dinner reservations at the Ritz, and surprisingly a beautiful ornate picture frame nearly identical to the one that had been damaged just the other week.
She had thanked him in advance of course and reminded him that he need not have spent so much money on her. He had laughed and told her not to be silly, that if he couldn’t spoil his mother than who could he spoil?
She had wanted to remind him that she wouldn’t mind if he found another woman to love, spoil and settle down with - or man, she wasn’t too fussed, just whoever made him happy - but didn’t want to spoil the conversation by bringing up old disagreements. Besides, she knew he already knew this and would only insist that he was perfectly happy as he was.
Well, as long as she was happy she wasn’t about to complain. Anyway, he had always been a bit of a Mummy’s boy, more so perhaps than Sherlock.
Ah, Sherlock. She wasn’t expected much from him in way of gifts. Well, not today at least. He did usually remember her birthday - or was reminded of it by Mycroft - but, depending upon how busy or distracted he was meant that often or not his present, card or phone call would come anywhere from on her actual birthday to about a week later, but he would remember, which was all she would ask for.
She tried the perfume, put the flowers in the living room, the tickets and reservations in a safe place, the card on the mantle piece and slipped the picture from the damaged frame into the new one. It fitted perfectly, although she had honestly expected nothing less considering Mycroft, but looking at the picture found she had to sit down for a moment.
It was easily one of her dearest and most treasured photos. A candid shot, it stood in stark contrast to the more formal, posed family portraits they had had done each year. For one it was just of the two boys, and for two they were both laughing, a rare occasion indeed.
She couldn’t remember what they had been laughing about or why, but that did not matter any more, and any way it had been such a long time ago, almost another lifetime it seemed. They had both been so young, Mycroft eleven and just on the cusp of puberty, Sherlock four, all big eyes and wild hair. For that brief moment they had been united in their sharing, not one hint of the sibling animosity that would later come to define their relationship.
When she thought about her boys this was how she liked to remember them; happy, relaxed and carefree, without the heavy weights that would later come to rest on each of them.
She sat and remembered for a while before pulling herself together and getting on with all the things that needed to be done, birthday or no.
She was just going to settle down for an afternoon cup of tea when there was an unfamiliar knock on the front door. Opening it she found a man she didn’t know or recognise standing there in a beige jumper, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Hello,” he said, “is this 17 Larkrise Croft?”
She confirmed that it was.
“Oh, good,” he said, “I have been instructed to deliver this personally.”
He handed over a cream envelope and returned to standing at what appeared to be military rest. The envelope had no name on it, just the address scrawled across in a very familiar handwriting.
She smiled slightly and carefully pried it open. There was a card inside, one of those humorous ones with two men lying on a hillside under the stars, one asking the other what he can deduce. It was an old joke but one that never failed to make her smile when, after the second man had talked about the galaxies, the time, the stars, the weather and creation, the first man called him an idiot and pointed out that someone had stolen their tent.
Opening the card, she found the usual inscribing and another slip of paper.
‘Dear Mummy,’ the scribing said, ‘Happy Birthday, Love Sherlock’.
The slip of paper, however, was more curious as that had not been expected. Unfolding it she found more of Sherlock’s scrawl across it.
‘Will be by later with rest of present and food’, it said. ‘Please keep John entertained until then. He’s a doctor who likes tea. SH’
She laughed because that was so like Sherlock. For years she had waited in anticipation of meeting… well of meeting anyone to do with Sherlock, but other than that fateful day in the hospital she had never been introduced to anyone. Not one colleague, one friend, one companion, one flatmate, anyone.
Mycroft had brought people over, but Sherlock had always been so isolated, so independent. He had been so insistent that he simply had not needed anyone that she had not wanted to push it, had not wanted to push him away, and yet, here he was, giving her one of the best presents she could have asked for.
Now she knew, it was so obvious who this young man on her doorstep was. She had heard all about this infamous John, the doctor, the soldier, the flatmate, colleague and friend. She had managed to get some information out of Sherlock, but he had always been so vague. Mycroft had filled her in on the rest though, how it looked as if Sherlock had finally found someone to care about, someone he could call a friend, and here he was, in the flesh.
It was a most unusual present, but one that meant far more to her than perhaps Sherlock would ever realise. Or maybe he did realise, after all this was wholly unprecedented and that was very much Sherlock. In that she hoped he would never change.
The young man looked on politely and she realised that not only had Sherlock failed to tell him who she was, but that she must also look a sight, laughing at the card and then grinning like a loon, all the while keeping him waiting on the doorstep. That was hardly polite, so she did the one thing she could do, the one thing Sherlock had known she would do, she smiled as normally as she could manage and invited him in for tea.
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THE END
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Author: jupiter_ash
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes owned by ACD, Sherlock created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss
Summary: Ever wondered about Mrs Holmes and what sort of a woman it would take to raise someone like Sherlock? Well, here’s one version.
Warnings: Mentions of domestic abuse and drug abuse, allusions to a same sex relationship, and lots and lots of angst
Author Note: My first 5 + 1 fic in this fandom. Partly used as an excuse to explore some of Sherlock’s past and upbringing. The +1 has been re-written more times than I would care to admit. I hope at least this time it works. This story has also been sat on my computer for far too long. I also haven't posted anything for a shockingly long time.
Thanks to trillsabells for the beta. Any other mistakes are mine.
*-*-*
One
When people passed comment about Mycroft they always drew attention to his obvious but totally overwhelming intelligence. In doing so they ignored his other, less than positive, attributes - his weight, his arrogance, the way he could look right through you. She supposed they deemed them less important or at least more acceptable when dealing with a child genius.
It therefore always came as an unpleasant surprise when, despite his matching brilliance, the comments about Sherlock were always the opposite.
“I’m sorry to tell you,” her sister said one lunch time over sandwiches and tea, “but there’s something… well, wrong with this one.”
Mycroft had been their only child for such a long time that she had more or less given up hope of having a second. Of course the chances of a second child had been severely hampered by the miscarriages and the limited amount of time her husband spent in her bed. Until Sherlock had been born Mycroft had been enough. In fact he had been more than enough, far more than they could have hoped for with his natural brilliance and extraordinary intelligence. Everyone agreed that Mycroft was destined for greatness - Oxbridge certainly and then perhaps a government post, maybe even Prime Minister. Nothing was impossible for him.
Then she had fallen pregnant again, six and a half years after Mycroft had been born, two years after their last failed attempt. She had barely dared to hope that they might be gifted with another child. It had ended in disappointment so many times, but as the months passed and the baby grew she started to think that maybe this time, if they were really lucky, Mycroft might find himself with a younger brother or sister.
The baby came early, only by a couple of weeks, but it meant he looked so much smaller than she remembered Mycroft being at the same age. So small and skinny, all long limbs and dark hair, and then his eyes had opened and they had been such a pale grey that they had even taken her by surprise.
What she first realised was that he was prone to watching everything. He never liked going to sleep as if he knew he was going to miss something by not being awake. He got distracted easily while being fed and was prone to screaming for no apparent reason. It took her a while to work out the pattern and was shocked when she realised it was because there had simply been too much; too much sound, or too many things to look at, too many people or just too much of anything. He liked the quiet and stillness, soft classical music, muted colours and familiar faces. She strove to keep him content as much as possible, if only for her own sanity, sure as she was that he would grow out of it.
He never did grow out of it.
He was barely two when her sister made the comment. Perhaps it had been the way he had been playing earlier, or maybe it was his ability to sit still for considerable stretches of time. Most likely, she concluded later, it was the way he had simply stared at them while eating, his big pale green grey eyes made more obvious by the white and turquoise outfit she had him in that day. He certainly had a stare on him, little Sherlock, a stare that could be quite unnerving as her sister discovered.
“That child is strange,” her sister said once Sherlock had quietly climbed his way down from the table and returned to reading a book far beyond his age. “Mark my words, there’s something almost unnatural about him. He’s going to cause you problems when he gets older. No doubt about it. Problems.”
Her heart clenched at that and as much as she wanted to tell her sister otherwise, to put it down to sibling jealousy or spite, she knew she couldn’t. There was something different about Sherlock, and it wasn’t just the way his intelligence made him stand out. Sherlock wasn’t Mycroft and considering the intelligence they shared she could not help but fear what that might mean in the long term.
*-*-*
Two
“The truth is, Mrs Holmes, that autistic or not, your son shows clear signs of sociopathic behaviour. He sees no reason why he should refrain from aggressive behaviour, nor understand why it is hardly appropriate. You yourself witnessed his assault on his older brother. There was little to no provocation for it, he has shown no remorse and refuses to see what he did as wrong or offer any justification for actions. He has a distinct lack of empathy, to the point where I fear he would have no qualms about hurting other children or animals.
“It is obvious that he is incredibly intelligent, possibly too intelligent. This makes him an outsider but unlike his brother he makes no attempt to integrate himself with others. All of these things add up and I fear that should something not be done now he will be a danger to society by the time he reaches adulthood. Do you understand what I am saying, Mrs Holmes?”
The psychiatrist was looking at her from across the large, probably oak, desk, the files through which he claimed to know her son were open and littered with long words scrawled in a slanted hand. If she turned her head she would probably be able to make out some of the words but instead she kept it held high and looked the psychiatrist right in the eye.
The psychiatrist, a Doctor Van Something-or-other, a well respected man in his field and the choice of her husband, looked at her with an expression of part exasperation and part sympathy. He had spent less than ninety minutes with her son, talking and assessing him. She was more than aware that Sherlock could be incredibly trying when he wanted to be but despite that she felt the doctor had no right to either of those emotions. She neither wanted nor accepted his sympathy. Sherlock was who he was and he was her son, she did not want to feel as if there was anything wrong with that. He was just… different, that was all, and there was nothing wrong with being different.
“I believe,” she said slowly, her hands clutched tightly together in her lap, “that you and my son may have not gotten off on the right foot. Sherlock has many faults, perhaps more than most children his age, but he is not a bad boy. Intense, perhaps, obsessive, certainly, anti-social, undeniably, but he is a child lumbered with a brilliant mind. Is it any wonder that he undergoes extreme frustration at times?”
It was clear that the good Doctor was not impressed by her diagnosis. Removing his glasses, he made a point of polishing them before replacing them and leaning forward, his fingers stapling in front of his face.
“Mrs Holmes,” he said slowly but firmly, “your son,” he glanced down at the pages, “Sherlock, lacks many of the restraints and emotional connections that make us human. In the time I spent with him he showed aggression, frustration and anger. He point blank refused to answer many of my questions and just stared at me when I suggested he should not have resorted to physical violence regarding the altercation with his brother. His lack of remorse is as shocking as it is disturbing. Combined with his outstanding intelligence he could become a danger to society. People use the phrase ‘getting away with murder’ rather lightly, but in your son’s case, Mrs Holmes, I have little doubt that should he put his mind to it he could do just that. If he doesn’t change he’ll be dead, in prison or in a psychiatric ward by the time he is thirty, mark my words.”
She did mark his words but in her heart she knew he was wrong.
She left the office without another word. She kept her head high as she walked back to the room where her youngest son was being observed.
None of this had been her idea, but after Sherlock had sent Mycroft to hospital in need of stitches her husband had put his foot down and demanded that Sherlock be checked out by a specialist. She had known it would do no good.
She found Sherlock by one side, away from the observation window, lying across the bench. His knees were curled up to his chin and his hands were covering his face and ears. He looked so small and fragile with his skinny body and the mop of dark curly hair. It was incredible to her that he could have been described in such horrific ways. Sociopath, autistic, special, he was just her Sherlock and he would always be her Sherlock.
Ignoring the curious looks from the observers, she crossed the room and crouched down beside him, softly calling his name. He acknowledged her presence with a slight shift which allowed her to see the pale slit of one of his eyes looking up at her.
She didn’t bother to ask if he was alright. He so hated obvious questions and it was clear that he was not alright. Instead she slowly reached out a hand and stroked it across his hair while whispering soothing words to him.
He responded by reaching out to grip her jumper and falling into her arms, his head burying itself into her chest.
“Head hurts,” he said his voice muffled against her. “Too much. Too bright.”
They had over-stimulated him. Too many new things, too many new people, too many questions. No wonder he had responded so badly to the doctor. They just didn’t understand. They simply wanted to slap a label on everything and so saw what they wanted to see. Pointless questions, repetition, lack of the familiar, no wonder he had gotten aggressive. They didn’t understand and he lacked the ability to make them understand.
“I know, sweetheart,” she said softly, gathering him in her arms so she could lift him up and they could finally leave. He was technically too big to be carried now, but she owed it to him and his skinny build made him lighter than most of his age.
They were not to come back to this place again. She would make sure of that. She did not care what they claimed, she was not about to lump her son with a diagnosis that could haunt his entire life.
She understood more about his violent outburst against his brother than any doctor or physiatrist ever could. Had she realised just how much his little robot had meant to him she would never have sent Mycroft to call him down for dinner. Mycroft who could be so heavy handed, so arrogant in his being right, so unable to understand his own brother’s motives that he simply had not realised that by breaking Sherlock’s toy - accidentally or otherwise - he was destroying something that meant more to Sherlock than any other thing.
Mine, Sherlock had screamed as he had thrown himself at his brother. Mine, mine, mine.
Sociopathic tendencies indeed. Sherlock made emotional connections, but they were so few and so deep that he became possessive. It was something they would have to work on, but the elements were all there.
He could be normal - or at least as normal as his intelligence and personality would allow him. She had to believe that, especially when it hurt.
*-*-*
Three
Sherlock loathed lies and liars. For the most part he could see through lies so easily that he became annoyed that people would even attempt to fool him.
She had made a point of never lying to the children. She hid things from them, she informed them that she did not need to tell them everything, but she tried her best not to outright lie.
Sherlock was ten when she dearly wished he was anyone but himself.
She had hidden the truth from him for so long that it had become second nature. She and Mycroft had discussed it and decided that Sherlock simply did not need to know. He would not understand anyway.
It had worked for so long, but then Mycroft had left for university and then there was no one now to stand between her and the drunken fists of her husband.
Until Sherlock had tried.
He was ten and still so small. With his big eyes and his wayward hair it was hard not to see her little baby when she looked at him. Then he would say something that would go some way to destroying that image forever.
“I know what he does to you.”
He spoke so softly, hovering in the doorway of her bedroom.
The finger marks were still red on her arm and she quickly pulled her sleeve down to make sure they were covered.
“What was that, dear?” she asked giving him an innocent look.
He just stared back at her, all baggy clothes and slightly chubby cheeks. His stare was penetrative to the point of being disturbing. He did not repeat what he had said. He knew she had heard and he did so hate repetition. Rather he walked carefully over to her sliding his fingers under her loose sleeve to gently brush against the marks. He spoke not another word, but after a long moment in which she fought the urge to either apologise or to lie he then bent forward and pressed a kiss to her temple.
Then he left.
In hindsight she should have realised what he was to do, he always was so possessive, but it simply did not crossed her mind.
Mycroft had always been the bigger one, in stature as well as age. At six foot one he was already a commanding presence, but Mycroft wasn’t here and it was a different body that next got between her and the fists.
It started with a shouting match, names thrown at her little boy such as freak and psycho. She tried to stop it, tried to protect her baby as she had always fought to do, but this time she was unable to.
The punch left Sherlock dazed and surprised. In defence of the situation, he wasn’t the only one.
The door slammed shut by the time she reached him and her arms shook as she pulled him close to her, holding him where he had fallen.
He wasn’t crying, wasn’t doing anything more than staring blankly at the floor, the blood from his split lip dripping down his face. She wiped at it with her sleeve, pressing kisses to his head as she held him.
“Tell me I’m not like him,” he said softly after a long period of silence.
He had his father’s eyes and hair colouring, his intelligence and some of his nature, and yet her response hadn’t even been close to a lie. “You’re nothing like him, Sherlock, love,” she said, willing him to believe her. “Nothing at all.”
It broke her heart to know that he thought he was.
*-*-*
Four
She worried about him constantly, but when he was like this she worried about him all the more.
At fifteen, Sherlock was all long limbs and awkward movements. His legs were too long for his body, his arms weren’t always under control and she knew he hated the way it made him that little bit clumsier. He was still skinny but it was clear that he was going to be about the same height as his brother.
He had been sat in the same position for over two hours now. This in itself was not wholly unusual, but there was something about the slump of his shoulders and the frown lines of his forehead that made her concerned that perhaps something had happened that she didn’t know about.
She knew there were a lot of things that happened - particularly at school - that he did not tell her about. For the amount that he could and often would talk, he was still a very private boy, but she knew that when the time was right he would tell her.
Knocking his door, she entered with a tray containing a mug of tea and a couple of his favourite biscuits. She set them down beside him without comment knowing he loathed idle chatter. If he wanted to talk then he would do. He had always talked to her in the past.
He needed a hair cut, she noticed with a small smile. Reaching over she brushed her fingers through his curls and placed a soft kiss to his cheek before reminding him that dinner would be on the table in an hour.
She hadn’t expected a response but was stopped quickly by the door at the sound of his newly deepening voice.
“Would you still love me if… if I was even more of a freak?”
She winced at the flatness of his tone and at the use of the last word. His father had not been the only person to have called him a freak and despite her best efforts it was a word that was starting to stick. She wondered if it would be a name that would follow him around for the rest of his life.
“I will always love you, Sherlock,” she said firmly. “And you’re not a freak, no matter what anyone else says.”
He said nothing more after that, just continued to sit and stare as he had been. She often wondered what sort of thoughts went round his head but had resigned herself to never knowing that sort of thing.
Searching him for clues as to the reason for his question her eyes fell to a magazine lying haphazardly on the floor half hidden by his feet. She recognised its type immediately, fallen as it was open on a page where a pretty blond was baring her breasts and sucking her finger in a rather provocative manner. She wondered for a moment where he had gotten it but realised that it hardly mattered. What mattered was how it did, or in this case didn’t make him feel.
She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. What she most wanted to do was to go across that room and gather him into the biggest hug she could, to hold him and tell him that it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, that she would still love him regardless of who he did or didn’t like, who he was or wasn’t attracted to. She couldn’t though, not because she was unable to but because he wouldn’t have accepted it. She would simply have to reassure him in other ways. He would see through it of course, he always did, that was one of the things that made him who he was, but she hoped he realised that he was far more than the freak other people thought of him and that one day someone else would realise that too.
She hoped that day would come soon but could not help but suspect it was still a long, long way off.
*-*-*
Five
It was the call she had been both expecting and dreading.
It was Mycroft that found him in the end. He didn’t say how but she knew he had his connections. Of course it wouldn’t have been easy because he wasn’t using his real name, but then again Sherlock had never made anything easy.
She glimpsed him first through the window. He had his own small private room. Once again she had not asked, just accepted the small favour Mycroft had been able to do for his little brother.
It wasn’t Sherlock that she got to meet first though.
The young man sat outside the room looked almost as bad as the one in the bed. His light brown hair was lank and unwashed and he had the pale, sallow, blood shot look of one who spent more time under the influence of drugs than out in the fresh air. She had never met him before, had not even known of his existence, but in that moment she hated him.
“Mrs Holmes?”
She didn’t respond as the young man rose unsteady to his feet.
“I’m Paul,” he said holding out a shaking hand, “I’m Sid’s, uh, friend.”
Sherlock wasn’t even using his own name. He was booked into the hospital as Sydney Holmes, no doubt because that was what his ‘friend’ knew him as. That’s why it had taken Mycroft that little bit longer to find out, a mistake that would not happen again.
She knew nothing about this Paul but she knew what he meant by ‘friend’.
Anyone else and she would not have minded. She was his mother, she had loved him through the screaming fits, through the psychiatrist reports, through the spiteful comments from others, through the ridiculous feuds with his brother. She knew him better than he knew himself and she knew he was nothing like the other kids, she had accepted that a long time before. He had never shown any interest in the opposite sex. He had barely shown an interest in any other people so she was not going to love him any less because his first real emotional bond was with another man.
Paul though represented everything that she hated. He was a leech and an emotional user. She knew Sherlock was no angel, but the man before her had introduced a vulnerable, confused young man to a world of drugs and hedonism, a combination that had led them all here.
It was her son she was here to see though and politely ignoring his so called friend, she pushed the door open and went to sit by his bedside.
Her baby looked so pale and skinny lain out as he was on the bed. It had been over a year since she had last seen him, but he had changed so much. All his baby fat had disappeared leaving his cheek bones even more prominent. He never had been particularly large - one of the main differences between him and Mycroft - but now he looked little more than a skeleton. It pained her to see him like that.
The doctors said it had been an overdose. Cocaine was the drug mentioned and she wondered what had driven her brilliant son to the point where he would risk damaging his beautiful mind with such a pointless drug.
“Oh, Sherlock,” she said brushing a wayward curl away from his forehead and pressing a kiss to his face.
Later he would awaken briefly and tell her he did it to make his brain stop, in an attempt to starve off boredom, in the need to feel normal, if only for a short time. Later still she would hold him as he shook himself through the withdrawals and begged her for something, anything to take the edge off and didn’t she love him for god’s sake? But for now she would sit by his bedside, hold his hand and ignore the track marks that ran up the inside of his arm.
*-*-*
And the Other One
Mycroft’s present arrived by black car, something that had not surprised her in the slightest, especially since he had called that morning and warned her. It had been very thoughtful of him, especially considering he had been half way across the Atlantic at the time, but in all the years he had never forgotten her birthday.
His present had included a large and very beautiful arrangement of flowers made artfully up out of her favourite blooms, a bottle of perfume that looked frightfully expensive, tickets to a play she had been wanting to see but had been told had been fully sold out for weeks, dinner reservations at the Ritz, and surprisingly a beautiful ornate picture frame nearly identical to the one that had been damaged just the other week.
She had thanked him in advance of course and reminded him that he need not have spent so much money on her. He had laughed and told her not to be silly, that if he couldn’t spoil his mother than who could he spoil?
She had wanted to remind him that she wouldn’t mind if he found another woman to love, spoil and settle down with - or man, she wasn’t too fussed, just whoever made him happy - but didn’t want to spoil the conversation by bringing up old disagreements. Besides, she knew he already knew this and would only insist that he was perfectly happy as he was.
Well, as long as she was happy she wasn’t about to complain. Anyway, he had always been a bit of a Mummy’s boy, more so perhaps than Sherlock.
Ah, Sherlock. She wasn’t expected much from him in way of gifts. Well, not today at least. He did usually remember her birthday - or was reminded of it by Mycroft - but, depending upon how busy or distracted he was meant that often or not his present, card or phone call would come anywhere from on her actual birthday to about a week later, but he would remember, which was all she would ask for.
She tried the perfume, put the flowers in the living room, the tickets and reservations in a safe place, the card on the mantle piece and slipped the picture from the damaged frame into the new one. It fitted perfectly, although she had honestly expected nothing less considering Mycroft, but looking at the picture found she had to sit down for a moment.
It was easily one of her dearest and most treasured photos. A candid shot, it stood in stark contrast to the more formal, posed family portraits they had had done each year. For one it was just of the two boys, and for two they were both laughing, a rare occasion indeed.
She couldn’t remember what they had been laughing about or why, but that did not matter any more, and any way it had been such a long time ago, almost another lifetime it seemed. They had both been so young, Mycroft eleven and just on the cusp of puberty, Sherlock four, all big eyes and wild hair. For that brief moment they had been united in their sharing, not one hint of the sibling animosity that would later come to define their relationship.
When she thought about her boys this was how she liked to remember them; happy, relaxed and carefree, without the heavy weights that would later come to rest on each of them.
She sat and remembered for a while before pulling herself together and getting on with all the things that needed to be done, birthday or no.
She was just going to settle down for an afternoon cup of tea when there was an unfamiliar knock on the front door. Opening it she found a man she didn’t know or recognise standing there in a beige jumper, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Hello,” he said, “is this 17 Larkrise Croft?”
She confirmed that it was.
“Oh, good,” he said, “I have been instructed to deliver this personally.”
He handed over a cream envelope and returned to standing at what appeared to be military rest. The envelope had no name on it, just the address scrawled across in a very familiar handwriting.
She smiled slightly and carefully pried it open. There was a card inside, one of those humorous ones with two men lying on a hillside under the stars, one asking the other what he can deduce. It was an old joke but one that never failed to make her smile when, after the second man had talked about the galaxies, the time, the stars, the weather and creation, the first man called him an idiot and pointed out that someone had stolen their tent.
Opening the card, she found the usual inscribing and another slip of paper.
‘Dear Mummy,’ the scribing said, ‘Happy Birthday, Love Sherlock’.
The slip of paper, however, was more curious as that had not been expected. Unfolding it she found more of Sherlock’s scrawl across it.
‘Will be by later with rest of present and food’, it said. ‘Please keep John entertained until then. He’s a doctor who likes tea. SH’
She laughed because that was so like Sherlock. For years she had waited in anticipation of meeting… well of meeting anyone to do with Sherlock, but other than that fateful day in the hospital she had never been introduced to anyone. Not one colleague, one friend, one companion, one flatmate, anyone.
Mycroft had brought people over, but Sherlock had always been so isolated, so independent. He had been so insistent that he simply had not needed anyone that she had not wanted to push it, had not wanted to push him away, and yet, here he was, giving her one of the best presents she could have asked for.
Now she knew, it was so obvious who this young man on her doorstep was. She had heard all about this infamous John, the doctor, the soldier, the flatmate, colleague and friend. She had managed to get some information out of Sherlock, but he had always been so vague. Mycroft had filled her in on the rest though, how it looked as if Sherlock had finally found someone to care about, someone he could call a friend, and here he was, in the flesh.
It was a most unusual present, but one that meant far more to her than perhaps Sherlock would ever realise. Or maybe he did realise, after all this was wholly unprecedented and that was very much Sherlock. In that she hoped he would never change.
The young man looked on politely and she realised that not only had Sherlock failed to tell him who she was, but that she must also look a sight, laughing at the card and then grinning like a loon, all the while keeping him waiting on the doorstep. That was hardly polite, so she did the one thing she could do, the one thing Sherlock had known she would do, she smiled as normally as she could manage and invited him in for tea.
*-*-*
THE END
*-*-*