So this just sort of...happened. Not quite sure where it's going. This is an AU (teen!lock) where Sherlock has a sister named Laetitia (leh-tish-uh) and they both ended up in the care of James Moriarty and Sebastian Moran. Sherlock's POV, hope I got it down right. Also, there are mentions of rape in here, but there will never be anything graphic, and mentions of children/teens getting abused, which may be semi-graphic in later chapters. Sherlock is 18 and Laetitia 16. Please leave a review, even if you absolutely hated it!
I wasn't quite sure exactly how this had all started. I liked to think it was when Mycroft had died, leaving me in an orphanage, and when James Moriarty came in, looking for an heir, and found a toddler reading a physics textbook. Perhaps it was when he started visiting me weekly.
Laetitia likes to take the narrower view of things. She thinks it all started when he and Sebastian signed the papers.
If you'd like to take the broader view of things, it started when I accidentally left the Bunsen burner on while I was at school and Mycroft didn't notice, causing our house to go up in flames, my unfortunate older brother still in it. That was also the day I stopped going by William and Laetitia stopped going by Hannah, but that's a different story for a different day.
Laetitia swears James is the best thing to have happened in our lives; even Laetitia does not believe that. Beneath a mask of optimism and layers of crap fed directly to us by him, she knows just as well as I do that his presence is a curse.
For God's sakes, he raped Laetitia when she was six, and then when she was eight, and then twice when she was nine. As she grew older, I learned to stop counting, though I believe it's somewhere in the double digits by now. Forties, maybe, sometimes twice in one day. But she always comes out of his bedroom wrapped in his damned coat, tears staining her cheeks with a weak smile on her face. I don't know who she thinks she's fooling, with that broken smile, but it doesn't work.
Laetitia has come to resemble a broken doll over the years. I cannot help but compare my poor sister to a broken doll. She wears short, frilly dresses and schoolgirl shoes (though we were not allowed to attend school ever since the time Laetitia accidentally let it slip about how her 'Daddy' touches her when she was six), and the makeup she's forced to wear is ridiculous. Every morning she takes an hour to coat her already pale face in white makeup to make her look porcelain, her already long lashes in mascara to look like the pretty dolls James likes, to curl her already curly hair perfectly even though it'll just get tucked under a bonnet. On Saturdays, she paints her nails, but she's always wearing gloves.
Laetitia doesn't like looking like a little porcelain China doll, but James likes it, and James gets what he wants. That particular rule was instilled in us when we were young, very young. I was six; Laetitia was only four. He assaulted us with his harsh words and harsher belt- both have left scars.
If I think Laetitia looks like a porcelain doll, I cannot begin to imagine what she thinks of me. I have become a monster over the years; never to Laetitia or James or Sebastian (the latter two whose company I cower in), but to society, I am a monster, just as bad as James. It is not my fault that he kept hurting Laetitia until I eventually gave in. She always pleaded with me not to, but I saw her gently scrubbing her wounds out while attempting not to cry and knew what was right, even if Mycroft would not have approved. Mummy and Daddy- real Daddy, not James, not an impostor- would have told me that you always have to protect family, so I had no qualms about choosing Laetitia's relative safety over my own wants and wishes.
In reality, my decision did very little to protect her, but believing that she's just a fraction safer is the only way I can sleep at night, when I see a list of names run through my head. The list of names of those whose deaths and torturing I've ordered over two years. The list is impossibly long; I cannot have hurt that many people in a small percentage of my lifetime.
James believes I like the work. He thinks that because I have grown accustomed to the way bile rises in my throat whenever I see a tortured body or because I no longer object to being taken to meetings, that I like his line of work and will willingly be the heir to his throne of destruction, chaos, and mayhem. I despise this job with every fiber of my being; it tears apart at my conscience, and if I commit petty theft, I can't even remember that taking some ordinary person's wallet is wrong. Laetitia still remembers right from wrong. At least one of us turned out okay.
I use 'okay' as differently from its definition as the night sky is from day. 'Okay' is when I'm bloody and bruised because I failed and James wants to make sure I know that, but his focus isn't on Laetitia. 'Okay' is when hunger stabs at my stomach but Laetitia is still being fed enough. 'Okay' is when I sleep on the floor so Laetitia can have the couch. 'Okay' depends on Laetitia and her well-being. My own pain, sorrow, hunger, and discomfort can be drowned out. Unimportant in comparison to other problems. What does it matter if my back is a little sore from sleeping on an air mattress that I swear Sebastian poked a hole in on purpose, if Laetitia is in James' bedroom, crying and begging for him to stop? The answer is that it doesn't- it never matters.
I always take care of Laetitia's needs and wants first. She insists on at least attempting to mother me, but I won't allow it. She's the more broken of the two of us, and there's no one else to put together the pieces of her life. Certainly not James, who caused the cracks, and the idea of Sebastian, who kept tapping at the cracks already formed until she broke, fixing her is actually laughable.
I've become a great actor. I've learned how to act invincible at business meetings, and strong for Laetitia, and uncaring when a belt hits my back. I've learned how to play so many different roles, and I can be so many at once. Caring older brother/ super villain at business meetings if Laetitia calls me crying; son begging for mercy from his 'Daddy'/ desperate teenager who just wants to die already when James beats me.
I've thought about committing before. I could. It would be so simple. Sneak out on the balcony in the midst of the night and dive gracefully over the railing. Lock myself in the bathroom and swallow all of James' pills. Shoot myself during a business meeting. Hang myself with a belt from the ceiling. I've come close to doing it once, but then I imagined Laetitia's face. She would most certainly be the one to find me. She's the only one who would care enough to look for where I am. I just imagined Laetitia's face as she found her brother's broken body on the sidewalk; a body limp on the cold tiling of a bathroom; nearly bumping her forehead into her brother's body that hangs from the ceiling fan. Or even worse, James delivering the news emotionlessly after coming home, and then expecting her to still climb in bed with him that night. I can't do that to Laetitia, so I bear with it.
I think Sebastian is waiting to see which of us will break first, whether it will be me or Laetitia. Does he not see how broken we both are? I handle it well only in front of my sister, but I am otherwise a wreck. Tish, no offense to her, cannot cope with her broken-ness and cries herself to sleep every night, leaving streaks in her makeup, streaks of black on a white backdrop.
Black and white are familiar colors to each of us, in our own way. To me, it reminds me of the suits I have to wear. They're tailored just for me and made expensively, but I hate them. They fit me well, true, and Laetitia always says softly that I look handsome in them, but I hate them. They make me look like James, which is the worst insult that can be given to a person. For Laetitia, it reminds her of the way James judges her. He is so harsh when judging her body, and there are no grey areas in beauty for him. He sees her as either ugly or beautiful, or sometimes neither. The nights he sees her as neither are the nights she is spared from his hands grabbing all over her, his mouth kissing every inch of her. The nights he sees her as neither are the nights I believe in a god.
Sebastian and James seemed so kind when they first began to visit us. I was so stupid. So foolish. I let Laetitia down and I still curse myself for it on a daily basis. I should have said something, but then again, who listens to some stupid kid? The staff all wanted me out of there- I do have to admit, I was a rebellious, pretentious child, and that made it hard for them to deal with me. They probably wouldn't have listened anyways, but there are night that 'what-ifs' just keep tugging at my brain like Sebastian at my curls when I don't move quick enough. What if I hadn't been an idiot and remembered to turn off my Bunsen burner? What if Tish and I never met James and Sebastian? What if we'd run away years ago and escaped them (and this terrible future, where I am a crime lord and Letitia a glorified doll)?
But what-if have never helped anyone out of a situation. I plan every night a new way to get us out of here, but they've become more desperate and implausible over the years.
I sit on my tiny little cot in my tiny little room with the large chains connecting my ankles to the wall. The chain that keeps my wrists together makes a soft scraping noise every time it brushes the paper. I finally sigh and look up at the blonde who's been staring at me for the past ten minutes as I've attempted to get the blueprints done for James just as he wanted.
"Are these chains really necessary, sir?" The 'sir' is mocking, because children (even though I'm legally an adult and should be allowed to leave if I please- I have to stay for Tish) aren't supposed to call their parents 'sir'. They're supposed to call them Mummy and Daddy and Papa. Sebastian was supposed to be Papa when Laetitia and I moved in; then again, life was supposed to turn out better than this. He nods his head toward the paper.
"Get the blueprints done, Sherlock."
"I'm trying, but the chain is rather stifling."
"Watch your tone. Or, better yet, just shut up."
"Sorry," I mutter out of habit. I'm used to begging for mercy, used to being curled up on the floor and speaking in a cracking and broken voice, asking to please be forgiven. The corner of his mouth twitches skyward; he knows what I'm thinking of. I keep my focus on the sketchbook and ignore both Sebastian's intense gaze and the way the chain bumps my wrist every time I move.
"Your sister's with Jim right now," he grunts.
"My sister also has a name."
"Respect, Sherlock, is an important characteristic for young boys to have."
"My sister also has a name, sir." He ignores my stubbornness.
"They're up in his bedroom."
"When aren't they up in his bedroom, sir?"
"What's got you all bothered today, hm? We fed you, and you've got your own room like you've been asking for. Be appreciative, Sherlock."
"I want you to stop hurting Laetitia," I spit. "She's not strong enough to go through what you put her through. She's breaking."
"She's broken," he corrects with an invidious smile. It sends anger rippling through my chest. "She's a broken little doll, Sherlock, and she looks so beautiful with tears pouring down her face." I say nothing and sketch the plans, wishing I had the power to take Laetitia and run. I don't have that power. I am helpless.
