As a child, young Sherlock Holmes' heart was too big for his small body.
Whatever another person could feel, he could feel it five times fold.
Very early in his childhood, this fact had given him bliss. Every adventure was five times more exciting, every laugh gave him five times as much warmth and pleasure and happiness, compared to any other person.
The world was vibrant and so very colourful for the toddler – like a big playground designed just for him to play in.
His Mummy and Daddy weren't around much, but that was okay. After all, Sherlock had Mycroft, his brother, Steve the butler, and Bernadette the housekeeper to play with him. It was a pity his parents couldn't spend a wonderful time like he did, but that was okay. Mummy and Daddy played with him a lot during holidays, so they could catch up.
As a young boy, Sherlock was safe and happy and pure.
Though he could still count his age with only one hand, young Sherlock was eager to pursue anything that could make him feel. Like that time when he opened his Christmas presents, tucked between his parents as they smiled down on him. Or that time when Mycroft had tossed him up in the air, catching a Sherlock full of giggles and delight. Or when Bernadette had read him a book about pirate captains sailing across the seven seas. Or when Steve had taken him along to do the groceries and let Sherlock pick a treat he could later share with Mycroft. All of that had given him bursts of energy and made his chest feel warm for a long period of time that he always sought for more things for the same effects.
That was why Sherlock Holmes, just slightly over five years of age, was climbing up a tree which stood just by the side of his home, during one of his rare unsupervised adventure.
He had been observing a newly formed bird's nest sitting on the creases of the higher branches through the windows of his bedroom, for the last few hours. And a few hours were all he could stand, just sitting around and watching. Smart as he was, Sherlock knew a nest meant that there were eggs. And if there were eggs, there would soon be chicks. He remembered Mycroft once told him about birds, that the first thing the chicks saw after they hatched would be their parents. The young boy had thought that it would be quite brilliant to be the parent of a newly hatched group of chicks. They could follow him around the house and sit with him during lunch; he could feed them the crumbs from his bread. Oh, would they prefer worms? If he asked nicely, maybe he could ask Old Theo the gardener to catch some for them.
Plans after plans piling up, Sherlock knew he couldn't miss the opportunity to be a bird-parent. He had to be by the nest's side as soon as possible, if he wanted to make it to the hatching.
Anticipation and impatience thrumming down to his pores, the boy proceeded to climb as quickly as he could. Mycroft had thought him how to climb, not too long ago. They had watched the sunset together, side by side, and his brother had made him promise only to climb when somebody else was watching and to be very, very careful. Amongst his daydreams of becoming a young parent, the promises had been lost in the mind of a very eager Sherlock Holmes.
As a child, young Sherlock Holmes could feel everything five times fold.
The first time he had felt sheer terror, he was just a boy slightly over five years of age.
Sherlock Holmes was climbing up a tree, to become the best bird-parent there ever was.
Sherlock slipped, after a hasty footing. Sherlock fell.
And Sherlock screamed.
Even after his bruises were iced and being fussed over by most of the residents of the house, Sherlock was still sobbing and screaming his throat raw. He had not stopped screaming ever since Old Theo had found him frozen in shock, lying on his back by the tree after his fall.
His Mummy even came back home early just to make him feel better. But nothing worked. No matter how many times Mummy caressed his hair, whispered sweet encouragement of "you'll be alright, you'll see", nothing soothed the boy's hysterics. Sherlock had thankfully escaped the fall with light injuries – he never did reach that highest branch where the nest was. She couldn't fathom what could have scared the boy so much for him to suffer still. Heartbroken seeing her baby's inconsolable wailing, Mrs. Holmes fled the room with a hitched sob.
Mycroft came in next.
He sat at the edge of the bed and carefully covered his younger brother's hand with his own. His touch was gentle against Sherlock's tense and bordering on catatonic limb. Sobs were now reduced into mewls. Screams were now moans. The poor boy must have exhausted all his energy.
"Sherlock?" The teenager coaxed his much smaller brother to notice him. "Sherlock, talk to me."
His plea was not acknowledged, however. Again, he tried by sweeping the sweat-glazed dark curls from Sherlock's forehead, shifting to lean closer to the shaking boy. Mycroft caught Sherlock's gaze and he knew then the boy was finally back in his body.
"Where does it hurt, Sherlock? Tell me."
Sherlock's only response was a slight shake of his head and renewed his mewling.
Mycroft frowned, "It doesn't hurt?"
Sherlock shook his head again with more force, eyes starting to glaze.
"Sherlock. Stay with me. You have to tell me, what is scaring you?"
His small, curved lips parted, yet still silence followed. Mycroft was about to repeat his question when Sherlock finally let out his voice, a bit scratchy after all the screaming he did.
"Mycroft, falling- it was scary, no one was there-" A choked sob interrupted his trembling confession, "I kept falling and my chest felt strange- my heart, something was squeezing my heart out up my mouth- it was cold-
"Mycroft I'm scared."
And at that moment, Mycroft understood.
Between broken sentences and more broken sobs, Sherlock somehow managed to gain back full control over his body and crawled his way to Mycroft's lap. He rested his mop of curls over Mycroft's heart, in hope to steal some of its warmth. His own had been taken away by his first taste of dread and helplessness, wrapped in horror and panic. Instead of protesting on how soaked in sweat his shirt was going to be, Mycroft cradled his sobbing younger brother even closer. His dear, little brother. Whimpers were met with lulls as the teen rocked back and forth to calm his brother.
While Sherlock was quieting down, Mycroft contemplated what to do next.
He remembered, quite a few years ago, another boy experiencing the exact same fright Sherlock had today. The rush of emotions- the horrible, stabbing knife of unadulterated terror- rolling down like an avalanche- it came all at once and there was nothing you could do to defend yourself against it, except waiting for it to eventually stop. Suffering on his own, he had invented a simple mechanism to salvage his sanity. Because where Sherlock could feel five times fold, Mycroft could feel ten.
It was a little trick he created, his only way of escape. Not conventional and not without its flaw, but it worked for him nonetheless. Mycroft had always thought he alone would benefit from it. Apparently, Mycroft Holmes could be wrong. The two of them were brothers, after all.
Mycroft knew exactly what his brother was going through. It was too much for a child, to have your whole body chipped away bits by bits by the raging, ugly emotions. Feelings that stain, feelings that eat you away. In the end, Mycroft decided Sherlock needs to learn his little trick, despite its potential failings. Consequences be damned, when there was a little boy who was crying himself into a wreck wrapped in your arms.
Everyone has their own unique ways to cope with the world. Theirs would be just a little bit different from everybody else's.
"Sherlock love, listen to me, alright? Focus. I need you to listen very closely now."
That night, Sherlock Holmes started constructing the foundations of his Mind Palace, under the guidance of his older brother.
The first and most vital feature- basically the whole point of this all, really- was completed with a sense of urgency by both Sherlock and Mycroft. Sherlock, to escape the pain; Mycroft, to release his brother from the pain. It was situated in the great hall of the Mind Palace, the first room Sherlock would come across when he enters his Mind Palace in the future. ("For quick and easy access," Mycroft told him.) It was their solution, their shortcut to emotional peace.
It was a shiny red button on top of a thick metal column, not unlike the ones Sherlock had seen in cartoons where it would be labelled as "DO NOT PRESS" and would explode whenever someone presses it.
Sherlock's red button, however, was labelled as "Refresh".
Long after his Mind Palace's construction ended, Sherlock Holmes could still remember his first push. He could still remember the sweet sensation of relief, washing down his body, relieving him from the poison that one would call fear.
One push and a few seconds.
He was clean again.
Life was not particularly kind to a twelve year old Sherlock Holmes.
Intellectual beyond his age, equipped with blunt honesty, and an aversion to socializing were not a concoction suitable for one to reach high in the popularity ladder. Patronizing teachers for their stupidity and classmates for their teeth-clenching ignorance were not exactly helpful either.
Young Sherlock Holmes never minded being ostracized by his peers. Rather, it was necessary for the bright boy not to.
He had enough share of fearful and hateful looks thrown at him, by both his fellow students and teachers alike. Just because he did not respond to any of them, did not mean he was blind to it as many others believed. Quite the reverse.
Shame. Self-hate. Confusion. Doubt. Fear. Embarrassment. Apprehension.
Whenever one of these feelings crept out from that place in his chest, Sherlock shot straight to the red button before it could spread any further.
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Clean.
Mycroft had warned him only to resort to the button when he was on the verge of his limit. His brother constantly reminded him to use their little trick in cautious moderation. What Sherlock learned was to ignore his brother. Why would anyone voluntarily expose themselves to an abysmal amount of anguish? What was the point of having the choice to escape?
Sherlock would never suffer the chance of humiliation by breaking down in front of those people. He didn't think he could survive the consequences.
Instead, Sherlock Holmes sniffed in disdain and sneered at the world as it undermined his developing genius. What couldn't touch him wouldn't find a way to break him. It was logical.
He remembered a time when the world was a much more brilliant and warm place.
Longing.
Refresh.
Twenty-one years of age, Sherlock Holmes was in University and paving his way to adulthood. At one point of time, he had become fed up with the ugliness and tediousness of the world. It was boring. Grey. Dull.
He had put all the blame on Mycroft.
Ever since he was younger, Sherlock had hungrily stalked anything and everything which might prove interesting enough to give him the excitement and drive he desperately craved. He jumped from topic to topic, absorbing and processing until he encountered that little spark. Something that can make him feel alive. Something that can make him feel.
After sucking everything a particular field had to offer, the young man would then go to his Mind Palace to edit and prune the information he deemed relevant and chucked everything else to be deleted. And then he moved on to another. Sherlock had gone through politics (Mycroft's area - deleted), pop culture (deleted before completion – too broad to fully cover), astronomy (deleted- irrelevant), anthropology (edited and saved- for future references), immunology (quite fascinating- saved), just to name a few.
Some areas he had grown out of, some were changing constantly enough to keep him engaged. Science. Puzzles. Crimes. Always something new, always something intriguing.
Ah, crimes. Sherlock had a particular fondness with that dark side of humanity. For a world that had judged him, damned him to be an anomaly which might pose harm to its precious society, "normal" people had taken more credit when it comes to inflicting damage to themselves in actuality. Sherlock Holmes was not the wife who killed her husband in a jealous fit. Sherlock Holmes was not the man who stalked dark alleys for another chance to rape. Sherlock Holmes was not the burglar who murdered accidental witnesses along his wake. All Sherlock Holmes had done was lain the skeletons on the table for all to see. When the world pointed accusing fingers at Sherlock, all he had to do was point at their dark little secrets in retaliation. And if the world turned their gaze away in pretend ignorance, the more Sherlock glorified himself and the more he looked down upon the world. It was a dance full of irony.
This was the reason why he honed his skill in deduction religiously. Integrating bits and pieces from the plethora of knowledge he had gathered into a piece of diamond, cutting through the veil they tried to cover themselves with. Catch the world in the act of hypocrisy it was built upon, a repulsive trait which distorted it in a way that disgusted and fascinated Sherlock at the same time.
What he attained in this was triumph with a taste of childish glee. It made his chest light and glow with self-pride.
Sherlock loved it.
He reckoned he will find himself a job in that line of profession in the near future.
But even criminal affairs were not enough to keep Sherlock occupied, at times. (Especially when they resort to methods so obvious and simple and so excruciatingly dull. Criminals ought to find a way to be more creative or Sherlock needs a way to get his hands on the Metropolitan Police's database, and wouldn't Mycroft just love that.) Though he would never admit it explicitly, Sherlock partially blamed himself for the higher threshold of distraction his brain required. In the quest for that little spark he had lost, Sherlock had binged on too much information too quickly that his brain had adapted by habituating itself to the unstoppable stream of input. Every time habituation kicked in, Sherlock needed an even stronger or a novel stimulus to overcome its withdrawal symptoms- where Sherlock's Mind Palace injected buzzing, chaotic pieces of information just to prevent his mind from staying in the state of inertia.
That was when Sherlock turn to cigarettes and then cocaine.
Cocaine, particularly, tricked Sherlock's brain into seeing the world as he had once, a picture of childhood memories he barely remembered anymore. Vibrant, colourful. Fascinating. Sherlock was not unaware of the drug's repercussions. But what cocaine gave to him was something even the intelligent young man could never deny.
Intellectual stimulation gave Sherlock the sparks he had vigorously searched for. Warmth of satisfaction, of pride, of achievement. The moments were glorious. But inevitably, negative conquered over positive. Whenever Sherlock gave himself a pat on the back for a deduction well done, glares and scorn would always steal the moment away.
Guilt. Unease. Sadness. Trepidation. Disgust. Bitterness.
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.
The advantage of cocaine was that it gave Sherlock an alternative way to escape. It let Sherlock wash the venom away from his system and yet the pleasurable states remained. It was nothing like Mycroft's cheap trick. It was the best possible solution Sherlock had ever known. It had opened Sherlock's eyes once again to how brilliant the world really was.
Yet Mummy cried and cried and cried. And Mycroft had frowned and gave Sherlock his usual disapproving stare.
And Sherlock pressed that red little button, gleaming on its pedestal.
Refresh.
I'm not too sure how quickly or regularly I will be able to update this, with exams approaching and everything. I'm not quite sure either how many parts there will be. I'm guessing around four- a bit short for a WIP, but yeah. I'm still taking shaky steps on writing. But I swear upon my soul I will finish this even if it kills me.
Well, here you go. Feedback will be much appreciated. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)