Roughly speaking, Sherlock was about five years old. He hated it when people approximated, so he made a point of knowing exactly how old he was in case he was asked or someone was in need of correction. On this particular day and at this particular moment, Sherlock Holmes was five years, four months, twenty-seven days, ten hours, thirteen minutes and six seconds old.
It was early June and he was in the garden of his family home, as was his tendency. The garden was the only part of his home towards which he didn't feel disinterest; he had privacy here, away from the oppressive starkness of the house and the idle chatter of adults.
At the age of five Sherlock was already brilliant, but of late he had begun to realise that this quality was not conducive to friendship. He didn't understand why other children his age didn't understand. They were slow and stupid and they didn't see things like he did and this made him angry. As a child he was therefore rather solitary, but he wasn't lonely, not yet.
The garden was his haven, though he wasn't very interested in running around or climbing trees. He preferred to sit in the flowerbeds. After a morning of reading and becoming giddy with just how fast his brain could run, he'd go and plonk himself down quietly amongst the flowers so that he could catch up with it. The flowers were red and yellow and green and pretty; this is all he'd see and it was wonderful. Looking at nature through the eyes of the child he was, he could ignore the fact that his mind sometimes scared him, made him dread what he might become.
He sat now in a bed of tulips, scowling under the sunhat Mycroft had just dropped onto his head with a warning from Mummy that if he didn't keep it on, his skin would freckle again. He was about to argue when his brother crouched down on the grass and held out his hand, opening it slowly to reveal a fat, fluffy bumble bee. It sat, content and softly buzzing, its wings sometimes vibrating and sometimes still. Sherlock looked up from it into Mycroft's face in wonder.
'Stroke it, Sherlock. Feel how soft it is.'
'But it might sting me.'
'It's not stinging me, is it? Go on, touch him. Be gentle.'
Nearly thirty years later, this will be one of the only memories Sherlock still has of his childhood. The rest he will have deleted. Surrounded then by those flowers he had no real idea of the adversity he would come to face; a lot of things he would simply want to forget, while others would go to make room for more important things, like John.
He didn't know it then, but the back of that bumble bee would be the softest thing he'd ever touch, and in touching it he was learning something very important: a creature known for its sting could be tamed, could be something quiet and good and beautiful.
It gave him hope. It gave him the strength to realise he was capable of becoming something extraordinary: the man that John Watson would fall in love with, a man who would be good as well as great.