A/N: It had to come along sometime; my first Sherlock fanfic. It is very late at night, so for now I am just going to say that this is the story of Sherlock's (unbeknownst to him) teenage daughter, and their journey to understand each other. Happy reading!
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I dodged the blind punch, ducking low. In a quick movement, I swept my leg out to knock her thick calves from underneath her. I'd had enough of this—clumsy fighting. The angry giant of a girl was of no use to me. All of her movements were slow and heavy, as if addled by some drug, though the saddest part was that I knew she was completely sober. Just unskilled and obtusely unobservant.
She tumbled ungracefully to the ground, and the crowd of students that had gathered around our spectacle gasped. Some of them cheered for me. I glanced up briefly to grin at those individuals before directing my attention back towards the incapacitated Sadie.
Sadie, I thought. Her parents must have been wishing for a much prettier child. To see her now, with her close cropped hair, large frame and sour expression, I might have thought her name was something like Helga, or Bone Crusher Xtreme III.
Sadie clenched her meaty fists and glared up at me, but made no further attempt at redemption. I was sure by the deep wrinkles present on her forehead that she wanted nothing more than to force feed me my own insides but that she knew she had been beaten by a wiry, four-eyed freak—as was the center of my reputation. Idiots.
"Watch your back, Ryder." Helga—Sadie—practically sniveled, wiping a wrist across the stream of blood making a scarlet line from her nose to her blunted, pockmarked chin. "I'll have my girls on the look-out for you." I knew from mild research that Sadie had no loyal gang members to call on, and that I had nothing to fret over. Still, I smiled and leaned down to stare into her dull, muddy eyes.
"Too cowardly to face me again, I see? A shame. I really have enjoyed our time together."
Her face contorted in rage, and she made to stand. A few straying crowd members hastily clustered back into groups and away from Sadie's wrath. But I merely held up a chastising finger.
"Ah, ah, let's not get excited. Here's some advice, Sadie: this is high school." I gestured around us to the red and blue painted cement walls, attempting to ignore the fetid odor of sweat and hormones which invaded my senses all over again if I turned my head too quickly. "Try not to take yourself so seriously, maybe learn a few things here and there. You may get more use out of an education than out of being a bully."
Having let my facial muscles slip, I grinned widely for her benefit, knowing full well it may have looked slightly frightening on the sharp angles of my insincere face. Just then, the release bell rang out across the building. Thank God. I'd been wanting to get back home as soon as I'd walked out the door that morning. Obviously, it was unwise for me to be around people today, more so than most other days. Without another word, I spun on my heel and started towards the exit, hoping to beat the oncoming mob of students rushing out of their classrooms. But before I got very far, I paused and glanced back over my shoulder with an involuntary twitch of my lip. "Or you could at least improve your combat skills. That was far too easy."
I didn't listen for her reply, and instead hiked my bag further onto my shoulder and continued on down the hallways until I'd made my way out into the waning late day sunlight.
/
"Angelica Sage Ryder!" I was lying on my bed reading when I heard my mother's screech from somewhere in the front of the house. The front door slammed in her wake, sending bothersome vibrations along the walls. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table to find that it was well after five o'clock, and that, as always, I had lost track of time. With a shrug, I went back to scanning the words on the page. I knew that if I didn't go to her, she would surely come to me. Only a moment later, my mom burst into my room, all blue scrubs and fraying blonde hair. I glanced up briefly from my book, noted the strain around her eyes and the greasy shine to her fingers. I glanced down at the stain on her neckline and sniffed at the air.
"Didn't get me anything?" I hummed, once again directing my attention back towards the book held in my hands. I hoped she would leave soon so I could get back to it.
"What?" My mom mumbled, rubbing a palm across her forehead.
"You got fast food on the way home. There isn't much food in the house. Did you get me something to eat?"
There was a pause, as there always was.
"Oh, yes. Yes, I left a burger and fries on the counter for you. But back to my point—why did your principal call me today to tell me you'd broken some girl's nose?"
A flood of delight went through me. Not only had I humiliated her, but I'd broken her nose, too! I closed my book, holding the spot with my finger. "Because I suppose that's what I did, and he felt the need to inform you."
"Angelica," she sighed, seating herself on the edge of my bed. "You're seventeen now. Soon you'll be in college, and in college you can't do these kinds of things without more severe punishment." Her tone was pleading and cajoling, but it only inspired in me a faint tug of annoyance. I knew the attitudes of oppressed college officials, but I also knew very well my own intolerance for useless people; and the latter was stronger.
"Would it help to say that she started it? My end was merely self-defense."
My mom's serious expression cracked into an exasperated smile, and I was only slightly startled when she brushed a strand of hair back behind my ear. My mom was a touch-y feel-y person. I was not. But I'd gotten used to it over the years. "I don't doubt it," she whispered. She stared at me for a painful moment. "You're just like him."
My heart kicked in my chest. "Like who?"
She contemplated for a moment, before whispering so low I might not have otherwise heard, "Your father."
My blood stuttered in my veins. This was an opportunity which didn't come around often. In my seventeen years, I had not heard more than ten words uttered on the subject of my father. I knew he had been a one-night stand in college, and that I was supposedly better off without him.
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I kept my voice low, as if talking too loudly would shatter the tentative conversation.
"I don't know."
"Mom," I grabbed her wrist, felt that her pulse was elevated. "Who is he?"
My tone was hard, non-negotiable. I had wanted to know who my father was for as long as I could remember. When I had been small, I'd felt some sort of sense of abandonment, but over the years that feeling had morphed into more of a curiosity. Meeting my father was an item on a checklist. My mind reveled in knowledge and information, so when I realized I was uninformed on something as basic as my own genetic background it had sent me into a mental frenzy of questions and frustration.
Her amber eyes softened considerably on me, as if she were sorry. Which was ridiculous, because all she had to do was give me a name and a general location. The rest I could find out on the internet in five minutes.
"I can tell you," she said, her voice wavering only the smallest bit. "That he is the most intelligent man I have ever met, and the most dangerous. And I can tell you that I don't want you anywhere near him."
Frankly, I didn't have the conscience to care what she wanted for me. This wasn't her choice. But she held the answer I needed. I was more angrily urgent than any sort of sad, but knowing that it was the quickest way to get something out of this conversation, I pretended to shrink in on myself. I curled both of my arms around myself, pinching myself right underneath the sensitive skin of my armpit to induce a light sheen of tears. I sniffled and let my head hang, though not before letting her catch a glimpse at my face. Subconsciously, she would see the taut skin on the sides of my mouth and the way my eyebrows had wrinkled and lowered, and deduce feelings of extreme sadness and the helpless confusion of a child.
I was instantly pulled into her arms, her hands pressing me up against her chest. "Oh, sweetheart, don't cry," she soothed. "I just want to protect you."
I refused the urge to roll my eyes as I pulled back, drawing my knees up to my chest and hugging them. "Can you please…" I sobbed in an impressively believable fashion. "Can you just tell me about the night you two met, at least? No names, no addresses, I swear. I just want—I just want…"
I heard a soft sound of pity from her and thought, Jackpot.
"Yes, of course." She murmured, petting at the top of my head. "Though I have to be honest with you; your father and I never had any sort of romance. We barely knew each other, in fact." I'd already assumed that, so I nodded and waited for her to continue.
She took a breath. "There isn't much to tell, honestly. I had a friend when I was twenty or so who I visited as often as I could. She lived in London; went to King's College, actually. I was so proud of her. One weekend while I was visiting her, there was a campus wide celebration— it was the ending of finals week. She and I were as drunk as skunks, and she pointed a man out to me. Tall and dark-haired with these amazing ice blue eyes." Here, she reached out again to touch my cheek, as if to remind me that those amazing eyes were now mine as well. I tried not to become enraptured in her story, mentally recalling what I knew.
Went to King's College in London. Dark hair, blue eyes, considerably tall. Intelligent.
"She told me his name and said that he was the campus mystery. Nobody knew his story, only that he had almost supernatural abilities when it came to picking strangers apart and finding out the way they ticked. She said he was always so composed, except that that night he wasn't. He was being shoved around by a group of friends in the middle of a crowd. She said that it was my chance. And so, I took it. There really isn't much else to tell. When I woke the next morning he wasn't there, and I never saw or heard of him ever again." With her last words she chewed on her bottom lip once before releasing it, which meant there was a lie wrapped somewhere in her last statement. Had she heard from him? Had he tried to be in contact with me?
I imagined writing everything out in bullet points and tacking the paper somewhere along the inner walls of my skull, trying to shoo my mother out of my room as quickly as possible without raising suspicion. As soon as she walked out, I locked my door before darting to my desk for my heavy monstrosity of a laptop. It took one Google search containing the words I'd memorized before to come up with the results I knew in my gut were true.
I hadn't expected for it to be so easy. Hadn't expected to find him within the first five minutes of searching. But I had. And I'd vaguely heard the name before, his legend having spread all the way into America like a vibrant blood stain across white sheets.
Sherlock Holmes, the famous London detective, was my father.
A/N: I mean, tell me what you think so far.