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A Pestiferous Prologue

1885

"Why the dickens are you following me!?" Sherlock hissed over his shoulder at Clara, his educated tones at odds with his shabby appearance.

"Do not use that name in vain," Clara hissed back, angered by his blaspheming of her literary god.

"Do you not observe that I am in the midst of solving a case?" Sherlock snapped, ignoring her reprimand. "I do not need some clergyman's daughter sending my deductions into disarray!"

Clara primly pursed her lips together, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders, discreetly studying his latest disguise, taking in the broad floppy hat, its low brim shielding his unnervingly piercing gaze from the unsuspecting world he scrutinized, his face wreathed in shadows and less poetically so with dirt, his clothes unfit for even the rag-man. "What exactly are you meant to be this time?" she asked, brow furrowing.

"An exhibit from Madame Tussauds," Sherlock said from between gritted blackened teeth, particularly proud of how he'd eliminated his bicuspids from view. "I'm meant to be one of the Squire's ostlers," he then explained impatiently, irritated by Clara's still confused face. "Why are you here anyway? Shouldn't you be on your knees, asking God to forgive you for your petty sins, before Mama dearest tucks you in for the night?"

"I glanced out of my bedroom window, and upon seeing you creeping through my father's best begonias, I felt compelled to investigate," Clara said stiffly, "you are not the only one to feel the lure of mystery."

"Well, take your temptation somewhere else," Sherlock said, standing up, "you're obstructing the pursuit of my own perplexity."

"Where are you going?" Clara pressed, following him. "What exactly are you investigating this time?"

"The case that will make my career," Sherlock said loftily, "the one that will raise me high above the ham-fisted imbeciles who inhabit this village. I shall no longer have to look upon your whey-faced visage, Clara Collins; it will become a distant memory amongst the dazzling metropolis that is London" -

- "Whey-faced!?" Clara snapped, drawing herself to her full height, a rather intimidating five feet one inches, a diminutive size Sherlock often liked to sneer at. "I shall give you whey-faced, Sherlock Holmes!"

"Are you threatening me?" Sherlock said, rounding on her. "If so, you're doing a damned rather bad job of it."

"I don't know why I trouble myself with you," Clara said in disbelief, "why I expend the effort" -

- "Then don't," Sherlock said cruelly, "our childish friendship holds no worth now, so let it die with some dignity, instead of humiliating yourself by throwing yourself at my head time and time again."

"You flatter yourself, sir" -

- "I observe, madam," Sherlock hissed, "and I observe that you are labouring under the delusion you mean something to me, when you do not, and you never did."

Clara stared at him, her lips trembling, his words striking her heart like a knife. From the moment she had taken her first steps, she had followed Sherlock around like his shadow, the little boy barely tolerating her, annoyed at her infantile behaviour even as he arrogantly accepted her admiration. Having no siblings meant she had clung to Sherlock all the more growing up, her only defence against loneliness, Sherlock isolating himself further from her even as he allowed her to enjoy what he considered his exalted company.

But now as a young woman, her fractured friendship with Sherlock was frowned upon by her parents, no longer seeing their relationship as that of brother and sister, but something more dangerous. They did not view him as an eligible parti for their precious child; Sherlock was no suitable suitor for their only daughter, not when Clara had been so delicately reared, Sherlock's strange behaviour and outspoken manner often insulting them and the entire village.

Yet Sherlock's conduct towards Clara could not be construed as loverlike, and Clara didn't care for him that way. Her romantic sighs were strictly reserved for the Squire's eldest son, a match that even the matriarch of the Collins family didn't dare dream to aspire to. Yet Clara continued regardless in her attempts to break down Sherlock's barriers, sensing there was something worth winning despite the dragons. She believed she could reach him when nobody else could, but here he stood before her, cutting himself asunder from her affection.

"You... beast," Clara said, shaking from head to foot now, "you vile ghastly brute! Mycroft was correct about you" -

- "Have you seen my dear brother's impression of you?" Sherlock said suddenly, startling Clara. "It goes something rather like this." He tucked his arms in, before waddling around in circles, looking rather like a constipated hen.

Clara stared at him for a moment, dark eyes burning like black fire, and then she suddenly sprang at him, catching him offguard. She knocked him to the ground, the two of them struggling like savages, screaming and shouting, Sherlock losing his hat in the fray, his black curls falling over his eyes, blinding him as Clara tried to, her nails raking his face.

"Have you lost all sense of sanity!?" Sherlock yelled, wrestling Clara onto her back, his weight pinning her down, his fingers forming manacles around her wrists. "Contain yourself, woman!"

Clara's answer to this was to sink her teeth into his hand, making Sherlock yell. He let her go for a moment, Clara rearing up, Sherlock hastily grabbing her wrists again, forcing her back down, wondering how on earth he was going to extricate himself from this twisted embrace without falling victim to Clara's cannibalistic tendencies.

"I apologize!" Sherlock bellowed, his voice ringing through the night. "I am a veritable beast, the lowest of the low, grovelling in the dirt with the worms, my brothers" -

- "Mycroft is hardly worm-like," Clara spat, thinking of Mycroft's growing girth, "in mind yes, but body no."

Sherlock stared down at her, taking in her shadowed face and tumbled brown hair, barely recognizing the decorous Clara Collins in the wildcat before him, before suddenly laughing, that roar of amusement that always strangely caught at Clara's heart. "Quite the succinct observation - I must have taught you something after all," he said, finally letting go of her, sensing she wouldn't strike him again.

"You are a dunderhead," Clara gasped, her corset painfully cutting into her flesh, "and that is all I have to say on the subject."

"Good," Sherlock said smartly, "I do not admire loquacity, the wastage of words" -

- "So says the most voluble man in the village," Clara said abruptly, "now let me up, I promise I shall be most proper."

"This is all actually most improper," Sherlock said uneasily, only just realising the rather scandalous situation they were in, "rather indecent in fact."

"I couldn't put it better myself," Clara's father said, his voice cracking, making Sherlock and Clara's heads snap up, only to see what appeared to be half the village assembled behind him, their shocked stares sentencing Sherlock to wedlock.