Disclaimer: If I owned Sherlock, female characters would be treated with respect stevenmoffat AN: if you review, you will instantaneously get your Hogwarts letter.
Violins sway, dancing to the sound of their own music, wood reverberates like laughter, strings crackle and shake like muscle and bone. The instrument in her hands is so alive; more alive than she was, these days.
Eurus remembers being alive.
She remembers running. There's no room to run, in this little glass box, but there was so much space around that old country house, and she used to run until her mother worried and her brothers had to chase after her. The one brother, really; Mycroft started pretending to be an adult so young, and of course grownups don't run. She used to race her thoughts, to see if her little legs could ever possibly catch up with the deafening symphony of thoughts ransacking her mind. She never could, though it helped, for a moment. The burning of her muscles let her forget the burning in her head.
She remembers the burn. It felt like it would melt her brain sometimes, like it was all too much for her poor little head to handle and ideas would start flowing out of her eyes and ears like blood. She had been so very envious of her thick brothers and their even thicker friends, it was part of the reason why she drowned him, because it was just so easy for him and perhaps the flood of water would ease the burning, burning –
She'd nearly drowned herself a million times trying to quench the flames. Mycroft used to fish her out and shake his head and tell her no, but he didn't understand. He kept her secrets, though. She was grateful for that.
She supposed all the flames left her for the burning wooden house held up by loneliness.
Still, it didn't matter anymore. Those things were so very far away, and they'd happened to a little girl made of fire and curiosity. This Eurus was water still enough to be a mirror, and a whispering of wind. She sparked sometimes, when the foolish little boy with the curly dark hair who felt so much came and played his violin, and her still water became a flowing river of music, and her breeze turned into a highlands gale. Then she sparked, breathed, and was alive for just a moment.
Being dead was nice, though. Being still was peaceful in a way that she never knew when she was alive. She missed it sometimes, the motion, but she liked being water and wind over fire. It was her namesake, after all. And she had spent so little time outside of her box, that it was as much home as anywhere else. She wasn't happy, exactly, but she was content.
She remembers being Faith, too. She liked Faith. Faith had been timid and scared but ever so brave, and she was thick like the others compared to Eurus but brilliant in her own right. She wasn't strong like Eurus, but she could be a person in a way Eurus couldn't, and she could talk to her foolish brother and feel his arrogance and condescension and kindness without the touch of fear or disgust that colored his childhood interactions with her (after all, what sort of girl cut herself to study the muscles that lay beneath fragile skin?) and feel for a moment that she was perhaps his sister. Faith had meant what she said; he truly was kind. Kinder than Eurus had expected. She herself couldn't quite grasp the point of it, but then he always had been so naive. And John – she had been so curious about the man who had wrapped his hands around her foolish boy's heart and molded him like clay and made him kind. So she listened, and found that she liked being his therapist, too. She liked being a person, and she had always liked stories, even if most of them were dull and absurd. These stories were no exception, though she got better glimpses at her idiot brothers, and what it was like being a proper person. Eurus could never truly understand; she just wore their skin and pretended. And John was so mundane that after weeks of sessions she still couldn't decipher how he caught her brother's eye. She supposed it didn't matter; he would have to go, just like the last one. It was a shame. Drowned puppies were always so sad.
Sherlock had screamed and screamed after the first one stopped. She wondered what would happen when the second did the same.
All she'd wanted was to understand what it was to feel, to really, truly feel, the way a person did. She burned and smarted and stung but she didn't know.
She tried sex. Sex was something people did when they felt and when they wanted to feel. It was something she could scientifically understand. And yes, she did briefly feel, physically. And then it was over and she was emptier than she had ever been and although that man had been her plaything she felt nothing but used. It was new. She reveled in it. But sex became yet another tool for manipulation that left her ever more hollow each time.
It made her think that perhaps she could understand anguish.
The music swelled, the winds rose, water crashed, strings shook like the violin was sobbing, same as her mother, quietly in the corner, and in the center, the goddess of the East Wind and a very foolish boy were locked like statues.
She remembers the fear with which others looked to her. Even her parents, the poor overwhelmed people so completely out of their depth, were afraid. Even the supposedly unshakable Mycroft was afraid. And, of course, Sherlock was so afraid he chose to forget her entirely. Moriarty, her windup toy wound down, was the only one who hadn't been afraid. He learned to be.
Nobody looks at her with fear anymore. Who would be afraid of a broken doll?
She remembers being so very alone.
She supposed it was strange, to have found more companionship in death than she had in life. In life, all she'd had were lost puppies, buried and gone. Now, she at least had her kind and foolish little boy with curly dark hair who spoke music for company.
And solitude wasn't so bad, anymore. Not now that she was still water and a whisper of wind.
The music slowed with the storm. The roaring waters and screeching winds calmed in a gradual decrescendo. They stilled as it ended; the final ringing notes a drop in the water, sending gentle ripples outwards until they reached the edge, and all was quiet.
Sherlock lowered his instrument. He gave Eurus one last searching look and left the room, trailing his family.
Eurus stands alone.
She slowly places her violin down. The wood and strings and bow are still and quiet as the dead.
Yes, Eurus remembers being alive very well.
Silence reigns in the little glass box.