"Hey, Sherlock-"
He put down his glass of orange juice to turn his head about. She was standing behind him holding something behind her back. He got on his knees to turn fully around on his chair.
"What have you got?"
He inquired, genuinely curious.
"If you come upstairs with me, I'll show you."
She replied tilting her head. She abruptly turned and ran down the hall, careful to sequester the mystery object in her arms so that her brother caught no glimpse of it. Even being eight years old, he knew she didn't have anything good. In fact, if history would provide the burden of proof, following her would only end in pain for him. However, if Eurus knew her brother's one weakness, it was curiosity. Thus did merely three minutes tick by before he abandoned his drink on the kitchen table and followed her. She was in his room, her body curled around her surprise. She didn't look up until he dropped to the floor and crawled to her. With the barest hint of a smile she produced a plastic sandwich bag. It looked like it had a few spoonfuls of flour shifting in the bottom.
"What is it?"
"I found it in Mycroft's room."
Sherlock reached out to grab the bag so he could examine its contents independently.
Eurus held it back from him, but opened it and grabbed the handheld mirror she kept on her nightstand.
"I know how you use it"
She stated as if Sherlock were supposed to be impressed.
She placed her mirror on the floor.
"They do it like this"
She began, and poured the powder on the mirror. She separated the flour into four little rows, two on his side and two on hers. She pulled out a half-empty packet of colored straws from behind her, the straws their mother had gotten for Sherlock specifically. Mum kept them in the drawer beneath the toaster. Sherlock ascertained their retrieval was the reason his sibling had been in the kitchen. She got a blue straw for herself and a yellow one for him.
"Can I have a red?"
He queried, trying to hand the yellow one back to her.
She ignored him and rearranged herself so that she could lean over her powder-laden mirror. Sherlock followed suit. For a moment, they both hovered there, Sherlock waiting for Eurus to finish instructing him. She seemed to be thinking about something. If he hadn't known better, he might have thought she looked uncertain of herself. Fortunately for his preconceptions of the machinations of the universe, Eurus recovered nearly at once and reengaged him with her ever-pervasive eyes.
"You put this in your nose-"
"In your nose-"
Sherlock giggled incredulously.
The tips of her mouth inched upward in what was probably supposed to be a smile.
"Yeah, you put this in your nose and breathe in."
She fitted the top of the straw in her nostril and let it dangle there, much to Sherlock's amusement.
"You suck up this stuff"
She said, her apparatus intruding on her voice with a nasality that both children found hilarious. Sherlock was all squirmy smiles as his sister demonstrated. She stuck the other end of the straw amidst one of her flour rows and inhaled. She started coughing immediately.
"You got to do it too,"
She said between hacks after jerking the tube out of her nose.
He acquiesced with more sniggering. Holding his straw in his nose, he bent over and settled on the row nearest to him. When he drew in he couldn't help but choke. It burned his nasal passages. He dropped the straw and covered his nose with both hands. For half a minute he thought she had just done all this to play a weird little trick on him, as had been the case countless times before. However, the burning was rapidly replaced by something stranger. His heart was beating a bit faster in his ears now. He felt…happy; very, very happy. It felt like he was on a roller coaster, but in his own body. He watched his sister repeat the process of inhaling the powder, and soon imitated her.
The feeling was stronger the second time. The burning was too. He felt like something in his head was rushing, or accumulating-like dominoes falling or waves tumbling, he didn't know which. There was so much of it all at once, he felt sick to his stomach. But he did it again, and again-
And the sensation just took up more and more room in his head, bullying every other feeling and thought out. Like an air balloon it billowed, but under it something like fire was clawing at him. Why did he feel so scared? For some reason the shadows in the room were getting bigger. They seemed to be stealing his air. He was already breathing hard, but he only suffocated more rapidly.
He looked again at his sister. She wasn't afraid at all. She looked limp even sitting up. She was staring at him with a lopsided grin, eyes half open. It was the single most sincere expression of joy he'd ever seen on her face. He didn't realize how much he disliked the normal Eurus until he saw her like this. No scheme or trial flitted behind her eyes; no imminent torment for him. She looked like time held nothing but this moment. He loved that. He wished he cloud see that again, only see that.
But the shadows were getting insistent now. They outlined the trembling in his limbs, the palpitations of his heart, and the ache in his chest. He tried to blink them away. Why was his nose leaking? He didn't have a tissue. Apparently he wasn't going to be able to get one, because it was nighttime now, and he couldn't get up.