Redbeard

He remembers it well: the first time he loved someone. Not that he didn't love his mummy or his daddy, or even his brother, but they were of a completely different class of love. They were expected to love him. But this creature – he was neither its son nor its sibling – and yet it loved him so whole-heartedly, wagged his tail merely from seeing his face or hearing his voice, that he couldn't help but love him too.

Redbeard, he called him. "Redbeard?" mummy had asked, put out by the strange name. Mycroft merely grinned – he had expected it. Yes, Redbeard. The name one would give to a fearsome pirate. Although, Redbeard wasn't the fearsome pirate in their games: Sherlock was, and Redbeard was his first mate. He was much better at it than Mycroft, who had used to laugh and scoff at Sherlock when he placed the skull-and-cross-bone adorned hat atop his black curls and tied his plastic cutlass to his waist with daddy's ties. He had told Mycroft this once, just to annoy his brother with the fact that he had been outshone by a dog. His brother hadn't liked that, and he had hit him. And then Sherlock had cried, and mummy hadn't liked that, so Sherlock had won in the end, regardless of the red mark on his arm.

He won many, many times. Mummy always complained about him letting Redbeard sleep on his bed, but at night he raised his finger to his lips and patted the space beside him, and Redbeard would jump up quietly, and Sherlock would smile and hug him as he slept, and he wouldn't even care too much when mummy scolded him the next morning. Sherlock felt as though his wrists were constantly red throughout his childhood, what with how much his mother had slapped them after he had fed Redbeard bits of his dinner. But when his friend looked at him so pleadingly, he couldn't begrudge him, and when Redbeard licked his face later, his breath stinking of meat and gravy, Sherlock felt that it was all worth it.

All Sherlock's troubles were worth it, when Redbeard was there. When he had fallen over and scraped his knee, Redbeard had been there to nudge his trembling chin and make it all better. When he had cried because Mycroft had broken his toys, Redbeard had been there to bound playfully around him, a perfect replacement. When he had been grounded for making the girl next door cry (even though she did suffer from poor hygiene, and wasn't it kinder to tell her?), Redbeard had remained by his side and made him forget why he even missed going outside in the first place. All he had to do was wrap his arms around his shaggy neck, and bury his face into his red fur, and everything felt okay. He was his medicine, and his counsellor, and his amusement, but, most of all, he was his best friend.

He had never had a best friend before. The other children at school didn't like him. They said he was strange. They said he was a freak. They said he was different. He just wanted to be liked, as they were. He just wanted to join them at skipping and hop-scotch without having them recoil from his presence. He just wanted to run around the field with them until his throat burned without being ran away from. He just wanted somebody to claim him with a grin when the class split into partners to do work. "You'll make friends eventually," his mummy had told him upon driving home one day, "you just need to open up more." Why was it always his fault? What was he doing wrong? Why did nobody like him? "Because you're stupid" his brother had answered him when he had asked once, twice, three times, lost count. He drove himself into studying hard, memorising everything, coming top of the class. His brother's answer never changed. The minds of his classmates did. They came to disdain him even more.

When mummy and daddy had realised that he couldn't get along with humans, along had come Redbeard, and gone were all his worries. He didn't care that the children recoiled, or ran, or rejected him. He didn't care when their tongues stuck out and rasped his way, and his didn't care that he was called names that were neither his birth-name nor pleasant. He didn't care that nobody liked him, because Redbeard did, and asked nothing in return, except that Sherlock love him back. And he did.

Sherlock loved him so much. Sherlock had never loved anything like this before. He loved this unjudging, kind and caring, admittedly smelly creature with all his heart. His mummy loved them too, and his daddy. They smiled after them when he and Redbeard went on adventures across the seven seas scouring for treasure in the backyard. They tittered fondly, quietly, so that only they could hear, and Sherlock pretended that he couldn't hear too, just as much as he pretended the grass was sand, because otherwise the happy illusion would be gone. He wanted this so badly. He had it. For a short while.

"Where ya goin', freak?" a handful of the children had asked on the day when Sherlock had taken Redbeard out for a walk. His mummy and daddy had been scared to at first, but Sherlock was smart, and Redbeard was brave, so in the end they had made him promise not to go too far and had kissed him on the forehead and sent him away: a choice they would come to regret. Sherlock, not one for sharp, stinging comebacks when he was younger, had just shrugged in response. Where was he going? He didn't know. Just out. Perhaps he and Redbeard would go to white sandy beaches and bask in the warmth of the sun with their feet and paws in the cooling waves, or to cold coves dripping with salt water where treasure could rain down in a hush. Perhaps they would board their ship, creaky and battered from battle, but beloved all the same, and they would sail until nightfall, when the stars would reflect against the water's skin and make him feel as though he were pirating in space. His mind could take him anywhere. Redbeard would follow him anywhere.

"What's the matter, weirdo? Can't talk?" one of the children had stepped forward and pushed him back. Sherlock rubbed his chest and looked affronted, unable to understand why they treated him this way. What had he ever done to them?

"I assure you, I'm perfectly literate." he had replied, but they hadn't liked that answer. They pushed him again, and again Sherlock couldn't understand them. He understood many things, from all his studying, but humans? Never. Their complexities were as vast as the seas he sailed. "Stop that," he said, "it hurts."

"What? This?" another child had laughed, and pushed him again, harder this time. Sherlock had lost his balance and fell onto his bottom with a cry of pain. Then he just sat there, rubbing his chest. His skin stung where they had touched him. Why? Why didn't they like him? What had he done wrong? He hated not understanding things. Tears welled to his eyes, stinging them. What was wrong with him?

The children stood above him, continuing to laugh, and he started to cry, cold tears sliding down his cheeks. Ringing in his ears was laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter, and then growling. He looked at Redbeard with blurry eyes to see an expression he had never seen on his friend. His lips were pulled back, baring his yellow teeth, and Sherlock was scared by how unfamiliar it was. The children noticed too, and a few of them backed up, just as scared. But one of them stepped forward angrily, and smacked Redbeard on the head. "Shut it, mutt" he had shouted, and then he was screaming as Redbeard lunged at him with a great bark, and screaming as his hands reached for the other children to find they had already ran away, and screaming as yellow teeth penetrated the flesh on his leg, and screaming as blood oozed down his leg and stained his socks red.

Sherlock was still too scared to do anything. He just sat there on the pavement, watching, crying, until the child's screams made the people in the surrounding houses come out, and one woman had pulled Sherlock up and away to hide behind her skirts, and a man was beating Redbeard about the head with his slipper. Sherlock was screaming now, begging for them to stop. He was just protecting him. They had been mean. They had pushed him. They had smacked Redbeard. It wasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault, it wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault, why didn't they like him, why didn't they like him, why didn't they like him, why didn't they like him…

Sherlock didn't remember ceasing crying after that. Actually, he didn't think he ever did. Even when no tears were shed, there still remained a cold, damp feeling on his cheeks reminding him that he had been crying, and why he had been crying, and it made him cry all over again. He had cried when people had restrained Redbeard, and when they had dragged them home, and when he had tried to tell mummy and daddy what had happened, unheard over the screeches for justice from the witnesses who had witnessed nothing, and he had cried when Redbeard licking his face didn't cheer him up, and when mummy and daddy had sat him down in front of the fireplace for a very sad, important talk, and he had cried when mummy had let Redbeard sleep in his bed, because he knew what it meant.

A medicine, a counsellor, an amusement, a first mate, a best friend. Now a-danger-to-the-public had been added to the list of what Redbeard was, and Sherlock hated it because it was a lie. Just as he knew that Redbeard whiffed of dinner intended for Sherlock, and knew that his fur was as red and felt softer than a calm sea, he knew that Redbeard wasn't a-danger-to-the-public. How could someone who loved so much be a danger? How could someone who loved him so much be a danger? Maybe that was why nobody liked him: because it would make them dangerous. Sherlock told himself this to cope, to pretend that he understood in the same way he pretended he was the greatest pirate in the universe, so that his happy illusion couldn't be broken. He still cried though.

He cried when they laid Redbeard down on the sterile table at the vets, and his fur clashed so horribly with the white in the room. He cried until he couldn't see, and Redbeard was just a blur of red. He cried as he clung onto Redbeard when he was there, and when he was gone – still there, in red fur in Sherlock's small grasp, but not there anymore. He cried until mummy was too tired to hold his shoulder for comfort anymore. He cried because he hated that Redbeard couldn't speak to say goodbye. He had said goodbye over and over in a mantra, like a prayer, and hoped that if he said it enough then Redbeard could learn to as well. He didn't.

Sherlock cried for days and days after mummy and daddy had brought him home without Redbeard. He didn't eat because there would be no one to eat with, and he didn't sleep because there was no one to sleep with, and he didn't imagine because no captain could be without his first mate. After a few days of crying his brother came to him and scoffed. "It was just a dog," he told him, "no need for such disgusting displays of emotion." He had hit Mycroft then, and mummy hadn't liked that, and she had shouted at him, but she had given up with a weary sigh when Sherlock had started bawling again, and she had given up trying to make it better. There was no one to make it better anymore.

His mummy had tried her best to make it better. She loved her son, and hated to see him in this way. She cooked all his favourite meals and took him to the park, but he never finished the food, and he dragged his cutlass along the pavement when they walked to and from the park, making the paint and the magic peel away. "How about we get a new dog?" she had suggested once in a cheery tone, but only ever once. "You can't replace my best friend." he had said forlornly, and she hadn't suggested it again, because to see him looking so sad again would tear at her heart. She just looked at him sympathetically, and rubbed her thumb against his cheek, and told him that she knew. She knew heartbreak so well. She knew it when she looked at her heartbroken son, and felt it.

A few days later, Sherlock was hungry again, and he was sleepy again, and he forgot what wet eyes felt like. His heart still ached but he was dry from the inside out. The seven seas had become a desert. He couldn't imagine anymore, with a landscape like that. He didn't want to either, because imagining would make him remember, and remembering would make him hurt, and he had had enough of that. "It was just a dog", he had lied, to help himself cope. He lied and lied and lied, and somewhere along the lines he managed to make himself believe it. And somewhere along the lines, he promised to never care for anything so strongly again. Caring. It hurt. What was the point? Look where caring had gotten him. Look where caring had gotten Redbeard.

He never heard his parents titter fondly after him again, and he never pretended to.

"That…was amazing."

Sherlock paused. He hadn't expected that. He had expected him to recoil, run, reject: the usual. What was the matter with this man? Had the war driven him mad? Maybe he himself had gone mad? Maybe he had misheard him? Maybe John was joking?

"You think so?" he asked, hesitantly. Now he wasn't sure whether he wanted confirmation. Maybe he just wanted to pretend he had heard right, that it wasn't a joke, that perhaps someone could actually like him for his genius. He didn't need to pretend.

"Of course it was. It was extraordinary. It was quite extraordinary." John said with an affirmative nod, and then he looked out of the window, nothing more to say. Honest. Genuine. Sherlock was surprised, for the first time in what felt like forever. But he was also…dare he say…happy? He felt his heart swelling for the first time in years, and the unfamiliarity hurt, but it was nice.

"That's not what people normally say." he said, looking out the window too, at London whizzing past in a blur of colour and lights. It all seemed so surreal, he wondered if it could all be a dream.

"What do people normally say?" John asked, turning back to him, intrigued, inquisitive, interested, and Sherlock turned back to him too, and he smirked.

"Piss off." he said, and John actually beamed at him, he was smiling, his lips curled up, he was grinning, he chuckled shortly, he paused and considered his answer again, and he laughed, and Sherlock found himself laughing with him before he realised he was doing it. His cheeks hurt from smiling. But it felt nice. His heart continued to swell, and his promise to himself from long ago was forgotten.

He looked fondly back at John, and John didn't know. He had no idea what he'd done.

Notes: After watching the BBC Sherlock season three finale, and seeing Redbeard, who Sherlock had obviously cared for, I felt inspired to write this story. It's just my head-canon, about his relationship with the dog, and what it meant to him, and how Redbeard being put-down could have been the straw on the camel's back that triggered Sherlock's distant, uncaring attitude. But maybe in the future someone else could be his medicine (doctor), counsellor (replacement skull), amusement (his poems to his girlfriends are funny), first mate (lost without his blogger) and best friend, and so maybe he could care again.
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Mummy Holmes, Daddy Holmes and John Watson belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I claim no ownership of these creations.
Thank you for reading, I appreciate it.