Remember that conversation in Empty Hearse? (You know, when they were playing Operation.) I was watching that, and, well, it got me thinking. Please tell me what you think of my thoughts. In other words, review!

Arrogant, they call him. Haughty, they think. Stuck-up, they whisper. Sherlock Holmes is not an intelligent man. No. He is a brilliant one. And he knows it.

So they say.

He struts around, head held confidently, deductions spewing out of his ever-moving lips. He does not hesitate to strip a man of all security, to reveal all of a person's secrets, to reduce someone to nothing. In their eyes and in his.

So they say.

He is amazingly, unreachably intelligent. And he is nothing more than a show-off, displaying this intelligence at every-at any-occasion.

So they say.

They say this. They believe it. But it is wrong. Sherlock Holmes does not know he is intelligent. he does not "spew off deductions" to showcase his brilliance. No.

Sherlock Holmes is stupid.

So he thinks.

He is so vastly, mindbogglingly stupid, he knows. He's known it all his life. He knows who is smart. Mycroft is. Mycroft, his perfect older brother, for whom the hero-worship has turned into buried jealousy. Mycroft, who does not "spew off deductions", because he is smart enough not to need to.

Sherlock wants to be smart, but he is not.

So he thinks.

He desperately wants to be smart. So he solves crimes, he deduces whatever he can, in a hopeless attempt to prove to himself that he is intelligent. It never works. Mycroft wouldn't have missed that, an insidious voice whispers. Mycroft is smart. If Sherlock can't do what he can, Sherlock is stupid.

And Sherlock can't do what Mycroft can. He is stupid.

So he thinks.

And indeed, is not what a man thinks of himself a reflection of what the man truly is?