Disclaimer: If I'd own Sherlock, Moriarty'd still be alive and skipping around making people into shoes.

A/N: Set before the series, but spoilers for the Great Game.

It had been one of those days, again. It was always one of those days. A day that wasn't one of them, still was one of them in some sort. No day had been a happy one since Carl Powers had moved into town. The swimming champion, suffering from eczema but still loved by everyone. Oh how he hated him. It was like Carl was the King, the almighty King reigning over his new kingdom.

Before Carl had arrived in town, everything had been just fine. No one mocking his clothes, his height or appearance. No one complaining about his lack of emotions or social skills right in his face – he knew well enough that behind his back they did gossip about it. He didn't care about it, they just didn't understand him. His thoughts. The brilliance of his brain. They didn't have to understand. They didn't have to love him because for him, it never mattered much.

The curious boy called Jim had been fine with everything normal and abnormal happening in his life. He had grown up with the daughter of the neighbours as his best friend – even thugh she was four years older – and with his dog Zep as the only company during some days.

But then the King had arrived and everything had changed. What had been a quiet and rather peaceful life had changed completely to something one would call 'hell'. He didn't want it, he had never begged for more attention, even in a bad way, but there it was. All the attention one could wish for, just given to a sixteen year old boy who didn't want it.

The lake had been his place to escape to whenever he felt bad. He got ignored by the youth walking past because they weren't interested in a loner with his dog, or a boy and a girl talking so animatedly that they didn't want to interrupt. He got ignored by the elder people who were afraid of him, hood pulled over his head to make sure no one recognized that it was him.

At the lake, no one bothered him. He could easily lay down and stare at the water for ages without anyone bothering him. Alone, just left alone with his brain, thinking out all sorts of things he wanted to invent or become. His future plans all laid out, all reachable with his brain, his brilliance. He knew he was brilliant. He knew that the rest of the world was a bunch of mindless idiots. People didn't seem to be able to think. To be prepared to do anything for a greater good. The world was going to hell and no one saw it. Reverse Darwinism?

A lake was so deep but also so wide that it could keep many secrets or keep people hidden when they were looking at other people, trying to figure what they were thinking. The Boating Lake in Regent's Park was the lake Jim liked the most. So big, so huge and so many hiding spots to watch other people go on with their boring, usual business of every day.

He wasn't in London a lot, living in Brighton. He planned for his Sixth Form to be in London, so he could enjoy more of the park. Brighton only held bad memories for him, Carl Powers was one of them. Carl, the King about whom it was all about, was the main reason he wanted to leave Brighton as quickly as he could. His parents wouldn't move to London, so he had to wait. Wait until he finished school so he could go to London, sharing a flat with some boring idiot whilst taking up a ton of jobs to be able to pay everything his parents wouldn't pay for him.

Ever since the day the King had entered the kingdom, he had been running. Running for a bit of freedom, somewhere they maybe didn't like him but still left him alone. Somewhere where they didn't start throwing random stuff at him because he was too smooth with teachers, too brilliant for his age. Where they didn't hit him on the top of his head because of his height. Where they just left him alone with his books and his dog.

But he was strong and he was going to be stronger. In the future they were all going to be utter idiots and he was going to be the best person in the world, one way or the other. He was going to grow out to someone that had the power to crush the ones who bullied him.

It wasn't that he had no emotions, it was that he was going to ignore them for the rest of his life. That was something he decided whilst drying his hair with a towel, picking out all sorts of greasy stuff that had been on the bottom of the lake they had pushed him in. Looking at his mirrored self in the mirror, he let the towel drop from his hands. The wet hair stuck to his forehand and as he met his own eyes he saw something looking out. Something that had been hidden deep inside it for so long. It was boiling right underneath the surface, ready to explode in such a way the whole world would know it. Right now or in a couple of years, it didn't matter, but it would come out and be brilliant, play brilliant and die brilliant.

A/N: I hope this doesn't scare anyone - I dunno how many people noticed it - but in episode, Carl Powers is 11 years old when he dies... which got me in trouble so the ages:

Jim: 16
Carl: 13
(arrives in future chapters) Sherlock: 14