That Would Be No
This is not the story of how Sherlock slayed his first snail, nor is it the story of how he found out the raven did it. No, this is the story of how Sherlock Holmes made his first friend.
Bird!Sherlock and Worm!John.
His mother'd always taught him to stay away from people. Those humans with their ugly faces and strange beaks, their funny wings that wouldn't fly no matter how hard they flapped, and yet so dangerous.
His mother'd told him not to think of them as inferior, because they were large – larger than him – and they could take him down with just one loud bang, like they had his father.
Sherlock had never known his father.
His mother said he was brave and smart, and Sherlock had his black feathers.
His brother said he was a nutter, but Sherlock certainly didn't take Mycroft's word as gospel. After all, he always took the worms mummy'd reserved for him, and Sherlock was astounded as each day he managed to hoist his body up and take flight.
Mummy also always said everyone was stupid. And everything that was small enough to grasp (and, naturally, completely brainless,) was food.
Sherlock found this concept strange and much preferred to simply not touch anything, while Mycroft much preferred to venture to Mrs. Hudson's backyard and choke down all she'd laid down for an entire flock of birds, ignoring the staring eyes of the petite and defenseless.
Mummy had warned him not to follow. After all, every wrinkly human could hold dangerous weapons.
He'd heard them row. Mummy and Mycroft, that is. Until his big brother left them. Left him and simply never returned to their home.
The others whistled he'd gone off to Africa, but Sherlock never knew for certain. After all, it was hard to write letters without thumbs. Bastard humans.
The first time Sherlock killed, he was little.
His mother had told him how.
Just dig, she said, and Sherlock did. Until he came across something harder than soil. And killed it.
It wasn't that he liked the taste of it precisely, but mummy had been so proud of him when he'd swallowed the disgusting mush.
He did it several times after that.
This, however, is not the story of how Sherlock slayed his first snail.
Nor is it the story of how he managed to make it quite clear the raven did it, or how he found his brother (or rather, how his brother found him.)
Nay, this is the story of how Sherlock Holmes made his first friend.
You see, the weather had been downright rotten when mummy told him it was time to fly out. He should, she told him pointedly, as it was proper.
Sherlock had spluttered then, because leaving had been farthest on his mind (the first thing had been the disappearance of the eggs of mother sparrow.)
He'd spluttered and struggled, but mummy's mind was not to be changed, and eventually she told him he'd have to find a decent tree to settle in.
With a decent female. And look better after his eggs than that 'damned father of his, God bless his soul'.
Sherlock, honest to whatever higher power there was, didn't feel much for the reproducing part of this story. Nor for the 'female' part, but he said nothing and simply nodded and turned.
Mummy hadn't been proud when he left.
She didn't smile or frown. She'd waved to him once and told him to take care, like all the mothers did.
And Sherlock flew off, far, far away.
Past trees where he was unwelcome to stay, because sure, they wanted his help when something (or rather, someone) was amiss, but found him otherwise unbearable. Too clever. Eerily clever for his kind.
So Sherlock flew in a perfect circle, around whole blocks, only to be sent away the occasional comment he really shouldn't care about, until, eventually, he came across a garden.
A beautiful little garden where, every day, seeds would be strewn on the grass, or nets of food would be hung in the trees for the large families of little birds, because big birds took it away from their homes.
Nobody dared actually live here, though, for this was a human's garden.
Better so, it was the sweet Mrs. Hudson's.
Delightful Mrs. Hudson who smiled and hummed; poor Mrs. Hudson who lived alone despite the human nature to seek company.
Lovely Mrs. Hudson whom his mother had said would eat him alive if he wasn't quick enough, so he'd better not try at all.
So he decided to take his chances.
And, within minutes, Mummy Holmes got word that her darling son had shacked up in the dangerous trees of the murderess and nearly fell from the branch she wat sat upon.
Surely, she thought, they are jesting. And yet, she didn't dare see for herself.
If she had, she would've heard the story Mrs. Hudson told our dear, feathered friend in a fit of loneliness.
A story of how, years ago, her husband, God save his criminal soul, had shot a bird who looked just like him.
All birds of equal species looked the same, she said, but she could tell.
She had wept and pulled his arm, and after, she had buried the beautiful bird in this ery garden.
But this is not the story of how Sherlock found out there were two kinds of humans, nor was it the story of Mr. Hudson's sentence or Mrs. Holmes' indifference. We aren't even at the core of our first adventure yet.
Well now; Sherlock had eventually taken quite a liking to the ever-so-kind Mrs. Hudson, but his mind was still not at ease. Never at ease. But he'd heard stories.
He'd heard the elders whistle of a solution.
A plant that could solve all your problems.
So Sherlock sought out this plant and found it near Mrs. Hudson's lillies and the apple tree.
The plant the elderly had called all sorts of funny names, but Sherlock couldn't remember any of them within minutes. And yet, none of his problems were actually solved.
But this isn't the story of Sherlock's addiction either. Not really.
The story we're looking for was after – much after that.
In fact, Mycroft had returned and had set all of that straight, calling it 'a slight misstep' with a smile and a nod as departure.
No, as a different approach, we're going to start on a wonderful day in mid July. A day Sherlock would usually be entirely indifferent to, really.
He wasn't one for sunshine. But he was simply hungry.
This in itself was not a regular occurrence, truth be told, and Sherlock was oncemore annoyed with the feathery vessel of his great mind.
Hence Sherlock ventured forth to find himself something, anything resembling at least half of a good meal, and decided to do what mummy told and dug.
And he came across something.
Something long and slippery.
This was not unusual.
What was, however, slightly out of the ordinary, were the worm's repeated pleas of 'please, God, let me live'.
Sherlock blinked so slowly the worm, his ten tiny hearts pounding, had begun silently praying he'd fallen asleep, but then opened his eyes and said the first thing his big fat brain could conjure.
"What?"
And that was it. The first, memorable words.
You see, John's mother had always taught him to stay underground.
This was where he'd be safe from 'those damned birds with their sharp noses and merciless eyes'.
His mother had told him to never, ever stray to the above, as his father had, and she had not seen him since.
John had never known his father, but his mother had said he was a man who had fought for all of their freedom, and John certainly caught some of that spirit also.
His sister told him he was a weirdo. A weirdo and an idiot. But he'd long since stopped believing her.
After all, she never really did what mum told her to do.
And he heard them row.
Oh yes.
Because when you were underground, you could dig and dig, but you could never really get anywhere when the grub family lived not a few inches above.
Harriet left after that.
John didn't think it was truly possible to leave that fast when all you could do was eat mud. He was disappointed to be wrong.
He was left alone after that.
His mother wasn't one for sentiment. You know, being a worm and all. And John went to battle.
Nothing serious, but it seemed the beetles wanted to claim playground territory and John was so goddamn righteous he simply could not let that happen, now could he?
But the sand had not been friendly to his poor body. Then again, this is not the story of John's battlescars. No, in fact, all his military training (not that much, actually, what with having no teeth, arms or legs and all that) went straight through the roof when John was left to beg for his life before none other than an enormous, black-feathered enemy.
John had never seen one before, a bird.
But, on further inspection, they didn't look nearly as evil as mum had told him they did.
No, in fact, it looked quite clever.
Almost intimidatingly so.
And John decided that, just for this, this had to be a good bird.
A stupid assumption, he was later told, but John claimed there were no stupid assumptions. Only naive ones.
And Sherlock decided this worm didn't look nearly as asinine as his mummy's description.
This was quite the correct assumption, and Sherlock claimed he never assumed. He knew.
Sherlock decided to keep this creature, just as John decided to stay with it.
They lived together in the garden of darling Mrs. Hudson, where Sherlock protected John from the hungry beaks of the sparrows or the magpies invading their territory, and John simply served as company and a replacement for the dead rabbit Sherlock had previously been sharing his deductions with.
But in actuality, despite earlier, repeated assertions, this isn't so much the story of how their sweet, sweet friendship started, as it is the tale of how it ended.
Now it was true John and Sherlock did not agree all that often, but one thing they did firmly agree on: humans were dangerous.
Sherlock had shifted his earlier claims and they had both come to the conclusion Mrs. Hudson was not, in fact, human, but what she was, they did not yet know.
But there were rumours of one particular human.
A child with eyes as dark as his hair and a mind as sharp as the tools he handled.
Sherlock thought of this as poppycock. Mindless chatter to take their minds off the one-sided tedium of their everyday lives.
Until he couldn't find John.
John was merely taking a stroll – as far as one could stroll when your body was, basically, one chubby, slippery string – when it happened.
He was dug out of his refuge and taken into the elegantly long, very human fingers of a small boy.
And even if the boy had had better hearing, he would have still been deaf to poor Watson's pleas.
It took Sherlock several hours to eventually not be able to find what took Mycroft only minutes to track.
Sherlock suspected he'd had help of the woodpecker, a notorious criminal he'd been attempting to put to justice for slightly over a year, but Mycroft simply told him to 'get on with it and he had arranged something, silly boy'.
It was true the open window had been welcome, since Sherlock had to reluctantly admit this would have taken him even longer than his fruitless flying around, had he tried opening it by himself, but he liked not to think of the manpower Mycroft had to use for his sake.
And inside was John.
And John was not alone.
The boy itself had been frightening enough, but Sherlock thought his heart could stop when the boy flashed a knife reflecting as brightly in the light above his desk as his toothy grin.
So Sherlock, once again, seeing as it was usually the most logical when John was involved, did the first thing he could think of and flew inside.
John wished he could fly.
Maybe be a bit bigger.
Have a mouth and, maybe, if he'd get out of here alive, grow some teeth.
Sherlock didn't have teeth.
John would grow enough teeth for the both of them.
He could help Sherlock open cans.
Sherlock never had any cans. Probably because of aforementioned lack of teeth.
John looked at the bright light above him and thought of what Sherlock would do.
Fly, probably.
Oh, how he wished he could fly.
The boy yelled, John noticed.
He didn't know why, but more people were coming.
He closed his eyes and waited.
Sherlock was grabbed and thrown out. The window was shut firmly and Sherlock's hope vanished.
As did his will when Mycroft told him it was too late.
And despite earlier allegations about other repeated allegations, this is really and truly the story of how Sherlock Holmes and John Watson became unlikely friends, how James Moriarty tried to enhance his knowledge by brutal force, and of how Sherlock mourned for months.
This is the story of how Sherlock lost his best and only friend, and of how his brother landed in his nest not a month after, carrying, Sherlock had to admit, a very clever duplicate of John Watson.
And lastly, this is the story of how Sherlock ascertained this was not a very clever duplicate, but an actual John Watson – the only one – and was shocked to find his first ever real assumption had been an idiotic one.
Sherlock is a bit bird-brained, isn't he? AHAHAH- This was written as a birthday present for my dear Danglingdingle, my hot Finnish lover from anovver movver. And if you thought 'Oh boy. Bird jokes? Lame.' you haven't even gotten all of them. Because when you find out which artist played the song this story was named after? You will want to smack your face. Or mine.
Anyway, I hope you'll all leave a review and I hope to see you again.