The screaming wind buffets the little crowd of hooded children, and the boy stumbles on a rock, feels the firm grasp of his tutor's hand on the cloak around his neck.
"Keep your footing, boy. We're nearly there."
The others are just as frightened. He can see it in their faces they glance at one another from beneath red hoods, fighting off watering eyes in the sharp winds. This side of the planet, away from their warm homes and elegant gardens, is cruel, untempered. There are no soaring buildings or monoliths to ward off the biting wind, only a thousand miles of rugged stone and dry earth.
To his left one girl is crying. He wonders what the others would think if he started crying himself. At this point, he hardly cares.
Worn stone pillars silently announce that they are there. The children huddle closer together, a desperate, last-ditch attempt at solidarity. They know they face the Schism alone.
He does not recall the waiting; as though waking from a dream, the boy only realises where he is when he stands, at last, at the front of the queue. His tutors, stoic at the best of times, offer him no comfort as they lead him, shivering, past the pillars and down a small incline in the rock.
For a moment, his eyes study an ancient stonework, rounded by the incessant wind. He glances up, and falters. Hands, gentler than he imagines, push him forward slightly, and he staggers to a halt.
Alone, the child stares into Time.
And then he runs.
~:~:~
"GO ON THEN! Go on, sit with your boyfriend. Hold his hand, Johnny. Go on!"
John Watson pushed the hair from his eyes, glaring defiantly at the thirteen-year-olds that circled him. Somewhere near his chin he could feel the smarting pain of a gravel burn where they'd shoved him to the ground, but he didn't dare reach up to check it. The moment he showed weakness, the moment they knew they'd hurt him - that's when they'd win.
The other boy huddled in the corner, small and petrified. The ridiculous thing was that John didn't even know him. He was just the new kid, a transfer from Leeds. He'd been sitting alone on one of the benches, and like a fool John had offered to share his lunch. The boy looked like he hadn't eaten in a week.
"Look at him looking at his boyfriend, the little queer!"
John glowered up at Charlie Hurst, Westview Primary's resident bully. He was a sturdy rock of a boy, blessed with an extensive, if unsavory, vocabulary from his father, and the hereditary Hurst nose bulge. He towered over the other children, and from John's position in the dirt, he looked nothing short of monstrous. The boy cringed as he felt himself dragged upward by the collar once more, mentally preparing for another black eye.
The hand around his neck disappeared suddenly, and John dropped heavily to the ground. Blinded for a moment by the sharp pain of gravel scraping along the wounds of his legs, John couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.
It came to him in a whirl of black.
He vaguely recognised the boy in front of him. He was in John's grade, but they'd never spoken. Really, he didn't speak to anyone, just sat at the back of the class and got very excited whenever their science projects required dissection. He would have been prime target for bullying, with his strange black clothes and unnatural fixation for his violin, but somehow John had never seen him dragged to the middle of the quadrangle and pummelled by the older kids.
He could see plainly why, now. With some clever footwork and several well-placed punches the single boy had taken out an entire fleet of children with nothing but his fists. As John struggled to his feet, he saw Charlie Hurst stumble backward, away from the lithe, dark figure, hand clutching his groin.
"Sorry, please..." he wheezed, clearly winded. His bulbous nose looked redder than usual, and he sniffed horribly.
From his position John couldn't see the boy's face, but evidently his expression was enough to send Charlie sprinting back across the oval, bent nearly double with his arms around his stomach.
For a moment it looked like the boy in black might run after him, but after a second he kicked at the gravel with his boot and turned around.
"You," he said coldly to the boy from Leeds, still huddled in his corner. "Get out before I hit you myself. Snivelling like a baby while someone else gets beat up, you make me sick."
The smaller child ducked his head obediently and dashed off in the opposite direction of the others. The boy watched him go. He snorted and glanced briefly at John.
"Are you alright, then?" he asked stiffly.
"How did you...do that?" John rose unsteadily to his feet, wincing at the slicing pain along his leg.
"You're not alright. There's blood everywhere. What did you do to them, insult their mothers?"
"I'm fine. It looks bad, it's just the gravel. I can get it if I...could you help me to the bench?"
The boy stepped forward swiftly, sliding a nimble arm beneath John's shoulders and guiding him to the battered steel table and bench in a nearby patch of sunlight. John peeled the ripped edge of his trousers off of a long scrape on his calf, brushing off the larger stones with is fingertips. The other boy watched him curiously.
"I'm John, by the way." he flicked the strands of blond hair from his eyes. "John Watson."
The boy in black hesitated. "Sherlock."
"That's your first name?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just not a name you hear every day."
"I'm sorry it's not your garden variety 'John' or 'Jack' or 'Greg'." Sherlock said coldly.
"Look, I wasn't...I wasn't insulting you. It's fine. John's about as boring as they come anyhow." He smiled uncertainly, and after a moment the boy relaxed. He pulled up his collar against the wind and stepped on the bench, climbing up to sit on the top of the worn table, arms crossed and legs reclining on the seat below.
"You didn't answer my question," he noted, staring out across the oval.
"What quest- oh, what I did to those guys. Nothing, really. Made friends with that new kid, which apparently means I'm a queer."
"Why did you do it then?"
"Do what?"
"Make...friends."
"I dunno, why does anyone?" John shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Well you made friends with me, didn't you?"
Sherlock broke his staring contest with the oval, turning to look at John with a curious expression on his face. "Did I?"
John paused. "Oh, well, you saved me from those guys, I just thought-"
"Thought what?"
John glared at him, exasperated. "Really? Nevermind. Thanks for the help." he eased himself off the bench, favouring his leg as he picked up his dusty backpack.
He heard the scrape of fabric over metal, the crunch of boots hitting the gravel. He didn't turn around, limping forward with determination.
"John. Wait, I-"
Whatever he'd intended to say was drowned out by a peculiar sound. Both boys turned around in the same moment.
Not four paces away, where only a second ago there had been nothing but uninterrupted sky and grass, there stood what looked like a large industrial bin; only this bin was largely transparent, and seemed to be fading in and out. With a loud wheeze, the bin vanished.
The boys stood frozen, staring at the empty grass for several long seconds. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak.
The sound returned in full force, this time on the opposite side of them, and they spun around in bewilderment. The bin materialised once more, this time holding its shape, and settled on the ground. The strange keening died away.
They were silent for a moment. John's backpack slid off his shoulders and thumped on the dirt.
Some kind of sound was coming from the bin. As they watched, a latch opened on the side, but instead of mounds of garbage, a young boy stepped out.
The three boys stared at one another in total astonishment. The boy was their age, quite as thin as Sherlock, with brown hair that fell across his forehead in a perfect bowl cut. He looked from one to the other, then turned and vomited forcibly into the dirt.