He was a broken soul, no doubt about that. He knew it right from the beginning and he didn't believe his parents or Mycroft when they tried to tell him otherwise. Well, they stopped eventually as there was a point when even they couldn't deny it. Most people had a whole band around there wrist. It started to form when you were three, the outer lines, the basic patterns were fully developed by the age of six and it then it began to colour. By the time when you became fourteen or fifteen years old your soulmark was fully developed and a name appeared underneath the colours but it was only visible for two persons – the person whose mark it was and the soulmate whose name it was. The colours of and patterns of most soulmates were always absolute identical. But then there were those few whose marks didn't make the full circle. The soulmates with broken marks were no equals, you where either the healer when your mark had lighter colours and missed only little bits, sometimes only really visible when one took a very close look. Or you were the broken one that needed healing and had a mark with large parts missing and mostly dark colours. Sherlock knew right from the beginning, even when the mark was not fully developed and not coloured yet that he was the broken one. He was already too aware of the fact that he was different back then, different in a bad way.
Sherlock hated it. He hated his mark. He hated the meaning behind it, he hated that he would always be seen as weak and broken by everyone who would see it. He always covered his mark, even when he was alone at home he wore a silver band around his wrist that his parents gave him. He himself didn't want to see it, didn't want to be reminded of the meaning behind that stupid mark and of his unchangeable status. Covering your soul mark was in itself a bit suspicious as most people didn't cover theirs. They kept them open on display as they want people to see them, hoping a potential soulmate would recognize the colours and patterns. People whose soulmate had died either before they have met them covered their mark. And of course people with broken marks covered their marks as well as they were seen as not normal, as defective, as impaired. And then there were those few who didn't want their lives to be determined by the mark, but it was regarded as odd and inappropriate to deny the power of soulmates. Nevertheless Sherlock always tried to convince people that he was one of the latter ones or one whose soulmate had died. Everything was better than people discovering that he had a broken mark. It had worked quite well throughout his adulthood. But with a shudder he remembered his school days. Even back then Sherlock wore a broad silver band around his wrist. When people asked he just glared at them or turned around. So most people assumed his soulmate was dead, until one day he got in the way of the school's biggest bullies and they ripped the band apart. The other pupils at school thought him to be strange before, but from that moment on they hated him, called him freak or cripple.
But it was not only at school that he was the outcast. His grandfather always made him show him his mark when it started to develop. And as he saw that the mark was broken he said that that was a proof for everything that was wrong with him. So even his own grandfather called him a freak and used every opportunity to teach him a lesson, to show him that he was worthless. His parents tried to comfort Sherlock, at least sometimes, but he knew that they had similar thoughts after he once overheard a conversation between them. So, yes, he was the broken one, deficient and marred. At a certain point, even before the final colours and the name of his soulmate appeared on his wrist he made the decision not to let this dictate his life. He would survive as long as possible. He would not care about what people called him. He would not search for this "Gregory" to heal him. Broken soulmate marks were very rare and the chance to meet him were slim. From the few men named "Gregory" that he had met in his life, he could always tell immediately that they were not his soulmate. There was only one who was different. One.