Hey everyone:) this is just a quick intro chapter with young Sherlock to help you understand references in the next chapter (which, if you want to read it, I will post tomorrow!)
"Ahoy there, cap'n Redbeard!" cried the young boy, shaking with laughter as he ran after the russet-furred dog that was his only friend. "It be I, Black Heart Billy, come to make ye walk the plank!"
Obligingly, the dog lay down, stretched out on the grass, and folded his paws across his face before whimpering playfully.
"Scared, matey?" growled his young master, in a voice hoarse with fatigue. Breathless, the boy collapsed on the ground next to his faithful companion and tangled his fingers in the silky tufts of copper fur. "It's okay," he sighed, panting, "Black Heart Billy's all worn out."
"Black Heart Billy?" scoffed a harsh voice, suddenly tearing through the restful silence of the summer day. "Dear me, Sherlock - how juvenile!"
"It's William." insisted the younger boy, squinting against the blinding sunlight as he attempted to glare up at his older brother. "Now go away, Mikey!" he added with s smug grin.
"Oh, very witty, brother dear - couldn't struggle all the way to the end of 'Mycroft'?" taunted the older boy, stalking off as haughtily as the uneven ground would allow.
"Not without vomiting!" muttered the dark haired child, tipping back his head so the paper pirate hat he'd made earlier fell over his eyes and pinned down his scruffy curls. A self-indulgent smirk slipped across his face as he savoured his victory. If he was honest, they were few and far between - Williams intellect was not usually a match for his biting older brother's - so why shouldn't he gloat when he could?
On the other hand, as long as he was being honest, he had to admit that he secretly envied the sharp, brilliantly cunning wit of Mycroft Holmes. William was often left speechless by his elder brothers genius - something he claimed was all due to a silly little 'mind palace'. How many times the younger boy had begged to know the secret! Try as he might, he couldn't construct those private walls alone; his thoughts were too scattered, not yet honed to the right level, and, according to Mycroft, too emotional...
"Never mind, eh, Redbeard?" sighed the boy with a mournful huff. He waited for the usual sympathetic whine, Redbeards predictable response to Williams whinging - but it didn't come. "Redbeard?" he repeated, hating the helpless note in his uncertain voice. "Redbeard?!"
Panicky now.
The fur is cold.
He screams for his mother; she is by his side in an instant, plucking him from the suddenly barb-like grass and folding him in her arms.
"Hush, my boy, it will be ok." she soothes in a voice too soft to stitch up the grey gashes in the summer sky. William can't believe her pretty lies, sobs himself into some sort of oblivion too foggy to be sleep.
When the boy wakes up, his eyes fight back a suffocatingly heavy darkness. He drags his drowsy frame from what can only be his bed and pads across the carpet.
The Holmes' house is filled with a melancholy, drowsy silence.
"Mummy? Daddy?" William calls softly, hardly daring to break the hypnotic spell. Once more, he is left with no reply. He tells himself that it's only because it must be night.
He tells himself he hasn't really been abandoned.
Clenching his tiny fists as his stomach squirms uneasily, the little boy slips silently onto the landing. Not quite sure why, he finds himself outside Myroft's door - Mycroft's half open door. With clammy hands, William presses the cool wood fully open and walks towards his brothers bedside. He is silent, using the soundless 'stalk walk' Mycroft taught him when they used to play spies, but the older boy bolts upright.
"Can I offer you assistance, little brother?" Myroft murmurs sarcastically, more baffled than irritated by his brothers untimely visit.
"What happened to Redbeard?" William demands instantly, the shaky words ripped from his mouth before he can decide that he wants the answer.
"He was... He was very ill," stammers his elder brother reluctantly, unusually gentle. Terrifyingly gentle. "He wouldn't have made it through the night."
"He's gone?" comes the barely audible reply, and even in the darkness Mycroft can't face the younger boys look of betrayal and loss.
"I'm sorry, Sherlock." he whispers, and this time, William does not correct him.
Why should he? Black Heart Billy, the happy little pirate, has been stolen away with his loyal companion. Besides, Maybe if he had an unusual, grown up name like his big brother, one dripping with mystery and excitement, he can hide the pain and childish hurt in a cold, logical, brilliant brain.
"Help me build a mind palace." begs the young boy, his eyes glinting with steely determination in the dusty shafts of moonlight that creep through the curtains.
"Are you sure?" Mycroft hedges nervously, his voice tinged with pity and regret. "You'll be alone. No one get get over those walls once they're built: no emotions can reach you. No love, no friendship..."
"But no pain." his little brother murmurs bluntly, his tight voice utterly blank.
"No... But the dragons, the dragons and the East Wind are locked in there with you. No pirate ship can take you away."
But that, thought Sherlock, is exactly what I want.
"Help me." he demands one last time - and he swears it will be the last: never again will he have to depend on anyone; never again will he be let down, feel the loneliness that gnaws at his chest.
Somehow, Mycroft must realise this, and he does help his little brother; he tells him how to access every part of his mind, lock away the hurt and lay logic and reason between every brick of hidden, insurmountable walls. He slowly hones the young boys precocious brain into that of a genuine genius, gives him the terrible secrets he has always craved.
He watches his little brothers weary blue eyes freeze as a web of ice cracks across their hardened surface, disturbingly blank for a seven year old boy, and later... Later, in the daylight, he pretends not to notice the torn pirate hat scattered across the garden.
He pretends it isn't his fault that William has been replaced with Sherlock