Ch 1.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open to find her vicious black curls all strewn across her face wildly, as if they had fought the Hundred Years' War on her face while she had been asleep. Sunlight hit her pupils with the force of a supernova explosion. Someone had dared to venture into her bedroom and pulled open the curtains. And then she saw that the right side of the bed had been slept in. And then she remembered that she was only in her underwear.

"Oh, bugger!" She swore under her breath, and looked around for a used condom. There was one. She sighed in relief, and slumped back on the bed. The person was probably in the kitchen, probably making breakfast for her, and thinking of the best way in which he could take advantage of the furniture, and the places in the flat, since he would find that information useful once he moved in.

No, she thought, I need to curb that.

Sighing in exasperation, she pulled on a tank top and tied her hair up in a messy bun, not bothering to put some pants. Just for the precaution, she fished into her cupboard until she found some contraceptive pills. Grabbing a water bottle lying helplessly near her bed, she popped the pill into her mouth and felt loads better. And then, she turned around to face the deadly clock stalwartly announcing its presence.

7:17 A.M.

Oh shit.

She hurried as fast as she could to the bathroom, and without letting Timothy know about it, or letting him hear the soft tread of her dainty feet. She shoved a toothpaste-loaded toothbrush into her mouth, and turned the shower on, simultaneously brushing her teeth furiously. She gasped at the cold water and at the sudden rise of goosebumps on her flesh, and at that exact moment, Timothy decided to trouble her with his annoying voice.

"Hey," said he, in a voice that had sounded very sexy last night. Sherlock managed a grunt at that as she kept brushing her teeth as fast as she could.

"You're up."

Sherlock did not take a moment to inspect her appalled face in the mirror owing to Tim's stupidity, or the love bite he had made on her neck. She's have to wear a scarf of some sort; she couldn't let the children see her like that, and have them ask her if she had been bitten by a big ugly wasp. If there was one thing she knew about children, it was that they liked knowing just the things she did not want them to.

"Clever of you to notice that," she managed back a volley for an answer, hoping to God that he would not bring up last night.

"Listen... last night..." he began tentatively, and Sherlock groaned to herself, "I was wondering if - "

She spit into the washbasin, and opened the door at once, making the coffee mug fall from Tim's fingers and crash at his feet. Tim almost did not feel the searing hotness of the coffee as it spilt on his toes because the room had become hotter than that as Sherlock extended her arm, and pulled him right in, "I've got fifteen minutes," she growled, taking his large hands and covering her crotch with his palms, her voice husky upon seeing the immediate reaction between Tim's legs, "Make best use of them, and don't you dare bite me this time!"

"Sure, m'lady," he breathed out shakily, feeling almost intimidated at her arousing directness as he leaned in to close all distance between them.

As soon as fifteen minutes were over on the alarm clock, Sherlock pushed Tim away while he was in the middle of a blindingly intense orgasm.

"Get out!" She growled, pushing him out, "I need to take a proper shower."

And before he could react, he was out of the bathroom with a very inappropriate erection and with a skull staring down at it eerily. He always wondered how Sherlock had the ability to make his knees buckle like that, and make the most obscene of noises and then make him leave just as if she had been performing a formality before. After five minutes, Sherlock stormed out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body.

"Listen," Tim started hopefully, "About last night - "

"Last night was a one-night thing," Sherlock snapped, chewing on her toast that Tim had made her very lovingly for the morning, "So I expect to never even see your face again, is that clear?"

Tim cringed, "Sherlock..." he croaked.

"Get out!"

Tim's face fell, but then he regained it almost immediately, "You know what? Whatever. Your loss."

And with that, he stormed out, clearly hurt by the rejection. Sherlock simply tossed her head back, getting into her clothes for the day as she sneered to herself, "Yeah right."

It took her blazingly fast five minutes to get ready, pick out the files needed for the day and fish around for the keys for her scooter. It was late, she was late, so goddamned late, and all the kids were probably playing hell on the classroom benches right then, screaming on top of their voices like they always did.

Sherlock never loved kids when she was a kid herself. Kids were horrible to her, telling her that she was not like "other girls", that she was creepy and that she observed things that she ought not to. Sherlock always went back to her mummy, asking what an "other girl" was like, and her mum would tell her that other girls were stupid and boring. That's where Sherlock had picked up the word that she would later have an eternal love-affair with: boring. It had only been when she was fifteen that she had become pregnant that she discovered that she could love children. At that time, she despised herself for not using protection, her brother Mycroft and her parents insisted on an abortion that no one would come to know about. But he had come to know, John, the boy who had slept with her. He begged her to keep the child, and when she discovered the feeling of life inside her for the first time, or when John sneaked her out of the house to get an ultrasound, and when she had heard the first heartbeats of her baby boy, she had fallen completely in love with it.

She shook those thoughts away, feeling treacherous tears coming up in the corner of her eyes, and blurring her vision when she was supposed to drive carefully through the hell-bound traffic. Mind was a most amazing creation, a perfection with a devil lurking inside, ready to corrupt it, and more so in a child. It had been her love and her interest in the absurd and complex mind of the child which led her to take up child psychology. It was a beautiful subject, ever changing, ever colourful like a kaleidoscope, wherein if you would look into it, you would see a different pattern every time. Every child was different, every child was unique and frankly special, because a kid, as she remarked often, was not conditioned by the society to be an idiot at the tender ages between four and eleven. And then, adolescence would come in out of nowhere, and all hell would break loose on the child's wonderful uniqueness.

Although her line was interesting, it gave you money only when you went for counselling. And Sherlock hated the idea of counselling with the parents present in the same room. Not that the child would feel very comfortable sitting in a room with a woman in high clicking heels, and in a glossy blouse and a pencil skirt, with her legs crossed like that of a dominatrix, but Sherlock could reach out to them, in a way no one could. But the parents... they just didn't help. They spoke on and on for their kids as if they were the ones who had come in for counselling, not the kid. Because, apparently, they did not feel comfortable leaving their child alone with an intimidating, haughty woman who did nothing to ease their ridiculous doubts.

Therefore, Sherlock settled for teaching, which was not a boring task at all, even if it didn't guarantee her financial security, she loved children because they were amazing and they were the most intelligent of beings. She found it amusing how a five-year old child could manipulate her parents into giving her the best of presents, or how she recognised the pressure points and weaknesses of her parents, and tried to exploit them very successfully. She loved seeing the power dynamics between the seven-year olds, and how a child viewed the world in only the sharpest shades of black and white. She loved it when she saw how a child was always unwilling to negotiate, and whenever a kid did so, it would always keep its gains and objectives clear in its mind. It was almost like a mini-senate in her classroom.

Moreover, she loved the creative writing classes, and going through the vivid imaginations of each of her students poured into paper. If given the chance, every kid could be absolutely amazing, and strong enough to go through their adolescence without much changes to their integral personalities.

One of those kids was William. Will was a kind child, sweet by disposition, and had very strong moral principles even as he was only five-and-a-half. He usually defended his friends with the usual bullies in the classroom, and was always very quick to start a fight. He always came up to her with the usual squeak, "Ms. Holmes! Ms. Holmes," followed by the usual requests or pleas for help. One day, Sherlock saw him fighting with another kid, and she had to separate them and take them to the Head Teacher, whereupon she discovered that they had been fighting over whose family was better.

Will did not have a mother, as he disclosed to her after the fight. Sherlock explained to him, with a slight guilty feeling in her heart, that some families did not have mothers. She had to make up a version of her own family, where the problem was almost the same. Will had gotten enthusiastic, and had started to ask her more and more, but she had simply asked him to return to his work lest she postpone all his class work as burdensome homework. A child never liked negotiating, and hence Will had sped off without another word.

But today was just another version of hell.

"Bobby, that's you in detention for the week," Sherlock's voice boomed out of nowhere as she stormed into the classroom, "Will, that's you in detention for the week, also for you Seb, and also, that's your parents coming to school tomorrow!"

After the class settled down, to Sherlock's utter relief, she started with a viva on pronouns. She loved seeing those children try and think that they could deceive her by cheating from their neighbours notebooks, and she loved making them think so, just so she could pounce upon them at the opportune moment. Although, most children knew that Ms. Holmes always seemed to know, and it was only the rogue ones which attempted any such stunts, and that too for the entertainment of the classroom.

And that was precisely why Sherlock loved kids. They were never boring. They were all little bags of stardust and surprises. And Sherlock simply loved being surprised.

It was a free period when Will came up to her again. Sherlock had been making two children spot the differences between two images when the little boy came up to him and declared that his left eye was hurting.

Sherlock took him to one side, "Did you rub it too much?

"Only afta it started paining," He admitted, and Sherlock corrected him, "not 'paining', it's hurting. It's the more proper word."

"Hur'ing," he corrected himself weakly, pouting slightly, and looking sadly at his laces. They were always done properly. In fact, Will was the only child who could tie his own laces.

"How's your eyesight? Can you read this?" she scribbled the letter 'g' on the notebook, and showed it up to him.

"Yup," said he in a small weak voice, but not failing to pop the 'p' like always. Sherlock smiled at how he reminded her of herself, "It's 'g'."

"Have you gone to a doctor?" she asked, blowing warm breath into her handkerchief, and dabbing at his left eye tenderly.

"Yes, she gave ma eye medicine an' candy," he spoke seriously, "And then, whe' I woke up this mo'nin', its was hur'ing."

"It was hurting," Sherlock corrected him again, and he swallowed thickly, "Ms. Holmes, Ms. Holmes, can you treat me?"

Sherlock realised after some time that the ache was purely psychological, "What do I say that you are, Will?"

"A very good boy," he chanted solemnly, and Sherlock smiled, "Yes. What do good boys do?"

"They work hard."

"So I think you should work hard on your class work, because if you do that, after sometime you'll forget all about it."

"I will?" he asked, his wide blue eyes curious and hopeful. Sherlock nodded, "Yes you will. Do I ever lie to you?"

"No," said he at once, not believing that Ms. Holmes could lie, "but it's free period, Ms. Holmes. I don't have class work now and now it's goin' ter hurt me."

There it is, Sherlock thought, proof that his pain was psychological, because he had come up to her during the free period, "You can delete it from your mind, you know?"

"Was delete?" he asked her with his wide inquisitive eyes.

"Deleting is something you do when... when you don't want it to affect you," said she, her mind instantly travelling to her long-dead child, and her long lost boyfriend, John. She often wondered what happened to him. He was probably married now, happy with a dozen of kids. Well that was okay anyway. He was never her real boyfriend, they had just been dating for seven months, and they had only one night together. And after that, it had all come crumbling down, just because Sherlock had been too impatient to use a condom, in spite of what John had insisted on.

"Can I do tha'?" he asked her, "Dele' it?!"

Sherlock sighed to herself, "Tell you what Will, I'll pair you up with Cassie, and you can find differences between two pictures, okay?"

At once, Will stood up, the pain in his eye forgotten, "Yes ma'am."

Sherlock had been going through the creative writing module, and she put Will's paper face down on the desk. The kid had personal problems, and she admired the boy for being so brave about it. This was another characteristic of kids that Sherlock loved. They could stand and bear almost anything, they were braver than the bravest of adults, never even thought about ending their lives like cowards tried to. The assignment explained why Will was so good at starting fights. Will wrote about how his father had nightmares, about how he cried in his sleep, and Will pretended that he was fast asleep, but Sherlock had seen the evidence right under his eyes every day. She decided to have a talk with this Mr. Watson, and alert him on how his mental health was affecting his child.

She picked up the phone, and her call was answered by an old woman. That might be a nanny or something, because Will's dad was a single parent, "Hello, Watson's residence."

"Hello," Sherlock began, "may I speak to Mr. Watson? I'm William's teacher from St. Pauls'."

"I'm sorry," the old woman's voice became more tremulous, "He's not here at the moment. What happened? Is William in trouble - ?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no," Sherlock shook her head. Why did parents always assume that kids were the guilty parties, "Nothing of that sort. I'd just like to meet him and talk about Will, don't scold him, it's not his fault. Just ask him to give me a call on this number, and I'll get back to him, alright?"

The old lady barely managed a sob before Sherlock decided to cut the phone. She sighed, plopping her forehead between her fingers, and set down to read more of the interesting modules that the children had written up.

That night, Sherlock got herself a new man to sleep with. She was fiercely proud of herself for using protection every time since that one disastrous event when she had conceived John's baby, and her sexual encounters were extremely brazen since a recent few weeks. Suddenly, she freed her hand and herself from the man's grip, slapping away the palm which cupped her breast to reach out for her mobile phone.

"You have one new message," her phone replied. It must have rung back when this new person had been fucking her all over and over again. He stirred beside her, but otherwise he still remained asleep.

"Erm, hello, Will's teacher," came a mellow tenor as Sherlock played her voicemail, "I'm sorry if Will's done anything. I know he fights a lot, but anyway I should meet you, if you think that's erm... if it's that serious. So... erm," Sherlock thought he heard another foreign breath behind Mr. Watson, "Tell me when it's good."

"If you'd like to play it - "

Sherlock shut her phone with a click. They definitely needed to talk about Will. She glanced up at the time. It was almost two in the morning. Nevertheless, she typed a message back to Mr. Watson, asking if Friday, 5 o'clock was appropriate for him. She thought that she should do it, lest she forgot it during her morning rush and kicking this new person out of her flat too. Mrs. Hudson was getting annoyed with so many different men coming to sleep over at Sherlock's, but she stayed quiet, owing to her masterful, nonchalant coolness.

She sighed and curled into his warm body. At any rate, Will's dad wasn't going to reply now. She tried not to think about the young dear child who lay in his bed, frightened and confused.