A Good Old-Fashioned Fairytale

Because every modern soul needs a good old-fashioned story.

old-fashioned: /ˌəʊld ˈfæʃ(ə)nd/

-in or according to styles or types no longer current

So what happens when the modern times patterns itself to the stories of old?

Chapter 1:

Unfortunately Perfect

There is no such thing as a terribly unfortunate life that is perfectly enviable.

But if there ever is a life that comes close, it'd be Sherlock Holmes's.

An oddly disturbing piece of information if there ever was one, one that most people who knew or knows the man would shake their heads at immediately, but somehow a categorized run-down, a summative list, if you will, always makes it somewhat undeniable.

Unfortunate Instance Point 1.

Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes lost their parents in their teenaged years. It had been a plane crash, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes's private jet bound for Geneva plummeting barely twenty minutes after take off. A so-called freak accident, blamed on sudden engine failure. Neither Holmes children consider it as such. Mycroft knew of his parents' power and the never-ending threats, Sherlock had snuck into the wrecked cockpit and raised an eyebrow at a gauge. Neither spoke of it, but both were pretty certain that the other knew.

The elder sibling went to school that day, all-too-aware of the responsibility he was bestowed with. He acknowledged, accepted, that he needed to be the parent now, and he wasn't going to be able to do that by skipping class. He had to be strong for the both of them, and when he came home that day, a poker-faced Sherlock greets him with an indifferent voice. "I didn't go to school today. I won't from now on, Mother's not here anymore to force me." Both still remember how he looked his younger brother in the eye, his face just as neutral but his voice slightly firmer. "I'll be Mother."

Not much can be said about the younger Holmes. He found school to be excessively bothersome, because seriously, who wants to be surrounded by bumbling idiots?, and he wasn't even talking about the students, he found them easy enough to ignore. Their parents had always managed to get him to go despite his incessant and daily expressions of distaste, their father using alternating strategies of reward and punishment, their mother somehow always managing to render his arguments useless. He did, after all, get his mental prowess from Mrs. Holmes. And so he didn't attend class that day, no one was there to force him to, but if he'd only admit it to himself he'd know that it's because he didn't want anyone to see him cry. Mycroft actually did get him to go to school the next day onwards. They didn't worry much about the lesson he missed. Sherlock always scoffed about it: Who needs to learn about the solar system?

So why in the world would anyone envy him?

Of course, it's never an enviable thing to lose one's parents. The thing is, under normal circumstances, it would have stopped there. Two siblings, orphaned and left to continue life and grow up at a much quicker rate. Nothing else was supposed to happen… but of course something did.

About a year and a half after the tragic accident, the brothers are coping rather well. All the butlers and servants and poolboys and drivers and gardeners and whatever employees one might hire in an estate have decided to stay, caring for the brothers if only to repay the surprising kindness of the late Sir and Madame. Still unbelievably filthy rich, their parents had left them with bank accounts in every financially secure country in the world.

Enviable, yes, but hardly impressive. I mean, anyone can spend money.

Unfortunate Instance Point 2.

With great power comes great responsibility indeed, and having an inheritance that can shock the sanity out of 90% of the world's population isn't exactly a walk in the park.

Arguably the most well-known business couple of their time, the tycoon duo had built an empire from the ground up, multi-billion dollar companies that span four continents and involve a ridiculously large variety of categories. In complete confidence in their sons' eventual abilities, the couple had left everything, everything, in the hands of the then-19 year-old Mycroft Holmes, also assigned legal guardian of Sherlock Holmes. Time-bound, of course, giving the younger one a 49.1% hold over everything the minute he turns eighteen.

With 35 employees in the estate's West Wing alone, the magnitude of the sudden responsibility thrust into the brothers' hands, especially Mycroft's, reached miles past overwhelming. Contracts, legal bindings, the in's and out's of their parents' business empire. The courage to step in front of different people thrice your age and ten times your experience and try to exude authority. Dealing with liars and frauds, opportunists who in every minute of every day smell the chance to pounce. The stock market, investment pulling, expansion plans, currency fluctuations. Hiring, firing, budget cuts by the billions, revenue showings in increments of 6 million per 5 percent, salary and wage issues of approximately twenty thousand employees per building. Seemingly menial things like logo changes. What, where, when, why, how. Yes and no weren't enough anymore. It turned into probably, in n years, yes but we'll have to alter the conditions, no but the construction can be moved three degrees to the south, and so on and so forth.

Who in the world wants that? Physics midterms are hard enough; most people can barely pass high school.

So why in the world would anyone envy him?

Well, they coped. The situation may have been too much for most people, but the Holmes brothers were not most people. It would be a complete and utter lie to say that it was easy, as able as they are they're still human, but it would also be a preposterousness to suggest that there was any doubt in their adolescent minds. Proud boys, those siblings, and for good reason. There were sure they can because they can, and any annoying, seemingly good-natured adults who so kindly offered to take over for the poor little boys, they're just children!, can just sod off.

Mycroft, with a discipline that most students can only hope to have and an innate authority that only appears in more businessmen's dreams, had bravely put on the metaphorically oversized shoes of his parents and slowly but surely managed to fill them out inch-by-inch, until he was marching in them as comfortably as he would in his own skin. Sherlock, on the other hand, had no patience for dealing with pathetic little old men trying to climb the proverbial ladder by stepping on each other's faces. Initially completely disinterested in gatherings among men with, in his words, the beards and brains of goats, he started attending board of trustee meetings in the headquarters at Mycroft's insistence ("These are your companies as much as they are mine, Sherlock."), and pretty soon he's doing his homework on the plane, regularly accompanying his brother as his right-hand man. Armed with five senses that never miss and a mind that never fails, the barely teenaged Sherlock had gotten used to barely-contained eyebrow-raising whenever he strolls into conference rooms behind his far more credible-looking brother. He doesn't mind, though, because usually five minutes into the meetings he'd have had deduced the living daylights out of each and every one of them, and a tenacity like no other gives him no hesitation at all to showcase his findings. It had always left everyone around the executive table wide-eyed and gaping, except for Mycroft who'd merely roll his eyes before continuing with the agenda. The brothers would then share approximately seven looks per hour, both knowing whenever their leg is being pulled, with Sherlock immediately deducing the truth and the reason. And the person's birthday, but that's hardly relevant.

They were quite the team, still are, but if you tell them that, they will treat it as an insult, and it had only been a matter of time before the business world started to recognize the emergence of a new Holmes duo. Problems continue to pour, as is with everything in this world, but by the time Sherlock turned eighteen, the brothers were already solving them in their sleep. Difficult situations happen every single minute of the day, but by this time, it was already second nature.

Young, rich, powerful… as a result, famous.

Unfortunate Instance Point 3.

This would be the one that annoys Sherlock the most. There are lots of pathetic problems that comes with fame, and of all the complications in his life it had been the popularity package that drove him to a certain phase that he isn't particularly proud of. In fact, in his heart of hearts, both of which people all agree he might not have, he knows he's downright ashamed to have been weak enough to succumb to the clutches of cocaine.

It was a long time ago, he'd been clean for years now, but fame had pushed him to a level or irritation that was almost inhuman. He's sure it was hard on his brother too, but Mycroft is such a people-pleaser that he never lets his distaste for the unwanted attention show. Sherlock is a different story however, and he had no problem expressing every single thought that ran through his frustrated mind. He soon realized, again via Mycroft, that it caused a lot more problems for the companies that it solves, and forcing himself to comply with people's expectations without letting them know exactly what he thought of them took its toll.

It's not that he couldn't achieve what people expected of him. On the contrary, he believed they were easy enough. No, his problem was that he just didn't give a tiny rat's arse about the superficial definitions people attach to his name, and he found it tedious beyond belief to try and please them. Why would he care how he appeared to people?

So why in the world would anyone envy him?

Simply put, if he just tried the slightest bit, the world would probably be fawning all over him.

He doesn't care about his facial features. He keeps himself presentable but nothing is ever done to improve his "face value". Stupid, pointless, moronic. And yet, with no effort at all, he's still widely considered to be good-looking. He treats his body no differently: bathing for the sake of hygiene, not vanity, eating for the sake of nourishment and pleasure, not weight management, engaging in the occasional non-team sport for leisure, not body sculpting. Still, his state of fitness is enough to make the average passerby jealous.

It wouldn't even be of any use to him to try and defend his mental capabilities: it justifies itself. Unbeatable perception and a completely reliable memory, the only plausible reason for him not to know anything is if he chooses not to. Consider his ridiculous penchant for deduction and it's too ridiculous to imagine.

Save for that cocaine phase, it would be safe to say that Sherlock Holmes is a good man. No true criminal record, quite a few juvenile cases though, stealing evidence to solve mysteries faster than the police even as a child is not exactly abiding by the rules, no true scandals, well his parents did die famously and his antics during meetings did get widely known, but it's not like he's ever killed anyone by deducing where they went to dinner last night, no nothing. Never broken a heart, not intentionally at least, and if Mycroft is being really honest, he'd say that Sherlock is a good brother. Mind-numbingly infuriating, but a good brother nevertheless.

There are a lot of things that the world might disagree upon, against him or against each other, but simply put, he's not really inclined to care. He's a virgin, and it's not for a lack of offers. Somehow, he sees the idea of sex for sex way too… pointless, and not that he's ever dreamed of marriage but if he were to engage in those activities for pleasure and/or procreation, he imagines he'd rather do those with a wife, legally bound. He wouldn't like sharing, especially with things like that, and his ego dictates that should a woman ever deserve him, she must be a woman of so high a quality that it would only be him, self-proclaimed "only non-idiot in the world", who'd be able to deserve her in return. We all know what that means, and not everyone would agree. Actually, very few would agree, which is probably why the whole romance-marriage issue is not something he's ever paid attention to. There's also the matter of morality and belief. Now Sherlock has never been a religious person. There's just a little too much, alright, way too much, pretention between the churchgoers he used to come across. The very same churchgoers claim to need God and yet parade themselves around like they're God's gift to men and force their opinions at the expense of others as if they're God Himself. One thing though that people find hard to believe is his stance on the existence of God. He does, in fact, believe in a Creator and an afterlife, both having been solidified in his mind by his own philosophy (…whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.). He'd even go as far as to claim to be a Christian, if it weren't for those who'd use the name to spread oppression. Hypocrites, he'd always think whenever he sees someone claim that homosexuals don't deserve salvation when he can see by the person's cufflinks that he'd already cheated on his wife twice that day. Hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites.

The social aspect would probably be considered his absolute worst area, and it is, if it wasn't for one small thing: He. Just. Doesn't. Care. He doesn't feel the need to make friends, and he would never suppress the need to say what he wants to say, not caring if it offends people or makes them uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong with being right, so why in the world would he hide it? A lot has grown to dislike him for his almost complete lack of social etiquette, but it has always been no big deal for him. He genuinely feels that socializing is just plain useless, not to mention boring, and so he's actually glad that people find it hard to get along with him. Enviable, because the rest of us mortals would take it hard if people didn't want to be acquainted with us. Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, is happy with that. And in the big picture, isn't happiness what we tend to envy the most?

Happiness, at least in this, is still a story waiting to happen. And so in the spirit of things:

Once upon a time...