It was a beautiful sunny day, the breeze was perfect and the birds were singing. It was the definition of a perfect spring day. The streets were lined with laughing pedestrians, on their way to shops or to cafes to take brunch with their friends.
On one street, there was no sound of laughter, no merriment or abrupt and cheery 'hello!' called to a suddenly familiar face.
This street was filled with the sound of marching feet, small and precise. Heavy breath and grunting as drills were snapped out over a loudspeaker with a sharp whip-like voice.
On that street, The Fighters were being trained.
It was something of a privilege to be called on to be trained as one of The Fighters, it showed that you had strength beyond that of a normal human, that you had above average cunning, that you were more than what others could be.
On this day, it was young children being trained, and though it made some a few strangers flinch at the young minds being drilled so strictly, to the practiced eye you could see the Sargent keeping a cool and collected eye for the ones that needed a break or water. Her dark hair was twisted into a firm bun, but under the military gaze was a look of fondness for her pupils.
Nothing would happen to these young souls.
Out of nowhere a streak of blue came rushing onto the street, pulling parallel to where the young boys and girls were being trained and coming to a sudden halt. Once the screech of rubber and smoke died down, a car door opened and a tall and imposing looking brunette stepped out.
Her grin spoke of mischief and her brown curls bobbed freely in the wind. She was nothing like the young Fighters had ever seen. Grin still in place she drifted over to where their instructor stood, scowling at her. The dark look did nothing to stop her from draping her arm over slim shoulders and pressing their heads together.
Looking out over the young and impressionable Fighters, she smirked, knowing that the Sargent could see it, "So," she purred, "These are the new bloods?"
There was a look of fondness under the dark glower that the children could easily spot, though to anyone else it looked as though the Sargent was ready to kill the newcomer. "I would like you to refrain from calling my children that, and get your arm off me, Riven."
The tall woman didn't move but the Sargent easily ducked under her arm, shooting another glare before barking an order into her megaphone, telling the young fighters the next round of drills to preform before grabbing Riven's arm to drag her off.
There was a short bout of shouting, the strict looking Sargent chastising the taller woman, who just slumped against her car to smile winningly at the screaming woman.
After several minutes, the woman seemed to crumple, and to the children's amazement, hugged the tall woman fiercely.
Their Sargent wasn't one to ever show emotion, yet here she was nearly pouring it out in the middle of the street.
No one ever pointed it out to her, and she returned after several hushed words and the stranger got into her car and left, but not before throwing a grin over her shoulder at the astonished young Fighters.
Weeks later the incident had repeated itself many times over, and the children got used to the tall woman appearing out of nowhere. She became something of a second instructor to them, always appearing wherever they happened to be training that day.
Then something happened.
A younger Fighter, so young that it was amazing he'd been recruited stepped on an older and bulkier Fighter in the middle of the drill.
The older boy was on the younger lad in moments, and in a flurry of movement the tall curly haired instructor was on them in moments. She had the dark haired boy pinned down and held her other arm out to the elder, crouched down and looking lethal.
"Go ahead," she hissed and the older boy looked smug before snapping out his leg with a deadly force, she easily countered it and flipped him down to the ground, her blue eyes narrowing at him, "You are supposed to protect those smaller than you." She ground out, one hand easily wrapped around his neck, not hard enough to hurt, but to restrain, "You are a Fighter and you will not abuse the power given to you."
Letting him go and yanking him to the ground, she pointed him towards the Sargent to receive his punishment.
Riven turned her bright blue eyes to the small child she had pinned, glancing him over to ensure no damage came to him before she could intervene. Thankfully there was only a small bruise blossoming over one high cheekbone.
"What's your name, lad?" she asked gently as she helped him sit up, still crouching down to be on eye level with him. The sounds of the drills starting back up washed over them, yet she kept him where he was.
"Sherlock," he said in a soft voice, feeling ashamed to be thought of as weak.
Her fingers caught the edge of his chin, forcing him to look up at her, and his own pale eyes were locked onto hers. "Just because someone is bigger than you does not mean they are stronger than you."
His pout slowly cleared as she kept talking, "Keep in mind that to be in this training program so young must mean you are something of a prodigy, be proud of that clever mind you have."
Smiling as she pinched his chin lightly, she let him back up and he raced over to the other students to continue the lesson of the day.
For years this continued, though none of them knew why their Sargent let the other woman help with training. They counted themselves lucky to have the curly haired woman in their presence though, she pushed them harder and faster than anyone had ever done before, honing their skills and their minds.
Sherlock was fourteen when he overheard a conversation that was obviously supposed to be private. It was a rare occasion that Riven actually accompanied them back to the barracks, but she had been particularly proud of their training that day. They had done a 'cat and mouse' as she called it, where she cleverly hid in the woods and they had to use all their skills to find her. They had actually found her within the hour and she'd been excited about that fact.
"Annabell, really, you worry too much," Hearing the familiar American accent of his second trainer, the dark haired boy pressed himself up against the building wall, not wanting to eavesdrop, but not wanting to interrupt an obviously private moment.
"Riven, you were discharged for a reason; you can't go on like this, pretending that you're okay." The Sargent's voice was angry, though there was a thread of worry underneath it.
There was a small chuckle and then, "Darling, cancer takes years to kill its victim."
The boy's mouth dropped open and tears filled his eyes when the words sunk in, Riven was dying. He raced from the spot he was standing, running back to his cabin where he could hide from the world and pretend that he hadn't heard what he had thought he had just heard.
The next time he saw her, he really looked at her, noticing things he hadn't seen before. There were dark circles under her eyes and her reaction time had obviously slowed. Her body, while always had been in whipcord shape, was actually losing weight.
She was dying.
The thing that Sherlock didn't understand was why it was taking so long, she might have been right about it taking years, but it had already been such a long time already, how much longer would they actually have her for?
The young man would wish he had never thought that, for just two months after pondering that question, the blue car failed to appear.
A letter found its way to the Sargent's hands, and it was obvious to her students that she was torn in two. To the untrained eye she was unaffected, cool and collected, but her young pupils didn't see the Sargent that day, they saw Annabell.
It was that summer that they graduated, Sherlock had just turned fifteen and his peers were already eighteen. It was a time that was supposed to be a celebration, but the dark haired boy could tell that he was not the only one who noticed there was someone missing; someone that should have been there.
His Sargent was obviously not doing well, she had lost too much weight and her eyes looked haunted. It was then that he knew that Riven was far more than just a comrade to her.
Sherlock returned home, his family proud of him for completing his training. He had always been smart, but he had come back something of a genius, they told him. They clapped their hands and then declared that he would follow his brother into a government position, that he wasn't to really be a Fighter; just that even they could not ignore when the government decrees that someone needs to go into the training program.
While he knew that his family would do their best to keep him out of the Force, it was still something of a blow to think that they would actually string him into such a boring job as his brother had.
He had gotten his own letter on a particularly sunny day, only two months after graduation. Annabell had passed away.
He could recall the gaunt look she'd had the last time he'd seen her and mentally swore to himself that he would never put himself in someone else's hands the way she'd put herself into Riven's. While the tall woman had been wonderful and amazing, she had ultimately broken the Sargent's heart.
Sherlock buried all emotion, forcing them away from him and throwing himself into the study of people, the study of everything. He honed his mind into a sharp tool to be focused, deleting information deemed unusable or irrelevant.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not delete Riven or Annabell from his mind, and part of him knew he couldn't bear to forget them.
On his eighteenth birthday, Sherlock moved from the family manor, leaving before he could get forced into a job that he had no care for.
Riven's words from when he was a child echoed in his head, "You are supposed to protect those smaller than you."
If his family wouldn't let him go about it the normal way, then he would find a way to do it. He always had been interested in crimes.
AN: So, first story I'm posting, though by far not the first story I've ever written, nor the first Sherlock story I've written before. Sherlock is a little OOC in this, but that's because he's a child for it for one, and this is an AU for another. He'll be more like himself soon. I'm toying with the idea of making the next chapter John-centric, but I'm not too overly sure. Riven is actually the closest I'll ever come to a Mary-Sue… she is loosely based off me in the sense that this idea came from a dream I had where my part was her part. The parallel to the dream stops right after she scolded the child for being a bully. That and her character jumped in my head a little and set up shop, showing me that she was her own person and not me, thank you very much. XD
And before I get a ton of messages that she didn't show the proper signs of cancer or that she took far too long to pass, or what have you, there's a REASON she looked so healthy and was alive so long. It will never be outright said in the story, but I will explain it in the next chapter, I want to see if anyone can tell me why she didn't show any outward signs. The hint is in this chapter.