Author's Note
Thank you for the favourites and the reviews, they are much appreciated. It really makes me happy!
The Last Rider: Thank you for the review, firstly, and the compliment of my writing is much appreciated. I know it may seem a little bit far-fetched for now, but it will make more sense as the story goes on. Since she is Moriarty's daughter, she basically inherits the control of the criminal underworld in his death, and I now realise I probably did not word it well enough in the prologue. I shall work on explaining it more.
DISCLAIMER - I do not own anything apart from Scarlett Moriarty. All BBC Sherlock characters belong to the two trolls Moffat and Gattiss, and the actual characters belong to the legendary Arthur Conan Doyle.
Chapter 1
One year before
Her hands shoved casually into the pockets of her navy blue Hollister – the man who had sold her this had the sweetest looking smile on his face, but she could still notice the lines of stress under his eyes, this was probably from his father's death – hoodie, she strolled down the soaked cobbles of the street. It was raining pretty hard, and if there was one thing that Scarlett Moriarty hated, it was rain.
Pulling her hands from her pockets, she adjusted the hood so it covered more of her midnight waves, blinking quickly to stop the constant rain from obscuring her vision. If she was going to get back...hm, home – and that was used in the loosest term possible – she needed to see where she was going.
"Childish," Scarlett commented to herself as she passed some graffiti – Steeve wuz ere was what it read – rolling her eyes, "If you've got the IQ of a flea, don't even bother attempting to write, let alone doing graffiti, where the public can see it."
There was a little bit of irony in that statement. Having been to jury a couple of months before for getting caught scrawling, "Good criminals don't get caught!" across a wall - well, that was one of the reasons she went there - Scarlett knew that she was being a little bit of a hypocrite, commenting on graffiti. But she didn't care at all, for many, many reasons.
She really didn't feel like thinking about what happened back in jury...
Shaking all of those thoughts from her mind, she continued her journey, quickening the pace a little before coming to a steady pause in the middle of the road.
There it was. St Peter's Orphanage, the only place which she truly knew. She had lived there throughout most of her life. It was a large, imposing building which had been painted over so many times that it had turned a mixture of dull grey and sickly green. It was a bit of an eyesore to any passers-by.
"Home sweet home." Scarlett muttered sarcastically to herself, striding forwards and into the building.
The noise that greeted her as she entered was phenomenal, a mixture of excited shrieks from the younger members of the orphanage – the less irritating ones, in Scarlett's opinion – and shouts of arguments from the teens and preteens.
"Hey, look, Freak's back," a particularly nasty blonde remarked upon Scarlett's return, "Are you goin' back to Juvie, Freak? Fuckin' hope so."
"Your roots are showing again, Arabella. My, your real hair is the ugliest shade of mousy brown. Now go snog Chris and get out of my face, you pathetic little shit." Scarlett retorted casually, sweeping off Arabella's abuse. She was used to it, anyway. And besides, what could a girl with an IQ of around 30 say to make Scarlett feel pain?
Casually shaking the rain from her hair, the hood flopped off of her head, dripping rainwater onto the floor below her.
Her gaze flickering to the left, Scarlett noticed her social worker, Elaine Parker – she had been dumped today, it was obvious, look at the state of her lipstick – trotting towards her on high-heels which were practically falling off of her feet. Elaine was a short woman in her mid-forties, who seemed to be denying the fact that she was aging and instead applying a lot of makeup and wearing skirts which were a little too short for her. She wasn't the brightest of people, which aggravated Scarlett to no end.
Interrupting her before she could start her sentence, Scarlett commented, "Not now Elaine." before rushing up the stairs, away from her mildly stunned social worker.
Pushing and shoving her way through the crowd of overexcited children and teens, Scarlett darted through the corridor as quickly as a bullet from a gun, before opening a door and careering headfirst into her own room.
"Finally." she sighed in relief, locking her door.
Flinging the soggy hoodie off of her slender form, Scarlett flopped onto her bed, burying her face in the light blue pillow. She was soaked, tired – it was 10:30, she wasn't entirely sure why some of the younger kids were still up – and a little aggravated from her encounter with Arabella, but at least she was relaxed. Her room was a sort of safe haven for her.
Flipping herself over, she stared up at the ceiling, yawning slightly. It was a little tiring to wander pointlessly around the city for hours, she had to admit.
Absent-mindedly, she reached towards the nearest book she could find – which happened to be Salem's Lot by Stephen King – and began to flip through it.
It was a couple of seconds later that she crooned, "Bo-ring." and threw the book onto the badly carpeted floor, where it joined piles of other unwanted books. She never could concentrate on something that bored her.
It was only a couple of minutes before she found herself drifting off to sleep.