(AN: Hey everyone, thanks so much for reading the first chapter and I am glad that so many of you liked it! This chapter was supposed to be uploaded on Sunday but due to some technical difficulties I have rewritten most of the chapter and am uploading it today, hopefully, better than ever. Please feel free to offer any constructive criticisms on how to flesh out Violet or how to make it more canonical. Thanks for the support and patience, I hope you all enjoy this chapter)
"Come on Violet, Mum wants us to come in." Greg called to his four year old sister. He was 12 and had taken over the task of watching over her from his older brother and sister who didn't have a knack for it all. He didn't really mind, she wasn't that bad. She was quiet, people who don't talk usually are, and she was very smart, she already knew how to read, and they both liked drawing and music. The only problem was when Violet had one of her fits. It seemed like anything would set her off, from too much noise, certain smells, too much movement, and the like. But what was more likely to cause her to have a fit was not being understood. Usually this wasn't a problem for him. Violet had a binder full of words. She would point at the words to tell people what she wanted, and if she didn't have her binder she would find any book she could get her little hands on. Most of the time Greg could tell what was bothering her just from her body language. Violet tottered up to him and grabbed his fingers then walked into the living room where their mother was preparing to leave to go to the shops. Per-usual their mother told them to behave themselves and told Violet to listen to Greg. After their mother left Violet took to drawing ,something she excelled at, and Greg started working on his math homework. A ten minutes later Greg looked up from his work after hearing Violet come stomping down the steps frantically.
"What's the matter Violet." Greg said.
"Mmmmm." she moaned frantically moving her arms back and forth in a panic.
"You can't find your binder?" he asked.
"Mmmm." she said nodding frantically.
"That's alright, Mum will help you find it when she gets home." he said working on his homework some more.
"Mnnnn!" she mumbled hitting his leg.
"What?" he said looking at her.
"Nnnrrr!" she mumbled aggravated.
"You want me to help look now?" he asked.
"Nnnnrmm." she muttered swatting his leg shaking her head.
"Violet don't hit!" he said sternly "What do you want then?"
She made a grab for his text-book.
"No, Violet!" he said pulling it away from her . He knew how angry she got when she couldn't find the right word in a book and he seriously doubted the word she needed was in his math textbook. He didn't feel like explaining to his teachers that his little sister had started ripping out the pages. Violet glared at him and ripped the book out of his hands and flipped it open.
"MMNNNN!" she muttered hitting the pages, and flipping them back and forth.
"You want a book?" he said hoping he had guessed right.
She let out a loud groan and tossed the textbook on his lap.
"Ow, Violet I don't know what you want!" he said trying to stay calm.
Violet clenched her fists and shook with frustration, moaning all the while. Greg could tell a fit was about to start and the best option right now was to let her get it out of her system. She then stomped her foot and stared directly at Greg.
"Greg, I need paper!" she shouted in a high shrill voice.
Greg stared at her wide-eyed.
"What?" he said in disbelief.
"I need paper please!" she said loudly still shaking with her little fists clenched at her sides.
"Alright, just hold on." he said standing up.
"Thank you!" she shouted slowly calming down.
Violets love and talent for art and her social awkwardness had carried on into adulthood, as had her ability to let stress get the best of her. Even though the train to London had been particularly stress free for Violet, Greg could tell that she was still anxious so he thought it best not to leave her alone in his house in this state, as the last time he did she had violent panic attacks that made her throw up and she would hug herself so tightly that she left dark bruises. This lead to the decision to bring Violet with him to The Yard, much to Anderson and Donovan's displeasure. The first time Donovan had met Violet she reached out to shake Violet's hand and Violet ,due to her mistrust of strangers hygiene, grabbed Donovan's wrist and shook vigorously, putting Donovan off for the rest of their encounters. Anderson had gotten the worst of it. On Violet's first visit to New Scotland Yard she and their parents had taken a bus from their hotel and Anderson, trying to make a good impression, took her hand and put his hand on her lower back, attempting to help her off the bus. This was a bad idea as touching Violet's back, especially her lower back, without her permission was a bad idea as it is one of the most sensitive places on her body. If Anderson had been someone she knew well he would have, at the most, gotten a stern look and a light shove as she twisted away and groaned "don't" at him. Unfortunately for him he was a stranger who had also grabbed her hand so she reacted by ripping her hand out of his, shoving him hard, and punching him in the nose. She had almost broken it and it had taken Greg and his parents explaining her aspergers syndrome and lots of apologies from them to get him to calm down enough to not press charges. Then Anderson became more uncomfortable because, after being nagged at by their mother, Violet apologized by patting the side of his face and saying "Sorry". To avoid any uncomfortable moments Greg set his sister up in his office with her pills and her sketch book. The day was going well Greg was getting his work done and ,in her own words, Violet was enjoying some spectacular people watching. After lunch Sherlock and John popped in to discuss a current case. Violet apparently found something interesting about them, because when Greg looked over into his office he found her drawing quickly alternating between staring at John and Sherlock in the way she did when she was interested in a subject and staring at her paper, a habit she developed after being scolded for staring at people numerous times as a kid. Not terribly long afterward Sherlock had decided he wanted to continue the conversation in Greg's office. As they entered Violet shut her sketchbook and stood up, displaying the stiff manners she had been drilled into her head as a child.
"Hello." she said calmly looking between Sherlock and John. "Who are you?"
"Hello, My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is my associate John Watson, and you are Lestrade's sister, younger I can assume."
"A pleasure to meet you both, and your assumption is correct, my name is Violet Lestrade." she said shaking their wrists she then turned to Greg and said "He is not as impressive as you implied."
John frowned in confusion and Sherlock raised his eyebrows.
"What do you mean?" Sherlock said.
Violet turned back to Sherlock and gestured to Greg's face.
"It is obvious that Greg and I are siblings, we have the same eye shape and color and nose." she said.
"I can tell you are an artist." Sherlock said.
"I have a sketchbook on the desk and have graphite dust on my fingers." she said.
Before Sherlock could deduce anything else about Violet, Greg gestured to the hall outside of his office and he and John snuck out.
"Sorry 'bout that, once Violet starts proving someone wrong she doesn't stop until there is a definite winner and that can take a while." Greg said watching them talk as animatedly as either of them got.
"It's alright, Sherlock's a lot like that." John said he then turned to Greg uncomfortably "Is your sister...?"
Greg could tell John was looking for a polite way to describe Violets odd habits.
"She has aspergers syndrome." He said nodding.
"Oh, is that why you put up with Sherlock?" John said.
Greg was taken aback by that. Sherlock had never admitted to having aspergers or an autism spectrum disorder but he had always assumed that he had aspergers syndrome but to a lesser extent than Violet. As he watched and listened to them talk he could see the similarities, the stiff posture, the formal speech, and the over-all bluntness among other things.
"I never thought of it that way, but yeah that might be it." Greg said.
Shortly after that they went back in and found that they had went on to deducing things about other people. They appeared to have just finished talking about Donovan.
"Talking about her, She and Anderson are sleeping together." Sherlock said.
Violet nodded.
"It is rather horrible of him seeing as he is married, the very least he could do is hide it better." Violet said
"He's such an oaf he thinks he is hiding it." Sherlock said scoffing
Violet narrowed her eyes.
"Be kind, oafish and horrendous as he is I like him well enough." she said.
"Why." Sherlock said disgusted.
"He reminds me of my cat." she said calmly.
If Sherlock and Violet hadn't noticed them walk in they surely did as Greg burst into side shaking laughter. Violet's cat was a fat, cross-eyed, snaggletoothed, brown persian mix with a most of his tail and half of his left ear missing, named Sqaushy. Violet had found Sqaushy as a 12-year-old when they had gone to the shoppes and no amount of persuasion could get her to leave the ugly kitten behind. There parents had tried to persuade her to give up the kitten when they got home and even had tried to take from her while she was sleeping but she slept holding him. Eventually everyone had grown to at least tolerate Sqaushy.
"How?" John said glancing over at Greg who was still laughing to himself.
"Their hair and fur are the same color and they grumble in the same octave." she said as if it were a normal thing.
Greg fought off another fit of laughter and not long after Sherlock and John left. After they left Greg turned to Violet.
"So how is Sqaushy?" he asked sitting down at his desk.
"Dead." she said picking up her sketch book and moving to a chair in the corner of Greg's office.
"Dead!?" he said kind of shocked, Violet took better care of Sqaushy than herself most days and he wasn't that old of a cat.
"Yes." she said nodding her head the corners of her lips drooping the way she did when she got sad.
"I'm really sorry to hear that Vi, what happened he said getting up and gently patting her shoulder.
He nose wrinkled and her mouth pursed in the way it did when she was angry.
"Robert let him get out of the house and when he and Daphie were leaving he backed over my Sqaushy." she said vehemently.
Robert was Daphne, their older sister's, husband. He was a gym teacher and health nut and Violet had absolutely no tolerance for him. Greg could understand why, he wouldn't care much for someone who always talked to him condescendingly and was constantly convincing his parents to change his schedule and diet either.
"That's horrible, I hope you at least got a good swing at him." he said sincerely.
Admittedly the only reason he put up with Robert is because Daphne loved him so much and he was the father of his nieces and nephews that he loved so much, but that didn't mean that he couldn't live through Violet and her acts of dislike towards him.
Violet frowned a bit.
"No, I wanted to but I had to go pick up Sqaushy's corpse and I didn't want to defile it by hitting that bafoon with him, but I did spit on his window and call him some names, Mum and Daphie got really cross with me about it though, but I don't know why, he was the one that killed my innocent cat and then had the gall to try to console me with the offer to buy a new cat, how disgustingly despicable." She said.
Greg fought back another laugh realizing how inappropriate it would be to laugh at a time like this. As troublesome as her social ineptitude was the results, were more often than not, hilarious.