December 1991
"The fact is, he's gifted, Ms. Holmes. There's no doubting it- just look at these papers."
The Headmaster slid the exam papers across the polished wooden desk and Sherlock watched through heavy-lidded eyes as his mother flicked through them, paying little attention to the complex equations that he'd scrawled there and instead beaming at the little red 'A' that was marked in the corner of every single page.
She looked a little tearful and he suppressed a groan.
"Oh well I always…I always had my suspicions…" his mother exclaimed, delicately placing a graying hair behind her ear. She turned to face him with such pure love in her eyes and he squirmed in his seat, shifting down so that his long, gangly legs stretched out across the floor, crossed at the ankles.
"I believe he could go to Oxbridge next year if he wanted to," the Headmaster said in a smug tone, glancing at him with a look of greedy anticipation. Sherlock could practically see the pound signs rolling across his eyeballs. "And with your…how shall I put this…limited financial status, he would make the prefect candidate for a scholarship as his brother did before him."
Sherlock could feel his mother tense beside him and he sent a glance her way, saw her growing a deep crimson colour and watched her hands tremble a little.
"Oh yes, well…our income isn't…I mean, I would hate for that to be a hindrance to him when he's clearly so talented…"
Sherlock glared at the Headmaster through his messy black hair and suppressed the urge to grab his mother's arm and lead her out of this oppressive room. Whilst his brother had lapped up the glory that was offered by the status of being a Cambridge graduate, the glamour and sophistication of Oxbridge wasn't exactly appealing to Sherlock; years spent in another tedious educational environment where he would outsmart those around him through their ignorance more than his intelligence, only to be given a piece of paper at the end of it all…he could be doing something far more constructive with his time, he was sure. It was some kind of morbid curiosity, however, that pulled him towards the prospect of university- that, and the pride in his mother's eyes that simultaneously heartened him and dismayed him.
"Talent such as his shouldn't go to waste, Marion," the Headmaster said beseechingly, and it seemed to win his mother over. He rolled his eyes. "We only have one other likely graduate, and to see them both achieve their potential would be wonderful, I'm sure you'll agree."
Ah yes, of course. The other candidate.
He stared with a tired, dull gaze through the window to his left and spotted her instantly, as though his eyes had been trained over the years to specifically find her. He was sure he couldn't loathe her; their relationship had shifted into something far from the friendship he'd foolishly sought out in his younger days. He liked to think of her as an enemy of sorts- and that was even better.
It had spawned naturally through competition- she glared at him with envy when he topped every subject and soon she bested him with ease, casting self-satisfied little smiles at him, which he often returned with a knowing smirk, unable to truly dislike her in those moments because the challenge she offered was far too enjoyable. He smiled a little as he thought of their endless rivalry that had become so much a part of his school life over the years that he often wondered if it wasn't some kind of friendship.
It was certainly the closest thing he had.
It was the end of the school day and she was walking purposefully across the courtyard with her arms folded, the look on her face one of pure loathing and she suddenly turned around to shout aggressively at someone. She flushed a brilliant shade of red as she yelled, matching her beautifully tailored coat, and she ran a hand through her rich dark hair in pure exasperation. Sherlock narrowed his eyes when another figure walked into the scene, his blonde hair slicked back and his shirtsleeves rolled up, his venomous yells at the girl contorting his face into a hateful scowl. Jeremy Northbrook must have said something scandalous then, because Irene screamed and, in a movement so graceful even Sherlock silently applauded, slapped the boy hard across the face.
It was widely acknowledged throughout the school that Irene Adler was beautiful; a fact appreciated by everyone, most of all by her. She'd long since her abandoned her occupation of stealing shiny trinkets and instead focused her efforts on stealing hearts; there was a trail of lovesick boys that followed in her wake, many of whom he'd seen kiss her at her doorstep or sneak off with her at school or walk her home with such pathetic hope in their eyes that he'd wanted to laugh at them. She, however, often proved to be a monumental disappointment in these situations, forever at the whim of her emotions, her need for approval, her desire to take whatever she fancied and throw it away when she was done. He'd frowned despairingly at her, unable to see why she felt the need to constantly surround herself with such agonizing idiots. It was far easier to hate her then.
He'd stopped listening to the conversation concerning his future and was snapped out of his doleful stare when his mother stood up with a grin, ushering him to follow her and saying thank you to the headmaster for supporting them in this marvelous opportunity. Of course, Mycroft had left home that very year and, with Christmas fast approaching, would be returning tonight to regal them all with grand tales of snobbery and new found wealth and whilst he dreaded the prospect, his mother was clearly bursting with excitement; she'd spent the better part of the day at the supermarket, the boot of the car full of shopping bags containing enough food to feed at least six people, despite it being just the three of them dining that evening. He dreaded to think what Christmas day itself would be like.
Shutting the door of the car against the ice-cold wind whist he leant against the window, his fingers covering his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion, his mother turned to him brightly; her eyes alight with something akin to nervous anticipation. Behind that, though, there was love. Always love.
"Both my boys at Oxbridge. I just…"
She reached out to stroke his hair as she had done when he was a small boy, and he offered her a tight smile, unable to bear the joy on her face, unable to avoid the niggling feeling of pain at the thought of gallivanting off behind his brother and leaving her in the house alone. Of course, it was only minor; the walls of that house were closing in on him day after day and if he didn't escape it now he feared he might be trapped there forever.
Ruffling his hair back into place (having long since given up on trying to tame it), his mother began to start the car, glancing from side to side and peering through the fogged up window.
"Is that your friend Irene over there?"
Letting out a sigh and informing his mother in a cold, quiet voice that Irene Adler was most certainly not his friend, he peered through the gap in his fingers and saw the burgundy-clad slip of a girl standing on the roadside, her face turned to the ground.
He could tell even from this distance that she was crying, and as she raised her head, there was such an awful picture of agony upon her face he wasn't sure what he was meant to feel. He saw the blackened mascara tracks that stained her flawless pale face, saw her darkened lips tremble as she stubbornly wiped at her tears and thought that this was perhaps the first time he'd seen her famed exterior beauty that caused those around him to fall to their knees. Of course, he'd always known it to be there; but he found her beautiful in other ways.
That was an opinion he rarely gave much concern, however, and certainly one he considered to be among his most private observations.
He suddenly realised that the car was traversing the icy road and edging towards her, and before he could do anything to stop her, his mother had wound down the window and stuck her head out with a smile. He sunk into the leather of the car seat, mortified.
"Irene, sweetheart, do you need a lift home?"
He watched through red eyes as Irene lifted her head back up in slight shock, looking into the car and spotting him. He offered her a mocking smile, before turning away with a furious grimace.
"Oh!" she exclaimed ever-so-articulately with a sniff, and he glanced back at her again to see an awkward slant to her smile. "I, um…thank you, but…"
She looked to her left and, following her stare, he saw Jeremy Northbrook carve a sharp path towards her, the look in his eyes a little more guilty than it had been earlier, and Irene cast him a cutting glare before turning back to the car with a luminous smile.
"That would be wonderful," she said, not pausing for a second before opening the door and landing with little grace on the back seat. He looked in the mirror and saw her glare at Northbrook through the window before she jutted out her chin and shoved her middle finger against the glass.
"Classy," he murmured. She saw his eyes in the mirror and, despite her smudged make up making her appear an utter mess, gave him a triumphant grin.
His mother, oblivious as usual, pulled onto the main road and smiled at Irene through the mirror.
"So Irene, I hear you could be off to Oxbridge soon!" she said, her face one of pure joy and happiness, with no trace of envy whatsoever. "Your father must be proud of you."
Sherlock inwardly groaned at her niceties, but noticed that Irene was staring despondently out of the window, her eyes darkening at the mention of her father.
"Yes, well…I am looking forward to going," she said, smiling politely back even though his mother couldn't see it, and Sherlock could tell that she was looking forward to leaving more than anything else. "Although I expect it'll be rather dull there."
He raised his eyebrows and his mother's smiled faltered a little.
"Sherlock here hasn't shown much enthusiasm either," she said and he sunk a little lower in his seat. "But I'm sure you'll both love it there,"
"Oh yes…" Irene said slowly, and he saw in the mirror the smirk that was being sent his way. "I forgot that Sherlock was getting a scholarship."
He felt the age-old stagger in his chest at the sound of his name spoken with her melodic voice and felt his eyebrows sink low with resentment. Liar.
His mother's smile almost devoured her face as she went on to exclaim how proud she was of her two sons, obviously what she'd been dying to do as soon as Irene had stepped into the car. Irene, meanwhile, was staring at him with an oddly curious expression, one of her slender fingers playing absently with a loose strand of hair. His face remained stoically bored, and he rolled his eyes once more at her, wanting to get out of the car because he could smell her. That sickly, sweet butter-cream smell that seemed to be her natural scent, that seemed to fog up the air wherever she went and he'd decided long ago that it was this particular quality that he despised most about her.
The car pulled up outside of his house (after Irene had sweetly told his mother that she didn't mind walking the rest of the way) and the three of them stepped out into the winter air, Irene's hair tangled behind her as the wind caught it. As if to rub salt into the wound, she then offered to help his mother unload the shopping.
He didn't.
His mother smoothed back Irene's hair as if she was the daughter she never had, before saying her goodbyes and heading into the house. Sherlock stood on the porch and, folding his arms, watched Irene as she took out a compact mirror from her bag, groaning when she saw the state of her face.
"Good Lord, I look like a fucking corpse," she mumbled, wiping away her make-up and pulling her hair back with her fingers, before beginning to walk away.
"You were crying earlier," he said, stepping in line with her, his hands in his coat pockets and his nose in the air. "The end of yet another failed relationship, I take it?"
"Blimey, nothing gets past you, does it," she said bitterly, but she seemed tired. She reached into her bag again, but this time pulled out a pack of cigarettes and gracefully flicked a single one into her palm before placing it into her mouth. Of course, he knew that she smoked; he'd seen her go through a whole packet before, by the trees where they'd first met. She wanted to get caught, he knew, her hiding place on clear display before her own house- she wanted her father to pay some attention to her, wanted to rebel as was such a common impulse among his peers.
He watched this whole display with a greedy fascination, however, her long nails like little maroon claws, the flame from her lighter flickering across each one of them. With a movement that appeared unnaturally elegant, she closed her eyes as the silver-grey trail of smoke escaped her lips like a river, swimming under his nose along with that constant stench of butter-cream; but this, this was something else. Something new.
She waved the packet before his face, looking bored.
"Want one?"
He took one immediately, clamping it between his teeth and she leaned over to light it for him with a crooked smile, one eyebrow raised.
"Hmm, looks good on you," she said, but he paid no attention as he breathed it in, that charcoal sensation that tasted instantly gratifying, that swam through his lungs and filled up every part of him, that sent a shock to every fiber of his skin and fogged up his eyes, that was pleasurable in every way possible. He smiled lazily, each movement coming to him entirely naturally, and he didn't flinch when Irene flung an arm around his shoulder jokingly, holding her own cigarette before them.
"Nice," she said, and he appreciated her ability to sum it all up with one straight, simple adjective.
She stuck it back in her mouth and shoved her other hand in her coat pocket, looking quite dejectedly back at him.
"So go on then," she said with a half smile, letting out another stream of smoke. "Impress me. How did I fuck this one up?"
He almost smiled at her, taking another glorious drag on his cigarette before raising an eyebrow.
"Most likely in the usual way," he said "Your need for approval from your self-indulged father has lead you to pursue a path of clearly destructive relationships which both sustains your need for emotional superiority when they fail at your hand, and puts you in a state of vulnerability, the point of which is to garner sympathy from him."
"Ahh, I see. So, I want to be unhappy so that my Dad will pay attention to me."
"Yes. It's rather childish."
She nodded mock-seriously, managing to glare at him a little but he could tell her heart wasn't in it, because she knew he was right.
"You're painfully predictable," he said.
"Sorry- I'll try to mix it up a bit in future."
He found himself smirking at this response; he licked his teeth and let out another reel of smoke, watching in a trance as it danced up into the white sky.
"Why did you slap him?"
"He called me a slut."
"Ah."
They'd walked a fair distance along the icy path, and he watched her face with a dull gaze, her eyes staring almost longingly at the floor, as though she was sinking into herself, falling away. He observed her strong jaw and wild hair, her slender neck and the silver chain that hung there, plucked from her beloved jewelry box that had belonged to her infinitely more beloved mother. He saw the sway of her skinny waist tucked behind her coat as she walked, little heels clacking across the ground at the bottom of her long, black stocking-clad legs. She could have anything she wanted in life, he thought, and she'd never appreciate it.
Yes. It was easy to hate her.
"You don't need your father," he said suddenly in a low voice, surprising himself a little, and she narrowed her eyes, glancing at him curiously. "You don't need to behave the way you do."
Raising an eyebrow, she sent him a cruel smile, stopping in the road to drop her cigarette to the floor and stub it out with her heel.
"I know I don't need to. I like to."
It was something in the matter-of-fact tone of her voice that somehow saddened him, but he masked it with a blank stare as he copied her previous movement, his boot pressing the blackened ash into the ice and feeling as though some permanent change had occurred, as though something had shifted between them.
"You are an endless disappointment," he said in a quiet voice.
"Why?" she said with a baffled, hurt laugh. "Because I say it like it is, because I don't care what people like you think of me? I thought we had that in common."
"Because you could be doing something better with your mind, instead of playing stupid games with those uncouth ignorant little animals, instead of plastering on your blood-red lipstick and wearing short skirts and low-cut blouses. Instead of acting like the rest of them."
He waited for the slap with some sort of pleasurable anticipation, but none came. She was looking at him with a blank face, a spark of victory in her eyes.
"I've seen you looking at me," she said, her voice deathly quiet, and he felt himself tense, some foreign feeling that hadn't pained him in years surging its ugly head, somewhere deep in his chest. She stepped closer. "Always me, only me. Those others, they'll move on, they'll get over it. But not you, no- I'm like a little puzzle, aren't I, your favourite challenge."
She leant in even closer, her lips parted slightly, craning her neck backwards so she could look him straight in the eye, butter-cream and smoke drifting up his nostrils. He felt like strangling her.
"At least, that's what you tell yourself."
She'd wound her fingers around the collar of his coat and had pressed herself up against him, a satisfied glow in her eyes. He stood tall, lifeless, and felt betrayed by the juddering thud of his heart and the little black claws that had suddenly sunk into it.
"Look at you," he said, glaring down at her through half-lidded eyes. "Throwing yourself at any male who's near. You are a silly little girl. It's pathetic."
"This time it's you, though. Something new."
"Whatever it is you're looking for, you won't find it here."
"Oh, I know that," she said, her smile spiteful and enchanting "You're not like them are you- God forbid you'd succumb to such pitiful feeling, that you'd lower yourself to their level, that you'd feel like they did."
He shoved her away without mercy and she let out a little gasp as she stumbled, a strange half-smile still on her lips. He cast her a vicious, defiant stare and threw his cigarette to the ground.
"I don't need you to tell me I'm better than them," he spat.
She stepped away from him towards her house, her head titled to one side and he was startled to see a trace of sadness in her eyes, the shadows beneath them that had always been there suddenly more prominent, the sorrow she kept hidden from everyone around her suddenly on display, for him. He felt he should appreciate it, should remember the sight, but couldn't see past all of her painful faults, couldn't get over the terrible fact that, somehow, she'd let him down.
She smiled at him again- always smiling, always her favourite mask.
"No," she said, and he wondered briefly if his stare mirrored hers, if it held the regret that dimmed the colour of her eyes. "But you need someone to, don't you. Because what's the point in being better if you can't prove it?"
