I'M WRITING THIS IN DRIVER'S ED CLASS AHHHHHH

I finished re-writing an outline for this last night, so I'll at least know what to do and can force myself to write now.

I'm going back to replying to reviews as well, so sorry if you reviewed many months ago and you're just getting the response now, haha :P I'm going to respond to the Guests here, though:

Amateur artist- Thank you for all of the reviews! I'm sorry it took so long, haha :P I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Not even .000001%. That's pretty saddening.

Lestrade had a bad feeling about this. He had told Sally it himself; he didn't want her out there, she was going to get taken- for pete's sake, he tried to stop her from going physically when he grabbed her arm. He was at no fault for this.

So why did he feel a surge of guilt drop into his stomach when he heard Sally's piercing shriek?

As soon as the shriek sounded throughout the house, Sherlock took off and tried to open the back door to the porch. As he messed with the handle, trying to stand on his tip toes to reach it, Lestrade raced after him and picked him up.

"No! No, stop, I have to get her, please-" But Lestrade didn't let the words affect him. Damn, he should have tried harder to stop her, this was his fault, all his fault…the only way to make this better was to stop Sherlock from being taken, too.

But Sherlock wouldn't stop, he just…just kept struggling. Sherlock's panicked mind flickered back to the time when Mycroft was killed, and it was all his fault, this man, he-

But Lestrade kept going. He dragged Sherlock up the stairs and into a random room, closing and locking the door. Immediately, Sherlock paled and beat against the door. Desperate tears ran down his cheeks, and he fumbled with the doorknob hopelessly, unable to untwist the lock function on the door due to his height.

Lestrade quickly locked the window, drew the curtains, and turned off the lights in an effort to try and convince Moriarty's men that they weren't in the room and that they had left. When he turned to check on Sherlock, he saw the child on his hands and knees facing the door, his hair untamed and sticking out at various angles. Lestrade could barely hear his pounding heartbeat over Sherlock's heavy breathing and attempts to swallow back the tears threatening to spill onto his cheeks again.

"Sherlock…" Lestrade whispered, edging closer to the boy. "Sherlock, I'm sorry, it was the only way; Sally's gone, you know that. We have to stay in here until morning, if we'd gone out to find her we would have been taken and probably killed."

Sherlock still didn't move, his hand now clutching his face as his breathing sped up. Rain pounded against the window, and it seemed to have been growing harsher and harsher ever since Sally was taken.

"Sherlock, look at me-" Lestrade grasped Sherlock's shoulder and tried to turn him around, but Sherlock cried out and, although he turned around, he backed into the door in his panic. A calendar that was hung on the door fell and opened as it crashed against the floor. Sherlock's wild eyes stared at Lestrade for a split second before he raced into a closet next to the door, closing the door behind him.

Lestrade raced over to stop the doors before Sherlock closed them, but he was too late and ended up pounding his fists against the doors. Lestrade desperately tried to pull the doors open, but they refused to budge. Sherlock must have locked them.

"Sherlock, come on, open up." Silence. No click of the lock, no consoling words, nothing. Just the relentless rain and a resounding pounding of thunder.

"Please…Sherlock, I'm sorry. You know that I'm sorry. There was nothing else that we could do." Lestrade pleaded with him, but the doors remained closed. Even though heavy doors separated them, Lestrade could still hear Sherlock's heavy breathing and a slight…sniffling? He was still crying.

Lestrade put his hand against the door and sighed. "Sherlock, what else do you want me to say? I…I know that we got off to a rough start with Mycroft, but…I want to help. I need to help. So…will you let me?"

Almost a minute passed. Lestrade sighed and took his hand off of the door, instead turning and leaning his back against it. He buried his head in his hands, the guilt in his chest burning like the sun.

Sherlock's small voice cut through the guilt like a knife. "It's not your fault."

Lestrade's head shot up, and he turned back to the closet. "W-What do you mean?" he asked, his voice shaking.

"Mycroft's death. Everyone else's disappearances. I know you blame yourself. I know I…I blamed you. And for that, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have." Sherlock's voice was getting clearer, and the rain's pounding lessened a touch.

"It was my gun, my shot that killed him. How can you just forgive me?" Lestrade whispered, leaning his head against the closet door as the memory flashed through his mind.

"You didn't mean it, I could see it on your face. But at the time, I was just so scared, so afraid of being alone, that I just snapped. I blamed you for everything; I'll tell you, it was nice at first. For once, everything wasn't my fault." Sherlock's voice grew littler and littler each second as his mind drifted to the conversation with his father a few months ago. He shook his head and pushed it out of his mind- but of course, of course Lestrade asked about it.

"Alone? What do you mean, alone? I talked to John, he told me that your parents have been out for the past two months, but they're coming back, right?" John had confided in him only if he promised not to tell anyone else, but he figured Sherlock was an exception. Suddenly, Lestrade's heart skipped a beat. "They are coming back, aren't they?"

Sherlock swallowed his tears. "No. No, they…they're gone. They're both gone."

It came out like as a whisper, but to Lestrade, it was a shout. A cry of agony.

"It started three or four months ago. Mummy was sick. The doctors started coming to our house more often, but they always said that she would get better, that she would be fine. But she just…kept getting worse."

She was getting thinner every day. Mycroft and he had fought multiple times over her illness, if she would get better, but they kept it secret. Mummy hated it when they fought.

Mycroft kept telling him that she wasn't going to get better. Sherlock refused that point of view, he didn't believe him for a second.

Until the day his mother left and never came back.

"One day, she just plummeted. Mycroft and I went to visit her in the hospital, and she just accepted it. Usually she'd say she'd get over it, she'd bounce back, but…"

"Sherlock, come here, mummy has something to tell you." His mother, so weak, so small, beckoned to him. He came and laid with her in the bed, holding her hand. Her skin was too big for her bones, and it wrinkled and flapped over, his hand buried inside of her own. But that was the way he liked it- surrounded by her, the only person he'd ever truly loved.

Tears fell down her cheeks as she told him the truth. That she wasn't going to get better, not ever. He wasn't going to have a mummy ever again. "I'm so sorry, Sherlock…I'm so sorry." Tears fell from her eyes, and Sherlock's head shook back and forth.

"No, mummy, you...you can't, please-" But then his father was there, and he was ushered out.

That was the last time he ever saw his mother.

"She didn't bounce back. Days passed, and father wouldn't tell us how she was. Then, one day, he…he exploded."

"What do you think happened? Days have passed, you imbecile! She's dead." His father's spiteful words were accompanied by the slam of his door.

"Father, tell me it isn't true." Sherlock whispered, holding onto his father's pant leg. "She can't be dead. She has to come home."

"Well, she's not coming home, fool!" His father kicked him, and he was sent sprawling until his back collided with his father's bookshelf. Several books fell off of the shelf and surrounded him, but all he could hear were his father's words.

As his father left the study, taking the keys to the car with him, he said his last words to his son.

"She never loved you."

"I tried to stop him,"

His father's car drove down the road, leaving the driveway and onto the road. Sherlock stumbled as he raced after his father, his little legs tripping over his feet as he desperately followed the car.

He ran, and ran, and ran, even when the car was little more than a spec in the distance, he ran. He didn't stop, he couldn't stop.

Then the car was gone. His parents were gone. His father was never coming back. His mother…oh god, his mother…

"But it was too late."

All of a sudden, he was sobbing into his brother's chest, and he was at home. "She's not gone," Sherlock found himself screaming, weeping until there was nothing left of him. "Tell me she's not gone, Mycroft!"

Mycroft shook his head. "Sherlock, I…I can't do that. Please, Sherlock, you have to understand. Mummy…"

Sherlock shook his head. No, no, no, no, no…

"Mummy isn't coming home."

7 and three quarters old. No mother. No father. Just an older brother and a check that came once a week in the mail. They'd tried tracking it, God knows they've tried, but they couldn't find him.

And now his brother was dead, and he was all alone.

The silence was unbearable. Lestrade could hear Sherlock weeping on the other side. The kid had no family, and the only other person he knew on this entire planet had practically killed his brother. The pain of losing all of these people was familiar in Lestrade's heart, and suddenly, he knew how to help him.

"My father left me, too." Lestrade murmured.

There was a sudden silence, and Sherlock wiped his tears away with his sleeve. "R-really?"

Lestrade nodded. "Really. When I was eleven, he left one day. Never came back. My mum raised me. And I know it's stupid, because I still had a mother, I was older, I could deal with it better, but…I understand. Even if it's just a little…I get it."

"Does it ever stop hurting?" Sherlock sounded like a simple child now. He was a child, Lestrade reminded himself, but the question had an air of innocence that was hard to ignore.

"No, it doesn't. It claws at your heart, and you're always wondering why it happened. Why he couldn't have stayed just a bit longer." Sherlock sighs at this, and buried his head into his knees.

"But it gets better." Sherlock's head pops up, and he wants to come out of the closet and see Lestrade's face, deduce him to make sure he's telling the truth. "Every day you keep on living and breathing and loving…you forget, just a little bit. Some days I don't even think about my dad. Some days, it's hard not to. But you get through it. You survive because it's the only option. And after a while, you're so glad you kept going through the sleepless nights and the haunted hours. Because…because as much as you want to forget it, you can't. And you live with it."

The doors open, and Sherlock tumbles out. His arms wrap around Lestrade's neck, and he's openly sobbing on his chest. Lestrade is surprised at first, but after a moment, he wraps his arms around Sherlock's body and caresses his unruly hair. "It's alright, let it out…it's going to be okay…"

And there they stayed. That was the first night in two months that Sherlock truly slept.