"Come on then where now?" now the Doctor was asking questions.
"I want to see my Sherlock,"
"John I can't take you that close, time streams would cross and it'll be too dangerous."
"No not exactly then, I want to see when the child became the man, when he became the consultant detective he was when he..." John stopped.
"Died?" the Doctor finished the sentence with a tremble in his voice. John didn't correct or mistake him.
"Well if you want to see that Sherlock I know just where to find him." ploughing through his last comment.
After a spot of time travelling they were at their next destination. Another large pastoral house surrounded by fields, greenery and shrubbery, only this one seem somehow more elaborate than his family home. John however knew this place, not that he had visited it himself but any brit with a working knowledge of their own country knows the most privileged school in the country.
"Eton, Sherlock Holmes went to Eton." John realised how little he knew about his dear friend's past.
"Not important. All what matters is the case at hand." His friend's words rang though his mind.
"Well…" the Doctor stretched his words. "Went to Eton is maybe an overstatement, he was definitely suppose to study here, I mean," the Doctor looked to his watch. "It's lesson time now, math I believe it would be for our man, so where would we find him?"
Giving it thought over where a teenager who didn't see the point of maths after a basic understanding of the subject would be during a lesson devoted to it, plus an ideas John had of Sherlock's past.
"A school can be as posh as it wants to be Doctor, but there will always be drop outs that don't care." John came to the conclusion.
"Well I'm sure you understand teenage earth culture better than me, where would he be?"
"It's the same at every school, bike sheds," John decided as they were both wandering to look for the teenage drop out.
"It's 1994 by the way John," it was a passing statement the Doctor made to John.
"Sherlock would be 18 then? God I'm probably about somewhere doing my medical training,"
"And I am probably doing…" the Doctor thought "Well not that much." He came to a conclusion. Following a gravel path that circled the campus they came to a fork with a sign pointing different locations in different places. It had all kinds of things on it, the different ages the school took in, primary school to college and everything in between."
"Does it say where the bike sheds are?" John said allowed.
"Elementary Watson." The Doctor told him.
"What?"
"They are by the elementary school campus, look." The Doctor pointed to one of the arrowed signs that read elementary school, with bike sheds underneath. "What did you think I meant John?"
"Never mind," John muttered and the two headed in that direction.
Steel racks of bikes lined under a wooden roof, they had got to their destination and John was all too right with his guess, for they could here young voices, and clouds of cigarette smoke.
"Now John if we do find him here we can't get as close as we have been getting before, he's not a child any more, if he sees you now it'll really mess things up so much in the future, do you understand?" the Doctor warned. John nodded as they crept closer.
By the bike sheds was in fact a more conventional, wooden shed. Probably where gardening and cleaning products were kept, but it was here the drop outs collected. The Eton uniform is a white shirt with black trousers and a long black frock coat and a circle of these gathered round with smoke coming from the centre, like Native's around a fire. John and the Doctor tried to deduce which one was Sherlock but they couldn't quite tell due to being too far, they crept in closer while remaining hidden. They could over here snippets of conversation now.
"So yes and in the end I gave her a bloody good seeing to," was the end of one of the upper class teens conversation, all the boys laughed around the circle, coming to a stop when another voice entered the conversation.
"You're lying." was all it said. All the boys in the circle looked around the corner of the shed to someone there.
"Shut up Sherlock." one from the circle called back to the voice, suddenly at hearing this John and the Doctor too craned to look round this corner of the shed.
Back leaned up against the shed wall, feet and behind firmly on the ground with his knees shooting into the air, a book cradled in his hands and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. A teenage Sherlock sat. Black greasy curly hair, longer then John knew it, ran to his neck. His face was as thin as ever with his sharp cheek bones and jaw line almost on the verge of breaking through his skin. His eyes looked hazy, but still just a sharp as ever. His face had the odd spot, zit, and boil, what usually comes with teenage angst. His Eton uniform tattered and ripped.
"You are lying though. At the start of your conversation about this woman you had you said you have just come back from her place. If that is the case then why on earth are you in fresh, clean clothes? Surely they would be creased. Not saying that you weren't out all night don't get me wrong, and you have just come back, stopped at your room quickly, not much time. You merely put the clothes on top of what you were wearing last night. Which was of course a blue tee shirt with some sort of yellow font on it, like the one I can see from under your collar? The kind of blue and yellow font used in Star Trek, plus the fact the annual science fiction and fantasy convention is currently on indicates you spent all of last night there. Using the cover story of being with a woman to impress this lot, especially due to the fact you have heard the rumour going round that you are gay."
"That's my Sherlock." John smiled to the Doctor. The Doctor was smiling too, but they were the only two. All the boys in the circle were now looking to the young gentleman who told the lie.
"Also a good half of you in the circle are gay," now Sherlock broke his eyes away from his book. "I can tell you who if you like." He smiled. After this comment the boys stubbed their cigarettes and shuffled away in a huddle. Leaving Sherlock Holmes alone with his book, just the way he liked it.
The two doctors carried on watching, they had no clue why. Sherlock wasn't doing much, merely sitting there, smoking cigarette after cigarette reading his book. They were just fascinated by seeing him, without his knowledge, they had away since the others left. Finally closing his book, Sherlock took a look to the left and right.
"Movement," the Doctor said, like on a steak out for a criminal, or on safari watching a resting lion. Sherlock removed his belt from his trouser's loops and tied it around the top of his arm.
"What's he doing?" the Doctor was baffled. John knew all to well.
"What he did to entertain himself when his mind was bored, and before he met me." John for once knew the answers, and pointed to the syringe in the youth's hand.
Slowly it sunk into the vain; a vain made all the more clear to see due to the loss of circulation from the tight belt around his arm. To the doctors it looked painful but the look on Sherlock's face as it punctured was one of ecstasy.
"Sherlock Holmes was a heroin addict." The Doctor stated.
"MY Sherlock Homes was a former heroin addict," John corrected. "He got off the stuff before he met me."
Yet even though he knew Sherlock would give it up seeing this young man turn to such demanding drugs upset him. He was alone, so alone. John had an idea in his head of the real Sherlock Holmes now.
"A child bullied by his brother due to the brilliant mind he has. When he finally enters schooling he presumes everyone will treat him like his brother does so he isolates himself. He gets himself lost in books and drugs." John thought.
"He had me though in the end." John thought allowed the last sentence of his train of thought.
"What was that?" The Doctor asked.
"Oh nothing,"
The Doctor gave a disgruntled looked, "I should be a mind reader not a time traveller."
They looked to Sherlock, putting away his needle and walking towards them and once again scampered off towards the TARDIS. Looking to their next location in Sherlock's life.