Chapter 3: First Meeting

Two Years Ago:

It was cold. Actually, it was fucking freezing, not to mention that it was raining and Violet didn't have enough money for the bus fare home. It was simply 'one of those days', she supposed, but that didn't stop her from hating everyone and everything in the world.

How dared he call her stupid? She would bet that she was a better programmer than all of her University lecturers put together-and Gordon Hames PhD certainly! She'd made a suggestion about the security of the university skydrive when she'd noticed a tiny breach (which she'd wormed her way through the night before).

"Violet," he'd said laughingly, "you'd have to be stupid to think that anyone could hack into the skydrive through that tiny a breach."

The thing was, she had already done it. She knew that she shouldn't feel so angry and unappreciated, especially considering that if anyone knew how brilliant she was, they'd have locked her up a while ago-probably in Guantanamo Bay. But she was bored. She'd just recently hacked into the most secure computer in the country - scratch that – the world, officially gaining 'Mycroft' status, which was great and everything, but it meant that she had nothing left to do; she could hack into anything she liked; she could manipulate whoever she liked; she could probably rule the world from her dingy little room in Fallowfield.

But what was the point?

Sherlock Holmes had gone and made himself a bad name with the press, and consequently the rest of the world, too, before killing himself, and she'd thought about making it a little project of hers to vindicate him, but, again, what was the point if he was already dead?

Apparently, you're meant to grieve for the loss of family, but the sad fact was that she simply didn't know Sherlock, her uncle well enough. No doubt she'd simply have been another nameless idiot to him if she had. He did like to think that he was better than everybody else, and it rubbed people up the wrong way. It was just a shame that he seemed to have rubbed the wrong people up the wrong way.

But there was no point in mourning for a dead man that you didn't know, was there? And she had a Red Dwarf marathon to be making her way to. Violet heaved a sigh and trudged up Oxford Road and turned right, toward her hosts' flat, making a futile attempt to ignore the raindrops that shot against her icy skin like bullets.

If her iPod hadn't been out of battery, she wouldn't have heard the scuffling sound that came from down a particularly grimy side-street. She wouldn't have heard the drunken guffaws and the pained grunts and she probably wouldn't have gone to investigate – curiosity and ire piqued.

Violet couldn't be shocked by many things. She'd been around drugs, booze and bloody fist – knife fights, thanks to her grandparents, who simply didn't want to know of their daughter or her illegitimate sprog. She couldn't be shocked by the coldness of humanity, or by its selfish madness.

She could be shocked by the sight of a pale, far-too-thin man in a long, woollen coat being kicked to the floor by a gang of petty thugs. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't…

Sherlock Holmes was not in Manchester.

Under normal circumstances, Violet wouldn't have known what to say upon meeting her uncle, her flesh and blood. At seeing him spitting out blood in time with every brutal thump against his ribs, however, she knew precisely what to say.

"Oi! You little shits!" she hollered, charging down the dank alley in her sodden leather trenchcoat and knee-high Doc Martens. "Get the fuck away from him!" she shrieked needlessly as the cowardly little bastards fled. One of the slower ones, a sallow, greasy-haired lad, got a swift kick and a shove into a nearby brick wall before he took the hint and sprinted out, onto the main road.

As her breath misted in the cold, moist air, Violet clenched and unclenched her fists, not so much in anger as in fear. She'd never done anything so reckless in her life. But as she turned to the sound of muted groaning, she figured that it was probably worth it.

She strode over to the figure scrambling up from the ground. "Are you ok?" she asked breathlessly, wanting to hear her uncle's voice for herself for the first time, even if it was just to tell her something as mundane as 'I'm fine'.

"Yes, yes. Go away." The drenched figure snarled, blue-grey eyes icy. He turned and began limping away before stumbling and collapsing against a graffiti-ed wall. "You need help." She pointed out.

"Yes." The man agreed in a monotone, "but not from you."

"From whom, then?" she demanded, her face flushing with embarrassment, hurt and anger, "there's no-one else here, unless you have an invisible friend."

It was then that the late Sherlock Holmes turned and looked at the girl who'd barraged into his existence while he'd been busy procuring some much-needed 'recreational medication' (admittedly getting beaten up in the process). And he really looked:

Running makeup-no foundation-Wet, purple hair-roots showing…Not much money, probably a student;

Leather trenchcoat-wide hood-Black blouse-long, woollen fingerless gloves…A Goth. Trenchcoat too expensive for her so must have been a gift from someone wealthy;

Pen ink on left palm-cheap rings-one thick stainless steel band with a razorblade motif-one embellished by a plastic jewel embedded in a decorous frame…Definitely student, gets bored in lectures, intelligent, probably more so than lecturers/tutors;

Fingernails bitten-overweight-heavy rucksack decorated with skulls…Sedentary life, probably in front of a computer, computer programmer.

After little more than three seconds he asked: "Firefly or Juggernaut?"

Without hesitation, Violet replied: "Juggernaut."

"Aren't you going to ask me how I know?" he enquired, his tone simultaneously tainted with pain and exhaustion and the irrepressible desire to show off. She grinned through the rain, and suddenly Sherlock couldn't quite shake the feeling that she looked familiar.

"I already know." She said smugly.

"What's your name?"

"Violet Sherringford." Ah, of course.

"You're rather good."

"How d'you know that?"

"I thought you already knew-"

"Indulge me, Mr Holmes."

Sherlock couldn't help but roll his eyes at that. She knew she was good, but she still needed to know how good, she needed an ego boost. It reminded him uncomfortably of someone he knew uncomfortably well.

"You're a Hacker disguised a student studying computer programming at a former polytechnic, but I don't think whether or not the university was a Red-brick influenced your decision; you're overweight and your makeup is almost minimally applied-you make an effort, but don't have time to spend applying it perfectly; you're an unemployed first-year student being subsidised by someone with money, probably as an investment, which means that you have some skill at your craft, so you spend the majority of your free time hacking, which means, again that you must have some skill; the fact that you're Juggernaut-the hacking equivalent of a colonel-at your age means that you are exceptional at what you do; you told me your name because you think you can trust me-you recognised me, but not merely from what's being said in the media, which means that you don't depend on the idiots around you to tell you how it is.

"All of that means that you're someone I can use. Someone I can trust."

Violet's grin relaxed into a contented smile and she noted softly that he wasn't bad, either. Sherlock snorted, "I'm a genius."

"And so modest." She murmured with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

"Modesty's a waste of time." Sherlock muttered before wincing.

"Come on," Violet sighed, taking a step toward him, "we need to get you some help."

"No."

"You need to get yourself looked at. Not at a hospital, obviously; we're going to my friend's for a movie marathon. Everyone who's going to be there is trustworthy, and one of them is studying medicine, so she can see whether or not you're dying while the rest of us watch Red Dwarf." Violet said patiently, "Then, tomorrow, we can see about you running off to do whatever you need to do, yes?"

If she were being honest, she half – expected him to say 'no', but of course few people could properly anticipate Sherlock Holmes, and sadly, she wasn't one of them.

"Fine." He said.

Not for the reasons Violet Sherringford thought, though; he didn't want to be 'looked at' or to watch Red Dwarf (whatever that was) and he was fairly sure that he could do without a Hacker if need be.

It was simply that he wanted to know why the hell Mycroft's daughter (there was, honestly, no denying the resemblance) was running around Manchester in the rain instead of tucked up safely in Oxford or Cambridge. He wanted to know why she wanted nothing to do with her father; judging by her clothes, she seemed to have subconsciously refused any affiliation with him whatsoever, not that Sherlock could blame her? More importantly, why was his brother not aware of his child's existence?

Author's Note: Right, firstly, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who's favourited and/or alerted this story.

Secondly: the Soundtrack for this chapter is Teardrop by Massive Attack and/or Shock Me Peter by Johnny Hollow (the latter being amazing and yet heinously underrated). If you hadn't guessed by now, yes, I am making up a soundtrack for this :)

For those who don't know, Red Dwarf is a British comedy series by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which I absolutely love. It's about the last human being alive sharing a mining ship (called Red Dwarf) with a hologram of his unlikeable dead bunkmate, a being evolved from his pet cat (Danny John Jules is a legend!), an android and the senile ship's computer. Go look it up-it's amazing, though I dread to think what our darling/not-so-darling Sherlock would make of it. XD

Also, I'm hoping that this chapter actually makes sense; like I said before, I have no idea about hacking or computer programming or anything. So, fingers crossed!

The long and short of it is: please review as I'd really like to know what you think (i.e. whether or not I should continue) }-)