Hello once again faithful readers, and those who have just joined us. Here, have a new chapter. Things may start picking up a little after this , since I have only the roughest of rough outlines for this story, and it's kind of shaping itself - under supervision, obviously. I'll shut up now and let you get on with it. Reviews are love!

Disclaimer: Paws off Evie, she's mine, the rest belong to ACD and the Moftiss.

The fact that there were parts of Sherlock's character that were so similar to mine ought to have been a bit of a heads-up I guess.

Then again it was only a couple of days ago I realised I have his nose. Of all the things…

Letting Dr Watson ("Call me John") into my house felt very strange. I don't exactly have many friends to bring home. Sam (my best friend) and I hang around at the local park, or more often, his house. If Mum goes out with Godfrey or one of her other friends it's usually to a restaurant. It's been a bit of a comfort blanket – my home, my mum's home, untouched by anyone else. Unfortunately, the good doctor had insisted on coming back with me to retrieve some stuff. Y'know…my socks, my schoolbooks, my underwear.

I was starting to think that John Watson was either incredibly paranoid or just a general whack-job, since I'd noticed the bulge in his jacket which could only have been his British Army handgun. Like the naïve teenager that I was, I didn't think anyone would bother trying to attack me in my own home. I leant towards whack-job – he was best friends with Holmes after all. But there was something quite steady in his stance, and something told me I could rely on him.

Everything about the place was so…normal. Nothing had been moved, nobody had been in here. It was almost disorientating, like I'd half expected my house to be turned on its head along with the rest of my life.

But it wasn't. Just way too quiet.

I tried not to let it get to me as I shovelled some things into a suitcase.

"How did you know about me?" John remarked from the door.

"What do you mean?"

"You mentioned I was an army doctor while you were shouting at Sherlock. How did you know?"

Oh, that. "Haircut, stance, mug. Simple enough."

I could almost hear him blinking. "You're not…no, forget that."

"What?" I turned to look at him. He had stopped leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom and was staring at me.

"Just…that's more or less how Sherlock knew. The first time I ever saw him, he knew I was an army doctor just home from Afghanistan. Where did you learn how to do that?"

"I didn't," I replied returning to squashing my science textbook into the small case. "It's not something I do consciously. I just notice things, it's no big deal."

"Could almost be related to him," I heard him mutter. I ignored him. Related to Sherlock? God forbid.

As an afterthought, I ducked into Mum's room to grab her phone and passport, just in case. I was coming out when something caught my eye. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Mum's room and mine are on two sides of a corner, but just beside my room is a small flight of stairs that leads up to the attic. You wouldn't think to look up at it normally. The light wasn't on so the door was in shadow, but I could tell it was ajar. Mostly because the doorknob appeared to be missing, the frame splintered and there was a stripe of much more complete blackness running down one edge. It sent a small chill down my spine.

"Dr Wats…John?"

He appeared beside me. "What is it?"

"Somebody's been in the attic." I pointed at the ruined door.

We stood there together for a moment or so.

"What's up there?" John asked eventually.

"Not much. Just old papers, books, Mum's diaries from when she was…younger…" I trailed off. "You think there might have been something incriminating up there."

"Well they must be looking for something." John drew his gun from his jacket and went up the stairs first. He fumbled a little for the light switch.

When it blinked into life, I saw the kind of mess I'd expected the whole house to be in. Boxes of books were broken on the floor, their contents scattered and shredded. A couple of old vases had been smashed, along with most of the old pictures Mum had taken down last year and intended to sell. They had been ripped from their frames, some torn to pieces. My childhood stuffed toys spilled their innards across the floorboards. Mum's old diaries had been knocked out of their boxes.

We entered once John had checked the intruders weren't still here. But they were most likely long gone. Still, he insisted on checking thoroughly while I stood in the ruins of a lot of my memories and tried not to panic. Whoever had been looking…they had looked hard.

I picked a few of Mum's diaries up. 1983…1990…1992…There weren't any missing that I could see, but a lot of the later ones had met the same fate as the books. I blew a bit of dust from one. 1994.

Wait a sec, Evie.

10/12/94. The strange date on Mum's note. Could it be…?

I realised my hands were shaking as I turned to the right page. Calm down, girl. But this wasn't just me being nosy. This could be a major clue.

There is was. My eyes widened as I began reading Mum's spidery scrawl.

I can't tell, but I think I just made a huge mistake. I can't tell Vi, or Berry, or anyone, so I'll write it here and try and make some sense out of it.

See, all I wanted to do was return that book I borrowed from Joseph the other day, so I went up to his college halls. He wasn't in, but his neighbour was. I didn't realise he was Sherlock Holmes.

I gasped. So that's how she knows him!

"What is it?" asked John, but I tuned him out and kept reading.

I think the guy was tripping out. I mean he seems so aloof normally, always tucked away in the corner of the library with these great big textbooks. I don't even know what he studies. But last night he was…different, that's the only word for it. Looser, unfocused.

"Did you know?" he said, "that the only job of male bees is to mate with the queen, and those that do die in the act?"

Well what on earth do you say to that? I think I said something like. "No, but I'm looking for Joseph…I'm bringing his book back…"

"They're all out," he said, with a winning smile. I didn't know he could smile like that. It made me weak at the knees. "It's just you and me, sister."

And then he reached out and took my hand, and pulled me in, and that was pretty much when I stopped thinking. Christ, this is bad – I know I have a crush on the boy, but I was never going to act on it. He doesn't even know my name and has probably forgotten I even exist since I crept out while he was still asleep. High as a goddamn kite, as my dad used to say. And I still went and had sex with him.

What on earth do I do now?

The next entry was made six weeks later. It was short and to the point.

The line on the test was blue, and there's only one person the father could be. I am in such deep shit.

"Evie?" asked John, but I still wasn't listening. I was adding up dates in my head, putting two and two together...My birthday is in mid-August, I'm the youngest in my year. From December to August is nine months exactly, and it didn't take a genius to work out what Mum was trying to tell me. Why she had sent me to Sherlock Holmes.

You could be related to him, John had said.

Well doctor, turn out I am. Oh crap.

Sherlock slung his leather satchel over his shoulder as he exited the library and reached into his pocket for the keys to his bicycle lock. The spring sun shone weakly down from between fluffy cumulus clouds. Formed by thermal updrafts present above towns and cities, he noted absently. He took no notice of the boys and girls wearing the uniform of their exclusive boarding school packing around him, keen to get home for the weekend. They took no notice of the skinny fifteen-year-old unlocking his bike for the trip back to the campus dorms. Sherlock had timed his exit very carefully. They should be almost deserted by now.

Shoscombe Place Private Boarding School was situated on expansive grounds in the Hertfordshire countryside. They had a fully equipped sports hall and tech labs, huge library and single, lockable rooms for students in year 10 or above. Sherlock cared little for the sports facilities, despite being an excellent kick-boxer, but he did care for the chemistry labs and especially for the library, spending the chief amount of his time there rather than mingling with the general student population. Not that anyone noticed his absence – they were all far too busy with their own boring little lives. Sherlock tuned them out, unless, of course, he needed them for something.

The teachers were the same. Sherlock, who had been home tutored by first his brother, then his Uncle Isaiah, couldn't understand why they wanted their students to learn things, but not so many things that they would surpass them. He had merely raised the point that the interpretation set down by the English teacher was not the one intended by Eliot – in fact, it was pure nonsense – and he couldn't see why he and his classmates should be forced to learn what was in essence the wrong information. He had expected at least a discussion, if not praise – instead he had been told to sit down and shut up. "When you have a degree and twenty years teaching behind you, Mr Holmes, we'll see what your interpretation is then."

Sherlock's straight A*s meant nothing when it came to the iron-clad opinion of the school and its teachers.

The Year 10 dormitories were about a fifteen-minute walk away from the main campus. Sherlock and his bicycle made it there in five. He had timed it perfectly – everybody bar about five students had already gone home.

Unfortunately, one of those five students was George 'Grimy' Roylott. Tiny IQ and the build and grace of a drunk bear. Slightly perverse relationship with a Year 7, who had an intellect about as long as her skirt, though, of course, nobody knew about that. "Well, well, well. Looks like the fag's emerged from the swamp."

Sherlock ignored him as he put the kettle on in the shared kitchen for a cup of coffee. Roylott had held a grudge against Sherlock ever since he had proved to the Head of House that it was him that spiked the punch with vodka at the last end-of-year ball – obvious from the smell of his fingers, made more obvious by the large (empty) bottle found in his room, plus the receipt. He had gotten off scot-free however (obviously – his father was a governor), and had set about making Sherlock's life hell. Poorly, true…but he was very annoying. And very stubborn. Sherlock's refusal to rise to the bait only seems to incense him more. So maybe he's just stupid.

"Where've you been this time, Holmes? Shacked up in a corner with some piece of ass?"

So crude. And unoriginal. And he's smoking behind the bike sheds again. He made no remark.

"I heard you've been running…experiments. Up in the labs." Roylott's voice dropped and deepened to a more threatening level. "Experiments on dead things. I heard you kill them yourself."

Sherlock allowed no emotion to show on his face, to betray the sudden, cold truth of the bully's words.

His next words are a hiss.

"Psycho. Freak."

Sherlock launched at him.

It was the first time he was ever called a freak, but the word would haunt him for fifteen long years.

I got the fact about the bees from .com/hub/Fifty-Interesting-and-Obscure-Facts, just FYI…

Whaddya think? Whaddya not think? Tell meeee….I won't eat you =D