Work Text:
The Improbable Boy
Most children grow up, except for one. Sherlock Holmes certainly knew he would one day grow up, due to the evidence of Mycroft growing up to become a royal pain in the butt. Their mother cooed over Sherlock, wishing he could always be little.
"Well, I won't mother. That cannot happen. Everything grows up eventually, and that's that."
Violet Holmes smiled somewhat sadly and shook her head. "Yes I know dear, but that doesn't make my wish any less true." She gathered him up in her arms and kissed him thoroughly. He giggled as little children do, and squirmed until she let him free. "My little bumble bee." She slipped him a pastry, and sent him on his way.
The Holmes were a proper family, and as a proper family had a nanny. She was smart enough to realize though, that too stern a hand would do her no good, so she made certain allowances for both Holmes' boys, until Mycroft was grown. She now only had Sherlock to spoil, and did so in the most delightful ways. Indulging him as he questioned her every move in the kitchen, as she mixed ingredients for baking and cooking, explaining how each ingredient worked with the others to make the most delicious foods. As any good nanny/cook knows, samples during the making are a must, and Sherlock was always more than willing to test the berries' ripeness for various pies/scones. He was a very adept helper in the kitchen, and it was a testament to Nanny's intelligence that his every question was answered properly, or he was lead to where he could find said answers deftly. Her word was almost gospel to him (if he believed in such a thing) and would never dare her displeasure with his actions if he could help it. Sometimes though, things blew up or caught fire in his attempts at experiments. He was contrite in his apologies, and always promised to be more careful. This was helped at Christmas time, when his parents gifted him a proper lab set, with proper safety gear.
What Sherlock loved most though, were those times where he was free to his own imaginings. Mycroft had once faithfully ruled by his side as a fellow pirate and co-captain of the open seas, but as all boys must, he was now grown, in more ways than one, as Sherlock never failed to point out. Sherlock though, was lucky to have a faithful new companion, Redbeard. The most feared guard dog of the seven seas, and Sherlock's best friend. Sherlock had never had a real friend before, who listened to his secrets and dreams. Most children found the way he thought too strange, and too revealing to deal with. Most children his age refused to be around him within hours of meeting him, and either ignored him or bullied him in the ways children did. The adults did not see too much of this of course, but when he made a very composed request to not interact with others his age, they complied as well as they dared. Children are meant to be around one another, but Sherlock being so very special, they could see how being different made that hard.
Violet Holmes first learned of John Watson as she tiptoed through Sherlock’s mind palace. Most children have no such thing, and their mothers go through each night and tidy up their minds like tidying a drawer, wondering where some most humorous ideas have come from, and tucking away those not so humorous ideas that plague even the littlest of minds. Sherlock being Sherlock of course, had a meticulously labeled mind palace where he stored all sorts of information. Everything he learned about had it’s very own special room so that it could be recalled quickly and reliably. This made it impossible for her to help tidy away too many negative ideas, which she fretted over nightly. She did her best, nudging here and there and it was in a very special room in the heart of his palace that she found all on its own, as if it were an island of a room, separate but still a piece of the whole. Neverland is usually an island of sorts, confused with the rest of the child’s mind, intermingled with an assortment of memories that one creates in childhood, the basis of oneself. Neverland varies from child to child, but it came to no surprise to Mrs. Holmes that Sherlock’s was a pirate lagoon, with a brightly colored reef that stranded many a ship on stormy nights. It is here that she first found the name John. There were no Johns in Sherlock's school age group, and none in their close family members that Sherlock was prodded to engage with at holidays.