Chapter Text
It’s not the first time Enola accidentally hurts herself due to her own, well—
(Curiosity is what she would like to call it, rather than the big words she can hear the town’s people whisper about her and Mum.
She’s already halfway through the “Q” section in the Encyclopedia, but even without it she can tell how the mutterings of “unbecoming”—(adjective: not fitting or appropriate; unseemly)—and “disgraceful“—(adjective: shockingly unacceptable)—affect Mum, by the way her jaw clenches and how her fingers tighten a fraction of an inch.
Sometimes Enola wants to ask what it all means, why everyone in town seems to whisper the moment they think Enola isn’t listening. It’s a stupid assumption, really. Enola is always listening.
But she never can focus. She knows Mum is cleverly distracting her, always dangling some sort of interesting object for her to inspect or a new riddle to be solved, but she allows it.
It’s Mum, after all.)
—recklessness, as the maid calls it. It was a truly idiotic mistake. A snap of branches and a fall from the willow tree Mycroft had always wanted to cut down when he was still at Ferndell Hall. But there was a bird's nest, and inside was a glint of metal that caught her eye, and just how could Enola resist?
Sherlock, Enola thinks, would have examined all the branches as he climbed, carefully calculated his path up and down, or have found some way to find what was in the nest without climbing the tree at all. And yes, Enola could do that, but it was so exciting, the thrill of the surprise!
Why waste time when you could do it now?
Besides, she never sees Sherlock anyways. The only word she’s gotten about him is stories she overhears and small whispers she convinces various people to tell.
And it’s fine, really. Sherlock is far too busy with her own matters, off at school. Enola is occupied too.
Presently, the rather large and bleeding scrape on her leg. She should get an adult to help, but…
Enola, you will do very well on your own.
There was no need for that. Telling anyone of her injury would only convince them that a “delicate”—(adjective: easily damaged or broken. How Enola resents that word)—girl such as herself should not be allowed to run, climb trees, or collect trinkets, and that just wouldn’t do.
But her leg is hurting, and if she doesn’t do anything quickly, she might burst into tears, which would be far more humiliating than asking for help.
What to do, what to do? Limping all the way across the courtyard, up the twenty-three—(she counted)—steps of stairs, to the left of the hall, avoid the creaky wood panel, shut the door, but not entirely, so it doesn’t click.
In the relative privacy of her bedroom, she allows herself to let out a small whimper of pain. No extra time for that, though, and she hurries to get the small roll of gauze she stole from one of the maids.
At the time, it was because she wondered about the gauze’s absorption rates while wet and damp, but now Enola’s very glad for her past self’s curiosity about medical bandages.
It stings, but at least she isn’t bleeding all over the floor. The maids would have noticed that instantly, and the ruse would be up. One makeshift bandage later, courtesy of the now-bloody pad of gauze and some tape, she can pull her trouser leg down and it looks like nothing’s wrong.
And she fixed it all by herself! There was no need for Mum or the maid, and no one would ever be the wiser. It felt like a little secret, locked inside her heart that only Enola had the key to. A tad giddily, Enola strolls back down the stairs, albeit at a slower pace than usual.
She did very well on her own. Mum would be proud.
But, as Enola pauses on the eighteenth step, she would never know. Telling Mum how she fixed her leg would be “counterintuitive”—(adjective: contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation)—and would ruin the entire point of her ruse.
No, Enola decided, continuing down the stairs, no one would know. She did, and would continue to do, very well on her own. This must be what Mum wants.
(When she inhales a bit too sharply after her leg skims a table edge, she brushes off the maids concerned looks. She sits down and eats dinner with Mum, the other three chairs empty like they always are, and if she didn’t discuss her day as fervidly as usual, well, winter was coming. It’s just the bad weather.
She excuses herself and goes to bed with an aching leg. This is what Mum wants from her. If she finally achieves independence, Mum can stop clenching her jaw and twitching her hands whenever the townspeople gossip, she doesn’t have to worry about her scandalous daughter, and Enola can pave her own path out of the shadow of her two clever brothers to make the family proud.
She’s fine with that.
She is.)
————
There’s a small book on the corner table, nearly covered by trinkets, clothing, and other books, but still in pristine condition.
This is the book Enola blindly grabs at, sitting on the floor with a dislocated ankle and wrist, as a distraction from the stabbing pain currently flowing through her body like how a river flows through sand; an endless current eroding away her basic functions.
Reading a book with one hand isn’t an easy task, but no one’s ever heard Enola back down from a challenge. Besides, she’s memorised the entire thing from the table of contents to the epilogue.
On the cover, elegant red text spells out, “A Study in Scarlet”, by one Dr. Watson, featuring Sherlock Holmes.
Tracing a hand over the paper, carefully opening the book to Chapter One, she reads. Well, perhaps not read, but recall. The paper and ink just provide the full experience, as she mindlessly scans the beginning of the book.
When Mum first bought the book, she was required to translate nearly every other word. Now, Enola is grown. Perhaps not a lady, but she doesn’t want to be one. She much prefers staying a girl in Ferndell Hall, free to do whatever she pleases.
Doctor Watson begins the book with a simple paragraph, nothing of much interest to Enola.
“In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached…”
It’s Doctor Watson himself who is intriguing, for how could a man as simple and seemingly lacking in mental fortitude as he, get along with her confoundingly clever brother?
But she has mused these thoughts before, and without significant evidence or firsthand experience, there is nothing to be “deduced”. (verb: draw as a logical conclusion. She’s long finished reading the Encyclopedia, but a word that her brother uses so frequently is of relative importance to her.)
Definitions and their clarity have always been comforting to her, though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone. Any keywords, she automatically defines, categorises and stores in her mental library.
She has nearly 3,109 words related to Sherlock Holmes in her head. Only 27 of those words were spoken directly to her by the man himself—the rest are drawn from other sources.
It’s a little discomfiting, to know how much she thinks of Sherlock, and how little he thinks of her.
It’s only natural though, with him busy apprehending murderers and villains. The last he saw of her was at their respective father’s funeral, and she had hardly made a good impression then.
Lost in her thoughts, there’s a small unconscious shift in her position, and the stabbing pain in both her leg and arm resurfaces, drawing her out of the turmoil in her mind. With renewed difficulty, she scans through the pages for the person she truly wishes to hear of.
“Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning…”
Enola devours these words in an almost ferocious manner, grasping for any shred of her brother, whom she idolises so. With all these scraps of knowledge, she can formulate a picture of him in her head, what he might sound like, act like, and look like, now that he’s a man and no longer the boy the maids remember.
“Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room…a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic…”
Even as she reads this paragraph for the dozenth time, she unconsciously frowns. Her picture-perfect brother, succumbing to some illness of the mind? Despite their…“estrangement”, (noun: the fact of no longer being on friendly terms or part of a social group) she still worries about the blurry figure in her memory.
(Even just the thought makes her feel sick, but sometimes she takes a selfish gratification in this apparent flaw.
A chip on The Great Detective, evidence that he isn’t some god-like creature, but one that stumbles. Whenever she is particularly injured, there’s some guilty comfort in the fact her brother might be in the same position as her, useless and immobilised.
Perhaps she’s just grasping at straws, trying to drag her brother down onto her level, but it’s the only way she can do so. It humanises him, in such a slight way; makes him feel just a fraction closer to Enola.)
The book is finished in the next few minutes. Reading the entire encyclopedia did wonders for her reading speed, but for a moment she regrets it, because the second her mind isn’t focused on the contradiction that is her brother and her feelings, it feels like reality snaps back into focus, and the pain returns two-fold.
Ah, her ankle. And wrist. She almost, for a blessed moment, forgot about them.
It’s almost become a game, or at least a habit, to conceal her injuries for as long as possible, which is often from the time they appear, bright red and bleeding, to the time they heal over with white puckered scars.
The maids, or now rather, maid, doesn’t mind her, and Mum is more often out than not. She feels satisfaction and an odd sense of disappointment every time, the pride of a task accomplished and the disheartenment of no one’s notice.
Enola, alone.
But that’s all she ever wanted. Well, all Mum ever wanted.
She grabs another book, semi-content to return to the fog of concentration. At least to avoid such disparaging thoughts as these, as well as the stabbing ache. By the time she’s an adult, she’ll probably have such a heightened pain tolerance it will be impressive.
Her birthday is almost upon her. Hopefully, her limbs would have healed by then, because if not, it would be a pain, quite literally, to hide it all from the maid and Mum.
Returning to her book, she flips the page with one hand and mindlessly reads on.
————
There’s a stinging throb in Enola’s cheek, and it’s undoubtedly making her look more like the blushing, crying, damsel in distress her brothers obviously think she is, but she cannot care. Not when her entire life, her freedom was a stake.
She’s on her knees. She would beg, with her forehead pressed against the cold tile, if it would change Mycroft’s mind.
And at her greatest moment of need, a desperate inspiration strikes.
Sherlock. Sherlock, her brother, the one who could—would—change everything. She’s just a gangly girl, but not even Mycroft was able to stand up to The Great Detective.
As she turns, all her perfectly formulated phrases disappear, the synonyms and definitions falling through her fingers like smoke on a windy day. She manages only a word, a whisper, aimed at him.
“Please.”
If the circumstances were different, she might have taken a few minutes to simply commit his face to memory. He’s tall, no longer the skinny boy the maids remember. He’s grown into a proper man. Father would’ve been proud of him in a way he never would’ve been of her.
Her brother, her idol, her inspiration, and someone who can’t understand. Why? He’s a certified bachelor, who paved his own path, in both career and personal.
They could be so similar if given the chance. They could be siblings.
Sherlock glances at her cheek. Of course, he can see right through her. Please, she begs in her mind, with words she couldn’t say out loud. Please, for just this moment, stay.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Enola’s heart drops.
There’s buzzing in her ear, and she knows what it is. It’s the sound of her world crashing down around her, as she’s helpless to do anything, bound by the law.
“It’s out of my hands.”
There is no one she can call her own now. Mum is gone, without even a farewell. Her eldest brother has confined her to a fate she is powerless to stop.
And Sherlock, the detective, her brother, her blood, the person she adores most, and now one she resents as well.
Turning on her heel, Enola leaves the room without a word. If they will strip her of everything she loves most, they will not manage to strip her dignity, or whatever scraps of it she had left.
It isn’t until she rises up the stairwell and sits on the cold wood floor of her room, does she begin to grasp the significance of what’s about to be done with her.
“A Study in Scarlet” sits innocently on the table in front of her. Through all the sprains and cuts, bruises and scrapes, it has been there as a comfort.
One quote from the book, directly from her brother, comes unbidden to her mind.
“But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.”
It was a doomed hope from the start. Sherlock’s absence from her life, their empty, broken relationship; it had festered in Enola’s heart for years. Now, the tenuous thread connecting them throughout all these years has been burnt beyond recognition.
More words have passed between her and her brother during these past few hours than in the entirety of her life. She’s made a new mental list of every new definition that needs to be added to her “Sherlock” category.
At that moment, another one is added.
Eyes blurry, she blindly grasps for the book, as she’s done countless times before.
The small novel hits the wall in a flurry of pages. Enola listens to the paper rip, and the spine crack.
And some small, secret, part of her heart, the last little piece buried deep inside her that still believes that everything can be fixed, cracks along with it.
(Noun: the action of turning on one's country, a group, or a person; treachery.
Betrayal.)
————
Since that fateful morning, the day she grieved for her still-living family, Enola hasn’t found the same comfort in the definitions that she once held so dear. All she finds now is undeniable proof that her idealised versions of her siblings are gone, and likely never existed at all.
Whenever she tries to picture her brother, all that comes to mind is him looking down upon her, without a trace of feeling in his eyes.
“Don’t think about Mum” has turned into “Don’t think about Sherlock”.
And life went on. It was not the same. But it went on.
In the absence of her careful categorizations, Enola directed her focus elsewhere. More specifically, onto the language of flowers. One of the last gifts Mum gave her, before she abandoned her to her fate.
Perhaps she’s being too harsh. Eudoria left plenty behind, all to aid Enola in escaping the very future she left herself.
Don’t think about Mum.
Nevertheless, there is a new section in her mind library, filled to the brim with flowers and their messages, the specific ways in their placement and how it changes the intent behind it.
On days when she feels particularly alone, she retreats into her head and spends hours upon hours, in a trance-like state, going over each new meaning, learning more, and delving into the intricate ways of this language that was spoken without words.
This is one of those days, and normally she would be brooding in her room, but it’s such a sunny, bright day out, a rarity in London, it would be a shame to let this chance go to waste.
She’s picked a relatively unknown path to stroll, just in case her spirits rise and she feels the need to run, just to work off some of her energy. There’s also the fact that she simply feels more at peace without attracting unwanted attention from the various unsavoury groups in the city slums.
It’s a small section of a public park where wildflowers and plants grow without pruning or human interference. It reminds her of Ferndell Hall, with the wild roses and brambles, gardens full of flowers, and the windy willow tree she’d injured herself so many times climbing.
With a pang, she realises that Mycroft, with legal ownership of the property, has likely pruned all the flowers into small orderly bushes, and cut the willow tree to merely a stump.
Despite all her disguises, change has never come naturally to Enola.
She gazes at a patch of small pink flowers, carnations—(female love, mother’s love)—before abruptly averting her gaze. She came to distract herself from self-pity, not wallow in it within a very public setting.
Determined to enjoy the rest of her walk, she moves on. A cluster of daisies—(innocence, loyal attachment), a sprig of honeysuckle—(bonds of love), all the while sketching some of the particularly pretty flowers onto some scraps of paper she brought with her.
Only at the end of the path does she snap out of her daze, and looks down at her paper, now full of various wildlife.
To her displeasure, although her head may not be thinking about her troubles, her hands seem to have a mind of their own.
As she stares at the page, a single red anemone stares back at her. Along the edges of the paper, she finds to her despair; random arrangements of petunias—(anger, resentment), marigolds—(grief, jealousy), hydrangeas—(frigidity, heartlessness), and black dahlias—(betrayal).
Why have her appendages betrayed her so? Enola isn’t idiotic, the wreath of flowers along the sides obviously are all her suppressed feelings towards him, but she doesn’t understand the centrepiece, the red anemone.
How ironic, after she’s managed to evade capture by countless people, including The Great Detective, that the problem that stumps her is one drawn by her own hand.
The anemone flower groups over a hundred species together, but its meaning is “forsaken love”.
Assuming it follows the same pattern as the previous flowers, this is supposed to express her own feelings towards her brother.
But, this would only make sense if Enola still loves her brother.
That feeling died long ago, the moment when he looked her in the eyes and threw away years of worship with the uttering of seven words.
(As much as she tries to forget it, erase it from her mind along with any remains of affection for him, that phrase persists in tormenting her waking days.)
As soon as she returns to her rented room, she throws the drawing into the fire. The suffocating smoke that comes from its ashes fills the room, like universal karma punishing her for her blatant lies.
(It is only a few days later does she truly understand.
She glimpses the weekly headline while buying a newspaper, to check the “agony” columns for any signs of Mum, and chokes on her own disbelieving breath.
With wide eyes, she reads the title again.
“Great Detective Dead”
For one terrible moment, she is frozen.
Flashing through her mind are pictures and imaginings, of her brother dead from a piercing bullet, bleeding out in a dark alleyway with a knife through his heart, an illness of the mind or body that decayed at his very life. There’s a buzzing in her ears; her hands are gripping the paper so hard it’s ripping, and she’s sure her face is pale-white.
Then, her adrenaline spikes and it barely takes a few seconds for her to scan the article.
Her vision blurs while on the first sentence, but she still reads the paragraph in a single moment.
It was about a police detective killed in the line of duty in Scotland.
Oh. Oh.
She sags against the dirty stone wall, going limp like a puppet with cut strings. She might’ve passed out from the relief if it weren’t for the fact that people were beginning to stare.
Six minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It took six minutes and twenty-seven seconds for her heart to return to a normal pace and for her fists to unclench.
Still sitting on dirty concrete, Enola places her head in her trembling hands, because she isn’t stupid and all she can do is accept the undeniable proof.
She unequivocally, treacherously, distressingly, loves Sherlock.)