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"Freak."
The word echoed against the tiled corridor of Scotland Yard. Not shouted, just muttered. But it hung in the air like smoke.
Sherlock didn’t turn around. Didn’t flinch.
"Every damn time," Donovan muttered to Anderson. "Struts in like he owns the place."
"Doesn’t even have a badge," Anderson agreed.
Sherlock stood before the crime scene, coat collar up, hands clasped behind his back. The insult slid off him like rain from oilskin. He was used to it.
John, walking behind him, caught the tail end of the exchange and glanced sideways. "You hear that?"
"Irrelevant," Sherlock said flatly, stepping beneath the crime scene tape.
At age eight, Sherlock Holmes was expelled from two schools in a single term. One for "unusual behaviour". The other for "violent outbursts under social duress".
At age ten, he solved a vandalism incident before the school administration could even begin its investigation.
By age twelve, he’d already stopped correcting teachers when they got things wrong.
There were patterns, dozens of them. Hidden in margins of forgotten school records, in hastily scribbled notes from guidance counselors. "Brilliant but difficult. Detached. Struggles with emotional engagement."
Mycroft had read them all. He hadn’t looked at them in years. Not until today.
It was a simple case: break-in, stolen safe, an open window that shouldn't have been.
Sherlock solved it in five minutes. Bored.
"You know, for someone so clever, you’re incredibly rude," Donovan said when he brushed past her.
He turned, mildly curious.
"Rude implies awareness. I’m merely efficient."
"That what you tell yourself? Freak."
This time, John stepped in. "Oi- enough."
"Let it go," Sherlock said. His tone was neutral, almost bored.
"You shouldn’t let them talk to you like that."
Sherlock gave him a flat look. "You don’t stop people from saying the sky is blue. It’s just expected."
That gave John pause.
It was a child. A little girl. Six, maybe seven.
She’d been at the scene, her mother a witness. She tugged on Sherlock’s coat when the adults were busy.
"Why are they calling you names?" she asked.
He blinked. "Because they don’t understand me."
"That’s mean."
He looked at her then. Properly. Her expression was confused. Genuinely upset on his behalf.
"Is it?" he asked.
She nodded solemnly. "You didn’t do anything."
Sherlock crouched slightly. Eye level.
"What would you do if someone called you that?"
"Tell a teacher. Or Mum. Or punch them."
He considered this. "Interesting."
John started noticing. Little things. How Sherlock would ignore every sideways glance. How he never responded when someone muttered a slur, insult, or jab.
"Doesn’t it bother you?" he asked once, while Sherlock was cleaning a beaker of something acidic. The aftermath of one of his experiments.
"What?"
"The names. The way people treat you."
"Statistically, most people are mediocre. I don’t expect them to act otherwise."
"But you don’t even react. Not even a flicker. That’s not… normal."
Sherlock shrugged. "I adapted."
The words were said so simply. As if adaptation was as natural as blinking.
"Did you know what they called him?" John asked.
Mycroft’s eyes darkened.
"Everyone called him names. It was easier than confronting what he was."
"You knew."
"Of course I knew. But he didn’t listen to me. He never did."
John looked away, contemplated. Then leaned in a fraction, "I don’t think he ignored them. I think he absorbed it. Internalised it."
Mycroft said nothing.
"It’s like he thinks that’s just the way people treat him. That it’s fine."
Mycroft looked out the window.
"Because it always has been."
A mistake. Not Sherlock’s. Someone else’s. But he took the blame because it was easier.
The Yard was buzzing. Anderson laughed. "Guess even geniuses screw up."
Sherlock didn’t respond. Just walked out.
John found him sitting on the steps outside.
"You didn’t screw up."
"Doesn’t matter. They’ve already decided it was me."
John sat next to him. "You shouldn’t let them."
Sherlock looked tired. Older.
"If you’re told something enough times, you stop questioning it."
Donovan was the first to apologise. Awkward. Forced. But real.
"Look- I was wrong."
Sherlock didn’t say anything.
"You’re still a pain. But you didn’t deserve that."
He blinked. "Acknowledged."
Anderson was slower. But after Sherlock saved his niece from a stalker, he offered a grudging thanks. No insults.
It didn’t erase everything. But it shifted things.
People began to see. Not just the brilliance. But the man under it.
Sherlock stood before a crowd of cadets at Scotland Yard.
"They asked me to speak about profiling," he began. "But I’ll say this instead."
He paused.
"There’s a cost to treating difference as weakness. I know. I lived it. Still do."
He looked at them all.
"But brilliance isn’t diminished by cruelty. It survives. Sometimes because it has to. Not because it wants to."
A long silence.
Then: applause.
John brought home fish and chips. Sherlock was on the sofa, violin in hand.
"You’re unusually quiet today," John noted.
"I’ve been thinking."
"About?"
"Labels. Names. Assumptions."
John sat. Waited.
Sherlock looked at him.
"I don’t think I’m broken."
John smiled. "Good. Because you’re not."
Sherlock nodded once, then went back to playing.
Outside, London buzzed.
Inside, Sherlock Holmes was rewriting the variables.
And this time, he’d include himself.