Work Text:
i. I’m just dreaming of tearing you apart.
She is just a child, your mother always told the people who whispered questions in her ear, she just doesn’t have control over her emotions yet. To you, it sounded more like she was desperate to convince herself that you were normal than it seemed like a legitimate excuse for who you were.
People always looked at you in a certain way, a look that made your skin crawl and your mind buzz. I am here, it made you want to shout, I am here and I am real so stop looking at me like I’m something out of a nightmare. You tried, you tried to make them see how your mind sets itself on fire just to be able to feel something, but they only gave you pathetic, pitiful smiles and it was minutes later that you realised you were screaming. The fire in your mind sparked into your lungs and with ash-filled breath you screamed and screamed until your voice was as used-up and empty as you felt. That night you heard your parents arguing loudly enough that their voices carried all the way to your room. Phrases like it’s better for the other two and they’ll be able to help her there duelled with she’s four years old, Violet and she’ll lose her safe place. You laughed at that, who did father think he was, he who knew so little but assumed so much. Your safe place was in fire and ashes where you belonged. You thought of fire and death and destruction as your parents’ voices gradually got louder until they reached an apparent agreement. In the end it seemed your father, with his sentimental reasoning, had won. You didn’t know how to feel about that but at least you got to stay with Sherlock so it was okay. When you lied down and found a damp pillow you put your hand to your cheek and discovered that it was wet. You didn’t know how to feel about that either.
ii. Writers keep writing what they write, somewhere another pretty vein just died.
On a family outing, Sherlock fell out of a tree and scraped his arms. The blood that dripped down his hands was pretty and you thought this is what human looks like. Sherlock cried and screamed that it hurt and your parents kissed him and held him the way they never held you. You thought that maybe if you were just slightly more human they wouldn’t be afraid to touch you. A few days later your brother found you standing in the kitchen with a knife in your hand and blood like a pretty, deadly waterfall running down your arms and pooling on the floor. Are you in pain? he asked you. You felt so much at the same time but nothing different from normal except a strange light happiness at seeing the blood seep out of your veins. Was that pain? Pain was bad, you knew, but there was no good or bad in your mind, you only knew right and wrong and there was nothing wrong about this. You knew your brother would be too dumb to understand so you replied: Which one is pain? The emotion that flickered across his face was one you were not used to seeing on him, it looked almost... scared. Of course you were used to people being afraid of you, but not him, not Mycroft.
You had heard your parents whisper psychopath before but now you wondered if it was true. If you really were a psychopath, you would’ve liked his fear, would have enjoyed it. Instead, you felt less human on that day than you ever had before.
iii. I’ve got the scars from tomorrow and I wish you could see that you’re the antidote to everything except for me.
They sent you to see a psychiatrist twice a week, a young lady with bright eyes who just wouldn’t stop smiling. It annoyed you, so you told her about that time you found a rabbit in the woods and killed it because you wanted to see if it would scream (it did). She never smiled at you that lightly again.
One time, on a bright summer day, she asked you about the scars and you found yourself suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to be understood. To feel human, you said, and to your disappointment she just nodded and started writing notoriously in her little notebook. After the fifth session you decided that you didn’t like this one, so in a very soft, melodic voice you told her to walk up to the nearest bridge and jump off the edge. The next day you heard it on TV. It was so sudden and unexpected, they said. You felt very right in that moment because this was the first time you had ever tried this and it had worked perfectly, or almost perfectly. It was the wrong bridge she jumped off of, there was another one 2 minutes closer. Repeat yourself more often next time, you noted to yourself.
Four psychiatrists later you finally found one you liked. A man, this time. Is there something wrong with me? you asked him once, with ash-smeared clothing and an air of smoke around you. He looked at you curiously and it made you want to kick your feet right through his desk but you didn’t because he answered. That is not up to me to decide, he said, and you smiled a tiny smile because this man might not judge you.
He did judge, however, when you did things that were ‘bad’ because they hurt you or someone else. But what is pain, anyway? What, really, is the difference between crying and laughing? What does it matter that you burned the neighbour’s barn because he had painted it the wrong colour blue? Why does it matter that you have painted lines upon lines of red on your arms because it’s not like you feel it or anything so it doesn’t hurt anyone. Why, then, is it ‘bad’? Those were the moments when you really doubted you should ever talk to anyone again. What was the point in speaking if no one understood what you said? You spent the rest of your therapy sessions in silence, observing the psychiatrist and doodling on the table. He was the one who gave up on you in the end.
iv. A constellation of tears on your lashes, burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
Mycroft and your parents were always whispering these days and they all looked at you with the look. The only one who didn’t have that pity in his eyes was Sherlock. He was scared of you, yes, but he didn’t pity you. He was scared of you because of what you did to him, not because you weren’t normal enough. You appreciated this, but Sherlock would never play with you because he had Victor. Victor Trevor, who got to play pirates with Sherlock every day and who looked at you in a way that practically screamed I get to play with him and you don't. We don’t want you here. Of course he never said any of those things but you were sure that he meant it anyway. He was always polite to your family, yet you despised him. You never had someone like that, a best friend. Your parents tried to get you to play with other people, making sure that their friends brought their little girls into your house every time they came over. They annoyed you, with their frilly pink dresses and high-pitched giggles. When they were playing with their dolls you decided to be polite and played with them. You took one of their dolls, pulled off its head and set its dress on fire. The girls loved it, they were laughing and laughing until their parents came and took them away. Your parents frantically apologized to them and shouted at you when they were gone. It turns out they hadn’t been laughing after all. Your parents never invited kids to come over after that.
That was okay, because you never liked them anyway. The only one who could come close to understanding you, the only one who could save you was Sherlock. But Sherlock wouldn’t play with you, wouldn’t save you. All he did these days was lie in bed and cry (or was he laughing, you weren’t sure of that but judging by the solemn looks on your parents’ faces that wasn’t the case.) He had been so boring since you had gotten rid of Victor. He wouldn’t even try to solve your riddle, even though he had always been fond of playing detective. You spent all your time in your room, drawing every scenario that played through your mind during the day, most of them killing Sherlock. He was as good as dead to you now anyway.
It became quite boring after a while, and since Sherlock still wouldn’t play with you, you decided to make one of the drawings come to life. I was just so bored, you would say the first time they asked you why you did it. Every time after that you’d say nothing and just smiled at the memory. It was intriguing and beautiful, the complex patterns of the fire as it swallowed your childhood home. You stood close by, watching attentively while the flames blackened the walls and the heat scorched your already scarred arms.
The men in white came to take you away the day after that.
v. In the end everything collides, my childhood spat back out the monster that you see.
Now, years and years later, Sherlock came back for you and finally wanted to play with you. How interesting it was, to see so much emotion in those three people in that room. His emotional capabilities had always been what drew you to him, and this was the best way to experiment with them. Maybe if you observed them enough, you might finally understand them and maybe then you’d finally be human enough to not have to be lonely anymore. Suddenly, in the middle of your game, Sherlock put a gun to his head and you felt an inkling of fear at the prospect of not being able to play with him anymore. You tranquilized him and decided to speed the game up a little, because you couldn’t wait much longer to be saved.
When you told him about Redbeard he reacted by crying (what a beautiful expression of human emotion, you should definitely remember that one.) You killed my best friend, he said. I was just trying to get mine back, you wanted to reply. Instead, you said that you never had a best friend, which was just as true. Never had you realised how lonely your life had been until then. A little girl, trapped inside a mind that never seemed to stop spinning and cursed with the ability to end human life, never had any other company than fire and destruction. So lonely and desperate for some kind of human contact, you were lost on that damned plane again. Why couldn’t Sherlock hurry up with that slow mind of his and finally figure out how much you needed him?
Then, he burst into your room, saying I’m here, Eurus. Finally, finally he had come to save you. You wouldn’t have to be lost and alone anymore. He helped you land the plane, pulled you out of your lonely isolation. He hugged you and that was when you realised that you did know what pain was, you did feel pain, had, in fact, been feeling nothing but pain for as long as you could remember. Your brother held you while you cried for your own life, and for the first time since you were born you didn’t feel alone.
After that day, you never said a word again. You had never liked words, and now you didn’t have to speak anymore, your brother would understand you just as well in silence. And as the sound of two violins playing drowned out memories of fire and ashes, you finally felt human.