Prompting Part XXVI
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
“There is a fifty percent chance any male son of Mummy’s would inherit the affected X-chromosome. I was born with a typical X-chromosome, and my little brother got dealt the mutated one.” John envisioned the Holmes family pedigree chart, with the colored squares and circles. “Mummy has always said that the situation, as it were, would have be far less challenging had the chromosomal assignments been reversed,” Mycroft commented wistfully.
John laughed disbelievingly at the idea of the Holmes household with an adolescent, hormonal wolf in residence. “Can’t imagine it being easy, growing up with Sherlock as a part-time wolf.”
“You have no idea. We brought in people, of course. Lycan-medical experts, behavioral specialists, a lycan nanny, and even a Labrador retriever companion to assist with socialization. Even so, he shifted at the most inopportune times, and drove Mummy and the household staff to the brink of their oceanic patience with his misbehavior. But I suspect that Sherlock, even without the lycanthropy, would have been a challenge.” Mycroft withdraws a leather-bound album from his briefcase, and handed it to John.
John opens the album and sees a series of tastefully done prenatal portraits of a pregnant, dark-haired, beautifully radiant woman, her belly framed by long pale arms and elegant fingers. “That’s Mummy when she was pregnant with Sherlock,” Mycroft describes. John smiles and flips a few more pages, and comes across the same woman, this time with a tired smile, holding a sleeping infant with fluffy dark hair that can only be Sherlock. As infants go, he looks about the same as any other infant. “Mummy calmed down considerably when Sherlock transformed to his human form, so we were able to take this photograph,” Mycroft says with a slight smile.
John flips on, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the intimacy of the photographs, but he is too curious not continue. He sees a photograph of a mostly black, downy-furred puppy with small triangular ears and light blue eyes staring into the camera on pudgy legs. John cannot keep from smiling widely. “That’s Sherlock? Wow. Who knew he could be so cute. He has blue eyes in this,” John notices. The most startling aspect of his first (and so far only) encounter with Sherlock in his wolf form has been Sherlock’s yellow eyes.
“Like wild wolf cubs, his blue eyes transformed to a golden color as he got older. He also lost those bits of white fur. Mummy warmed up to Sherlock’s wolf form, eventually. It would be hard not to. Especially because he would change at least once a day. Even as a cub, he learned quickly that Mummy refuses to nurse him in his wolf form. That’s when he gets a bottle.”
John flips the page and sees an image of a seven-year old Mycroft bottle-feeding Sherlock as a black puppy in his arms. He is shown cradled in Mycroft’s arms belly up, legs and tail tucked, his tiny front paws holding onto the top of the bottle. He notes Mycroft wearing thick gardening gloves.
“He might not have any teeth at this point, but his claws were atrocious.” Mycroft comments, wryly. The next few pages feature a slightly overweight young Mycroft romping with Sherlock as a wolf cub in a green pasture. The wolf cub’s wide open mouth, small pink tongue lolling out, gives him a look of pure happiness and innocent joy. In another series of photographs, the black wolf cub is pictured with a pale-colored puppy, obviously of the domesticated dog variety.
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“Yes. The behaviorists suggested we adopt a canine puppy to help with Sherlock’s lupine socialization process, such as learning proper social play and bite inhibition. It would also help establish a socialization history for his eventual lycanthrope sentience classification.” John flips past the puppy pictures, interspersed with pictures of Sherlock as a human infant, and then as a toddler. Bright, inquisitive, and intensely knowing blue eyes locks into the viewer on each page of the album, all fat cheeks and the beginnings of that heart-shaped mouth.
John realizes suddenly that he is enjoying himself, that Mycroft is acting the long-suffering but proud elder brother, delivering embarrassing childhood stories and pictures to satisfy John’s burgeoning curiosity about Sherlock’s wolfself. John is enjoying himself so much, in fact, that the absurdity of this meeting has almost escaped him. He looks out the window and thinks the driver is taking them on a roundabout tour of Westminster.
“As much as I am finding this meeting oddly pleasant for a change, why am I here, exactly?”
Mycroft fixes John with an indecipherable look. “Sherlock is as wolf as he is human. The split personality that other lycanthropes report is not part of his experience. When Sherlock was a child, we tried teaching him to separate his wolf instincts from proper human manners, but my brother has always been, if nothing else, incurably rebellious. When he was five, the behavioral specialists and the family tried to introduce him to a carefully selected pack, but to say that he did not accept the situation is a gross understatement.
“During university, he experimented with running with a pack. It led to some unfortunate liaisons with rather unsavory characters, and the consequences are lifelong. For a few years, we despaired that he would never overcome his downward spiral into self-destruction, and it was...agony to watch. You already know about his history of substance abuse. We were advised to stop enabling him, withdraw all offers of resources, and that he would come around when he made the decision to. In retrospect, it was a necessary but crippling way of dealing with his needs. From a psychosocial perspective, it is now my belief that he self-medicates as a means to cope with the lack of pack structure and the general shortage of tolerance for his poorly restrained lupine tendencies.”
“But, I thought, boredom...” John interjects.
“Oh, there was also his desire for constant cerebral stimulation, but he also needed structure amid the chaos to feel at ease. Despite his seeming laissez-faire attitude towards all things structured, he needs pack structure, he needs some form of discipline, even if he acts out against it.
“We were always his pack. He didn’t need a wolf pack as a child, and he threw proper tantrums over that. He resented me and Mummy for forcing him away from his human pack, and then he experimented again with a proper wolf pack in University. It didn’t work, because his “wolf” is different from theirs.
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“Me?”
“Yes. I may have initially disagreed about your inclusion to his ‘pack,’ as you are obviously unfamiliar with lycanthropes and uneasy even around dogs. But he is insistent; he has chosen you to be part of it.”
John barely has a moment to process Mycroft’s statement, when the door opens and he is being ushered back onto the street in front of his flat. He heard Mycroft say a perfunctory “Good day, Dr. Watson,” before the door shuts and the black sedan peels away from the curb.
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Okay, if anyone is still reading, let me know if you like this and want me to continue! There are a few different directions this can go, and I'd love to hear what you think!
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I'd really like to read some more if you'll continue. :)
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Thank you for reading and commenting! I am trying to see what direction I want this story to go, now that I know there is some interest in it!
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Thank you so much for commenting. I am trying to world-build some more and try to flesh out what it is like to live as a lycanthrope in this 'verse.
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Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I feel reinvigorated to know that there are at least a few people interested in this story!
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