Written for my friend Golden Disasters

They call him so many names.

Freak. Weird. Retard.

He can't escape them-can't escape them like he can when Daddy yells or Mum cries. He can't retreat into the safety of himself because those names are branded into his memory, burning like fire behind his eyes every time he closes them.

Freak.

His jaw hurts. He can feel a bruise beginning to form on his cheek. Blood is sharp and salty against his tongue when he licks his lips. They had hit him, hit him hard with their fists, but they had crippled him with their words.

He pulls his knees up to his chest and rocks back and forth. The blood slips from his lips and into his mouth as he whispers, "make it stop, please, please, please make it stop." His eyes clench, and that word that horrible, awful word laughs at him.

Freak.

It's going to be dark soon, he knows. He can feel the night air, cold against his bare, bruised hands and the through the torn fabric of his shirt. They had thrown him to the ground at one point, he realizes now, and the wind stings against the raw, exposed skin.

His soft whispers have become sobs, and instantly he hates himself for it. Stop crying, Sherlock. Stop. Only babies cry.

But he can't. He's shaking with the force of them-they're tearing at him like the horrible words but somehow it hurts less. Somehow it hurts less when he suddenly can't breathe and he's back on the ground, crying onto the frozen pavement until Mycroft finds him.

Nothing hurts him more than that word.

Freak.

Mycroft sits with him that night, after cleaning the cuts and the bruises with something that stung like a hundred bee stings.

"Did they call you names, Sherly?" he asks.

Sherlock shrugs. The words don't hurt as much right now. Now that he's home and the house is finally quiet from all the yelling and the moon is big and white and bright out his window. And his big brother is with him. Mycroft always seems to make the words go away.

"They did, didn't they?" Mycroft's voice is very soft, gentle. Not even Mummy talks to him like that. Mummy doesn't know how to do anything other than hug him and cry. Mycroft gives him the answers.

"Yeah. They called me-" The word burns like acid in his throat and he can't say it, he just can't because then it will be real. He will taste it on his tongue and it will laugh at him whenever he closes his eyes. freakfreakfreakfreak.

"Hey. Sherly, look at me." Mycroft's hand is under his chin, tilting it up.

Very slowly, Sherlock raises his eyes to his brother's. It's dark in the room, but he can just make out the shadow along Mycroft's temple and jawline. To Sherlock, he looks like a knight in a fairytale. Not that Sherlock really likes those silly stories.

"When they call you names like that, do you know what you do?" Sherlock can hear the seriousness in his older brother's voice, and knows that this is something very important. "When they call you names, you can go to your Mind Palace, and you can store those words away. Lock them up so they can't hurt you that way again. And then you walk away. Don't look them in the eye. We're better than them, Sherlock. We don't feel the way they do."

"I feel," Sherlock whispers. "I feel, and it hurts."

"I know," Mycroft says, with such an ache in his voice that Sherlock understands that he does, he really does know. (Mycroft knows everything) "And that's why we have to make it go away." He lifts his hands. Sherlock can feel one settle down on his head, pressing on the dark curls. "I'll help you, Sherly."

"You will?"

He can just see Mycroft's quiet smile from the light of the big round moon. "Yes. Come on, let's build you that palace."

So Sherlock closes his eyes, and together they build the Mind Palace.

Over the years he stores their names away.

Retard. Nerd. Weird. Loser.

And so many other names that he's deleted. He keeps the ones that don't burn his eyes when he closes them.

One always stays.

Freak.

It seems no matter what he does he just can't get away from it.

He tries. He tries to escape from the names and that one, horrible word in so many ways.

And when he ends up in the hospital for the first time, it's not Daddy or Mummy who come to see him(he's not even sure where they are anymore) it's Mycroft.

"I tried to make it go away," Sherlock whispers.

Mycroft sits at the edge of the bed. In the harsh white lights of the hospital, Sherlock can see his face clearly this time. His eyes are sad. "Not this way, Sherly," he says, and ruffles Sherlock's curls. His touch is soft and gentle and sad, hands clenching briefly in the stray strands that stick to Sherlock's forehead with sweat from his repeated thrashes and screams. Never has he looked so...disappointed. "Not this way."

He learns to use his Mind Palace.

He stores away everything-every emotion has a room. Every room has a room within it that explains in some scientific way the meaning behind the emotion. He has an explanation for everything. The things he doesn't understand he relentless researches until he does.

He needs to protect himself from the names-so he learns every name of every bone in his body in Latin. He learns every element of the Periodic Table. He learns every nerve ending and section of the brain. He learns and reads and hides everything inside himself.

People say he's withdrawn. Antisocial. That he doesn't understand them.

Then the names start up again.

He wants to scream at them. Scream and rage and hit because can't they see?

He understands them perfectly.

But no one understands him.

In collage, the fights happen again.

And with a single word he is the shivering little boy in the parking lot with his head in between his knees whispering to himself that he needed to make it stop.

With one word he is sobbing in the bathroom of his dormitory, alone with the drugs and his mind palace, furiously deleting the words that are to painful to store.

One always remains burned into him though, no matter how many times he tries to rid himself of it.

Freak.

Finally, Mycroft pulls him out.

Sherlock is in a daze, sprawled on the floor staring up at the ceiling with numbers spinning in odd circles around his head when his older brother and several men he doesn't recognize lift him up and drag him from the school.

"It's not going away," Sherlock manages to tell his brother between breathless cries and muttered nonsense. He knows he's not making any sense, but his Mind Palace is so full now-so full of empty rooms and rooms bursting at the seams with horrible, horrible names. He can feel the names starting to break through the walls and it terrifies him.

"I know," Mycroft says, wearily. "I know, Sherlock."

It never really went away, but it got better for awhile.

Mycroft introduces him to Lestrade, and the DI cleans Sherlock up. Gives him a place to stay and work to keep his mind busy.

Sometimes, though, Lestrade can't help him and Sherlock slips back into the dark place of needles and powders and mindless screams.

Sherlock doesn't remember much of it, except Lestrade holding him(like a father might) and asking him to please tell him what's wrong.

And Sherlock remembers whispering in a slurred, broken voice, "They call me a freak."

Sally Donovan calls him a freak.

He knows that she doesn't think anything of it, but he's surprised that Lestrade doesn't do something about it.

Mycroft notices, of course.

But they aren't really talking right now, him and his brother. Mycroft has gotten cold and hard, nothing like the gentle older brother who helped build his armor and his Mind Palace so many years ago.

And the word refuses to go away. freakfreakfreakfeak

He locks it away behind a thousand doors, hides it in dark rooms, but whenever she as much as whispers the word to him, the defenses shatter.

But then Sherlock finally asks his brother, "Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?"

And Mycroft turns to him, with a hard face but gentle eyes and says, "Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock."

Sherlock knows that better than anyone.

John comes.

And for once in his life, Donovan's words have no effect on him. Because John doesn't think he's a freak. John doesn't push him away when Sherlock is doing one of his deductions.

John thinks that he is brilliant.

They argue about stupid things like the Earth going around the sun and why there's human fingers in the drawer, but when John grins at him while they run across London chasing down criminals, when John scowls at Donovan whenever she calls him that-

No. He can say it now.

When John scowls at Donovan whenever she calls him that name-

He can say it.

When John scowls at Donovan whenever she calls him that name Fr-

He can say it because John fixed it. He made it go away.

When John scowls at Donovan whenever she calls him-

Freak.

He can say it now. He can whisper it in his mind and let it out in his mind palace, and it doesn't burn him. It doesn't hurt quite so much anymore.

Because John fixed it. John made it all go away.

Sherlock suspects that the army doctor doesn't even really know it, how much he's helped him, and Sherlock is too embarrassed to tell, because obviously he doesn't feel that way.

Caring is not an advantage, Mycroft had told him.

But sometimes, Sherlock thinks that it is.