Disclaimer: I am neither Steve Moffet or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and as such, claim no ownership of Sherlock Holmes (even if the Cumberbatch is gorgeous). This fic is the product of my twisted mind and rather strange sense of humour.

A Not-so-Cinderella Story

Chapter 1

This story begins, as most decent fairytales do, with a death. And yes, most fairytales do begin with a death, whether it be the death of a king, of a queen, or even of a peasant woman. Any fairystory which doesn't begin with a death is only pretending. The death was in actual fact the death of an ant, minding his own business, getting crushed by the careless feet of a passing traveler.

In this case, the death was a woman, not so remarkable in it's own right, but this woman's death was the first of a long list of catalysts without which, this story wouldn't even have begun. The woman had been pregnant, and was finally ready to bring the child into the world, but only after 9 months of morning sickness, cramps, bloating (making the woman go to her husband, weeping, "I have elephant feet," to which the husband replies "Yes, but very nice elephant feet," earning him 3 weeks of general hell), and the unholy cravings where the woman says she will die if she doesn't get a drink which looks like and has the general taste of tar.

Of course, at this point, the woman was giving birth, but unfortunately, without the modern comfort of an epidural, which, naturally, lead to the screaming, the general threats towards the father of grievous bodily harm if he ever even thought of going near her again, and the fainting which the father normally does, most often just after training the video camera at the point of exit, the resulting motion leading to a very interesting view of the nurse's...unmentionables...

The child that was born was wholly unremarkable, insofar that a newborn can be unremarkable. For the few minutes after the birth the woman was very glad that JUST a child had come out, unlike a queen or something in another kingdom who had given birth to not just a child, but a new-born goat and a wooden spoon as well (one has to wonder what the king or whatever thought when he saw a rather smelly barnyard animal and an ordinary kitchen utensil come out of the poor woman). At any rate, the child (who, like I said before), was quite unremarkable, was thusly dubbed 'John', and just like that, the woman dies.

Cut to a few years in the future (most stories involving the birth of a child do), and this child has grown up somewhat, from a squalling infant to an adorable (but still quite unremarkable) toddler, with hair just a shade away from brown and blonde, and large expressive tawny eyes.

The father of the child, who really doesn't factor into this part of the story at all really, apart from the fact that he IS the father, is mostly away, supposedly doing 'business', but which inevitably involves copious amounts of alcohol and a woman of questionable morals called 'Candy-Lee'. And the child, John of name, is schooled, and taught by tutors, and grows up into a teenager, who is still unremarkable.

It is at this moment in time that the father, for reasons known only to a rather expensive 50-year old bottle of Chivas Regal Royal Salute, decides that it is at this time he should marry again. The woman he does marry, who goes by the unfortunate moniker of Sébastia, came with two children, both slightly older than John, with the names of Molly and Jim. The father, doesn't appear again in this story, for whatever reasons, however, I personally believe it is because the new bride found out about 'Candy-Lee' and had both her errant husband and the woman with questionable morals forcibly relocated to a quiet spot just outside of town, in a very nice neighbourhood with very quiet neighbours, and rather nice flowers.

So the child, John, grew up some more, with a woman who may or may not have been an evil stepmother. But how does a woman get this term? Is it because she isn't the child's natural mother? Or because she married a beloved father, who should have been pining the rest of his life for his true love? We have already established that John didn't know his true mother, and his father was more interested in 'Candy-Lee' than him, but does this new woman deserve such a term? I cannot say, most likely the woman in question did attempt to raise John as best she could, being now the mother of three petulant teenagers, and if she didn't care or love him in the whole-hearted way a mother would, or should, can you really blame her?

And as for his new step-siblings, who may or may not have been ugly, certainly Jim could not be called that, if only when viewing his physical visage, whereas Molly was quite plain and rather flighty, but they merely viewed John as they would a caged bird, fascinated that such a thing could exist, but uncaring of his eventual fate.

However, as anyone knows, a good fairytale needs a villain, so unfortunately, this woman and her children have been thrust into the roles of 'Evil Step-mother' and 'Ugly Step-siblings'. While our hero, John, still quite unremarkable, was forced to do all the household chores of cleaning up his step-mother and step-sibling's mess, in an attempt to keep the house from falling into a state akin to a hovel. And if John's hands became work-worn, and the soles of his feet became hard, and his face slightly haggard, is that any reason to call him a servant?

A/N: After seeing Sadyna's latest picky (of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf…http:/ sadynax .livejournal .com/21771 .html (remove spaces), I got to thinking about fairy stories in general, and this story pretty much came into my head, wouldn't leave, and it grew and gained a life of it's own, and pretty much wrote itself in about 4 hours.