Screaming, so much screaming. Spinning, spinning, spinning out of control. Squealing tires, blinding light, the sound of an explosion. Pain, too much pain, burning pain. And finally nothing; pitch black nothing.

Sherlock awoke with a start, momentarily unsure of where he was, the unfamiliar surroundings scaring him almost as much as the nightmare.

"Oh, bloody hell." He muttered upon remembering where he was and what he had to do later that day. "This is going to be a long day."

According to the clock beside his bed, he had only been asleep for three hours, but three hours was more than he'd honestly been expecting. Sherlock drowsily pulled himself from beneath the smothering blankets, which had wrapped around him like a cocoon during the night, and went to shower in a useless attempt to wash away the memories that plagued him in his sleep.

"Settle down, class; settle down! I've got a little surprise for you today. It seemed such a lovely morning that I though a pop quiz would be in order! So, put your notes away, I don't want to see anything but a pencil out on your desks. Don't worry; it's just a little one. Only fifteen questions."

The miserable groaning of Mr. Mitchell's fourth hour Advanced Maths class was interrupted by the sound of a series of sharp knocks on the classroom door. Annoyed at the interruption, Thomas Mitchell barked out a gruff "Enter," before returning to his task of handing out quizzes.

The door creaked open and a tall, thin boy who looked to be about age 16 stepped into the room. His eyes landed on Mitchell and he quickly crossed the classroom and handed the man a yellow class schedule while saying "I'm Sherlock Rein-" the boy paused for a moment and corrected himself, "Sherlock Holmes; I'm a transfer student."

The students were immediately far more interested in the boy than they had been when he first entered the room. It had been at least a year since they'd had a transfer student. They all looked him over with appraising eyes, looking for any clues about where he was transferring from. They found nothing.

"Alright, Holmes, you said? You can take the empty seat over by the window. We're about to take a quiz, but you can sit this one out until we can catch you up to what we're working on. Go on, have a seat. And do try to be on time from now on; my class began at eleven and you are over twenty minutes late."

"If it's alright with you, sir, I'll take the quiz. I am surely capable of doing whatever you've been working on." Mitchell bristled slightly at Sherlock's confident words and somewhat arrogant demeanor, but he handed Sherlock a quiz and said nothing more on the matter.

As Sherlock made his way across the classroom to the empty seat by the window, he noticed that a few of his new classmates were looking at him as if he'd grown a second head. He ignored their staring, not caring what they thought of him. As far as Sherlock was concerned, they weren't worth his attention.

Sherlock breezed through the quiz with no difficulty whatsoever. After all, he'd covered the material on the quiz years earlier; it was all just too simple. He didn't understand why the others were all still working over ten minutes after he'd finished, nor did he understand what they might find difficult about it. He also had no idea what he was supposed to do with the quiz now that he'd finished it. He had no prior experiences with classrooms, and therefore had no idea what the proper protocol for turning in a completed quiz would be. Was he supposed to just bring it to the teacher once he finished? Was he supposed to wait for the quiz to be collected once everyone finished?

Finally, some fifteen minutes after Sherlock finished the quiz, another student completed the final problem and brought the quiz up to the teacher's desk. Sherlock followed the girl's example and turned in his quiz.

The quiet that had filled the room while all the students were occupied gradually dissipated, the room filling with more and more whispered conversations as, one by one, they finally finished the quiz.

Boredom was quickly creeping up on Sherlock. He'd not even been at the school for two hours yet and he was already feeling as if boredom would soon consume him. He'd already made observations about half the students in the room, the other half were seated somewhere behind him and he was unable to see them to make any worthwhile observations. He refused to even consider trying to compose while this bored because he knew from past experiences that music created just because he needed something to occupy his mind never turned out as good as music with some sort of inspiration behind it. He hadn't even thought to bring a book to read with him. This was shaping up to be the dullest day he'd seen in ages.

Sherlock was just pondering ways to get kicked out of school when he noticed that the girl seated in front of him was speaking to him.

"Hello! My name's Kate. Did you just move to town, or are you transferring from one of the other schools in the area? "

Sherlock considered just ignoring the girl, Kate, but he didn't have anything else to do and, though he doubted this would be a very enthralling conversation, he would take any distraction from boredom that presented itself at this point. That didn't mean he was going to be nice, though; after all, Sherlock wasn't even sure he knew how to be nice.

"I've just moved here."

"Where are you from? Your accent sounds exactly like everyone else around here, so you can't be from too far away."

"France, actually. I'm afraid the accent is just an imitation, something I picked up from speaking with a couple local residents." Sherlock had always had a bit of a gift when it came to imitating the accents and speaking patterns of people around him and for learning languages with ease. It was probably a product of his upbringing, but he couldn't be sure.

"That's….wow. You really sound like you're from around here. What brought you here to Sussex from France?" The girl's interrogation was beginning to grate on Sherlock's already frazzled nerves, but he was sure that he would be getting these same questions again before the day was done. He could only hope that she would spread the word of everything he said and that would, hopefully, reduce the amount of people who would ask him the same questions.

"I have relatives who live here. I was coerced into living with them for a while." It was this or therapy, and there was no way Sherlock was going to consent to therapy. He didn't need help, because he didn't have a problem. Of course Mycroft refused to believe that, which is what led to Sherlock's current situation.

"Well, it's really great here. I'm sure you'll like it! If you want, I can show you around the area sometime. Maybe this Saturday?" Kate offered, looking hopeful.

Sherlock was positive that he would not be around long enough for him to like this place. He already had seven ideas on how he could escape back to Toulouse without alerting his meddlesome sibling. He was also positive that he did not want to spend any time with the girl outside school. He didn't want to spend time with anyone outside school; actually, he didn't want to spend time with anyone regardless of whether he was in school or not. A third thing he was positive of was that this girl, Kate, would not want to spend time with him if she knew anything about him. He wasn't exactly a likeable sort of guy, not if he let himself act how he wanted.

"I'm sure your boyfriend would be unhappy with you offering to show strange boys from school around the city while he's playing at a football tournament."

"How did you know about Davy? And how did you know about the football?" The girls eyes were wide and she looked a lot more uncomfortable than she had a minute ago.

"I simply observed. You are wearing a sweatshirt for the boys' football team and I saw a sign in the hallway wishing the team luck in their tournament this weekend. It was not very difficult to deduce that you had a boyfriend on the team who would be away for the weekend."

If the fact that she turned her chair to face away from Sherlock, muttering something about freaks as she did so, was anything to go by, Kate was no longer interested in talking to Sherlock. And that suited him just fine.

At noon, the bell rang for lunch and Mitchell dismissed the class after giving out a long list of problems from their textbook that they should do for homework.

Sherlock, who had never been one to eat very frequently, and he had taken to eating even less than before in the last six months or so, took the hour allotted for lunch as an opportunity to explore, mostly in the hopes of finding either a piano or a library. Of all the things that the Holmes residence in Sussex was lacking, it was the piano that bothered him the most. But Sherlock knew he shouldn't have been surprised; Mycroft had never really struck him as someone who would bother learning anything like an instrument, and from everything he'd been told over the years Mr. Holmes had never shared or supported his wife's passion for music.

Sherlock's hands were itching to play again. He was sure the month without any practice meant that he would be horrible, and he refused to even think about how much his violin skill had deteriorated since he'd last had a chance to practice. It had been months since he'd gotten to play. Six months. Sherlock knew if he didn't find himself a violin soon, he'd have no hope of ever being a decent violinist again.

After a bit of searching, he finally found a promising looking building on the far side of campus from his maths classroom.

The letters above the door labeled it as the Music and Arts Building. Upon entering the red brick building, Sherlock could immediately see that the hallway of the first floor was full of students' art projects. There were all sorts of attempts at paintings and drawings and sculptures lining the walls and floor of the hall. He doubted that there would be any musical instruments somewhere so obviously dedicated to the visual arts, but he reasoned that he'd rather waste a couple minutes searching than take the chance that he'd miss what he was looking for. As he neared the end of the hall, Sherlock found a staircase leading up to the second floor and he finally heard what he was looking for. It was muffled, but it was undeniably the sound of music. A saxophone, if his ears could be trusted.

Sherlock just about flew up the stairs.

The second floor of the building was far less cluttered than the first. The only things in the hall were a few benches next to the doors to what appeared to be the offices of the music teachers at the school. The left hand side of the hallway was lined with practice rooms, some of which just had a few stands for music, and one of these was occupied by a boy a few years younger than Sherlock who was practicing on an alto saxophone, but three of the practice rooms contained what he required. When he tried to open the door, he discovered that they were all locked. Further inspection of the area found a sign which stated that he should get the key from Mr. Charlie Jones, whose office was room 224, if he wanted into a practice room.

Charlie Jones proved to be a jolly old man who had a large office at the end of the hall, about the size of most classrooms, which contained two grand pianos. He apparently taught all the instrumental music classes at the school, and gave private lessons to the more promising pupils. Mr. Jones happily handed over the key to one of the practice rooms.

Sherlock's watch told him that he only had about twenty minutes before the bell would ring and force him to move to his next class, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. He was unabashedly ecstatic at the prospect of playing again, and it took all his restraint to stop himself from skipping his way down the hall and to the practice room.

He unlocked the door of Practice Room B and settled onto the bench in front of an unassuming upright. Sherlock knew better than to attempt to jump right into the pieces he'd been playing before his unexpected hiatus and expect to play them well, and so he contented himself with a few simple exercises to warm up and familiarize himself with the feeling of the keys beneath his fingers once again.

It didn't bother him that he was back to playing scales and simple music meant for musicians who hadn't been playing anywhere near as long as he had. It didn't even bother him that the piano was in dire need of tuning. Simply being surrounded by the music once again helped to rid him of a small portion of the dark, dangerous cloud that had been following him ever since the incident, which had brought his location to his meddlesome sibling's attention and caused him to be returned to this country and his biological father's home for the first time in seventeen years.

But Sherlock wasn't thinking about such things while he played. No, he was remembering the days when he was first learning these basic skills. He couldn't help remembering. For the last six months he hadn't been able to help himself when it came to remembering these things every time he played, or even every time he heard someone else playing, anything that she had taught him. He remembered growing up in the house in Toulouse and hearing his aunt, the woman who raised him, the woman who was practically a mother to him, giving him advice on how to perfect the piece he was working on, or giving him suggestion on what to play next , or helping him with his composing.

While he played was the only time Sherlock would allow himself to remember his aunt. Because these were happy memories. If he allowed his mind to wonder to thoughts of his aunt and uncle at other times, it was inevitable that he would find himself remembering the last time he saw them alive. And that was something he saw far too often while he slept for him to want to see it again during the day.

As his short time with the music came to a close, Sherlock took the key back to Mr. Jones and made his way to his next class, which he was sure would be the easiest hour of his day. He was only in the class because part of the graduation requirements for the school was that everyone must take a foreign language class every year. The only foreign language classes available at the school were French and Spanish, but the Spanish class was full and so he was left with having to take French. The school had refused to see reason and believe that he was, in all likeliness, more fluent in French than the instructor.

This time Sherlock managed to avoid being late. He took a seat at the back of the room after introducing himself, in French, of course, just because he felt like it, and worked on the homework he'd received in his last class until the class began.

By ten minutes into the class, Sherlock was forced to bite his tongue and stop himself from correcting the teacher. She was decent enough at pronunciation, but every little slip, however minor, made him want to shout. He wanted to correct her every time, he wanted to stand up and tell the class that they were mimicking an idiot, but if there was anything he'd learned in the last seventeen years, it was that no one likes to be corrected, especially by someone they consider beneath them.

So Sherlock sat quietly by and let the woman make a fool of herself.

For the rest of the day Sherlock managed to avoid any interactions with his fellow students, rebuffing every attempt made at conversation. The only speaking he did for the rest of the day was to introduce himself to the teacher at the beginning of each class period.

He was sick of school already, and he'd only been enrolled for a little over half a day. And to make it all worse, he had to go back to his father's house now that the school day was done.

Boredom had always been a problem for Sherlock, and his methods for eliminating the boredom had gotten progressively stranger and more dangerous for many months now, but all that was over until he could escape the clutches of his so called family and get back to his true home.

Planning an escape had never sounded like a better way to spend an afternoon than it did today.