Love and hate, both complicating and astoundingly simple words. Hate keeps me safe now. Love hurts and destroys me. It is the ultimate deceiver; it makes you believe in it. It builds a web of trust and adoration. The web curls tight around you, so tight it suffocates you. It blinds you from the obvious and pulls you away from reality. Sometimes it hurts but it only makes the happy times feel better. The web tightens around your throat so you choke on your words; it rips down your body and strips you of your opinions until you're just a slave to it. Like everybody else. It does all of this so when it cheats and betrays you, you can't see it. Even when people try to tear it away from your eyes it still clouds your vision. Even when you realise you can't verbalise the feelings and you think it's your fault.

Love only leads to pain and you think you can live out your perfect poetic fairy-tale happy ending, until you realise the fairy tales are grim ones. Twisting tales full of pain, blood and gore, just like love. Just like life. People say life is nothing without love, but what if you don't want love. What if you're so broken you just can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to even care about you, because everyone who comes close to you sees your darkness and hatred for everything so disgustingly human? Because we are horrible creatures, we are ones who live in the shadows and fight for the light. Once we reach the light we realize it is only the darkness disguised but we still have that sickening hope for something better. The hope that everything gets better, because in reality it doesn't. Life is just a whirl pool of pain and hatred and such foul creatures we are that we crave and kill so for the petty thing that is love. Even if we know in the end it all ends in hate.

Most people believe I cannot feel that I am a monster. I can feel but I have just never understood it. Even when I was a child I knew when something was wrong I just never understood why. I tried to understand but I was a child, astoundingly intelligent but naïve in ways only a child can be. At first children seemed fascinated with me and all the things I knew, but soon they grew out of it and recognised me as strange, a freak. A name I have heard all my life, a name engrained into my brain.

It is around me like a poisonous bubble. People see it and run, they know something is wrong. Some people are disgusted by it and taunt me. They think that the poisonous bubble is killed me, that I am dead inside. When I was very little and I was called a freak for the first time I did not know what it meant. I did what I always did when I was little. I went to Mycroft.

Mycroft Holmes was sat in his room enjoying a book. Though he was young he had intelligence far beyond his age and was reading a college standard book. He heard the front door close and looked up at the clock. He realised it was Sherlock returning from school, he put his head back down and continued to read his book.

"Crofty, Crofty where are you" Mycroft heard his six year old brother calling for him. He stiffened at the irksome nickname. Others called it cute but Mycroft just found it irritating. Sherlock rushed into the room with the energy only a six year old could possess and stood right in front of him. He had a worried but inquisitive look on his face and Mycroft could tell he was about to ask a question. This was a common occurrence with the brothers. Sherlock looked up to his brother and the knowledge he possessed. He would constantly ask questions to the most random questions. Secretly he found this quite adorable and did like to help his little brother who was too clever for his own good.

Mycroft set his book down and looked at Sherlock "What is it Sherlock". Sherlock swayed on his feet" Crofty what does freak mean?". Mycroft froze at that and looked a little harder at his brother. Every adult who looked at Sherlock always acknowledged how cute his brother was and he couldn't deny that. His skin was quite pale and had he had the complexion of milk that contrasted greatly with his black as night curls. No matter how much anybody brushed them they always appeared unkempt. His ever-changing eyes were bright and inquisitive and shocking. He was quite thin due to the amount of running around and experimenting he did.

Sherlock was always a scruffy child but he looked even worse today, his curls a jungle of black and there was mud all over his school uniform. There were also little scratches in the material. Mycroft may not be an adult yet but he knew what it looked like when a kid got pushed onto the floor and this image was right in front of him. "Sherlock, who told you that word"

Sherlock furrowed his brow and pouted a little. "Some very stupid boys at my school, I was just talking about bees and how fascinating I found them when the pushed me into the grass and called me a freak but I don't understand what it means." Mycroft hurt a little after hearing his brother's words. He knew children were not appreciative of the Holmes' brother's intelligence but he had hoped Sherlock would get a few more years of blissful ignorance and would not have to learn of children's cruelty. He knew Sherlock was very different to the children at his school and to Mycroft himself. Sherlock had more problems really understanding the world even after all of his experiments. So to let his little brother have a few more years of ignorance he did one of the things he did best. Mycroft Holmes deceived and for once it wasn't for a selfish reason.

"It isn't anything to be ashamed about Sherlock, the reason those boys call you that is because they don't really understand you. They think that it is a bad thing but it really means you're very unique and different to them. They might not see the good side all the time but some will learn to. They think all your experiments and curiosity are strange and perhaps wrong but they are wrong. So if someone tells you you're a freak you ignore them okay, they may not know it but it is a good thing"

Years later Mycroft would see a grown Sherlock Holmes meet John Watson, the John Watson who didn't think Sherlock was a freak or wrong but found him fascinating. The John Watson that didn't run away from Sherlock but ran toward him. Then maybe his little brother would have a chance at being something other than the freak.

When Sherlock learnt that Mycroft had bent the truth he was surprise and hurt. He realised that being a freak was the same as being a monster and that there was no hope for him. He would be alone forever, so Sherlock adapted and apathy became his mask. He wore the mask so much that it bonded to his skin and poisoned his soul. The mask was old and used by many so it had cracks and sometimes feelings seeped through. But after a while Sherlock learnt how to trick himself into ignoring them and the cracks were healed.

It was hard at first to keep his mask on all the time and he became sick of the distractions of the faded but noticeable feelings. So Sherlock turned to drugs. Cocaine made him feel like everything, he knew everything he could deduce anything. Morphine made him forget and sometimes that's all Sherlock wanted. After three overdoses, two turns at rehab and a pestering detective inspector Sherlock found what he was supposed to do.

He was doing fine before John came along. Sure his heart had become dark and unused and he was forever in the shadows alone but he was fine. Sometimes the boredom became too much and started to chip away at his mask so he indulged himself in old habits. But it was all fine.

Until it wasn't. Because Doctor John Watson limped into his life and brought colour and light. John Watson could see through the mask and the damage that his soul had suffered. John Watson didn't see a freak. Sherlock realised that he wasn't all right before but it was better now. Not perfect but better.

Maybe the not so freak did know about love all along and it only took a bright soul and a big heart to see that for all the pain maybe, just maybe love could be worth it. Sherlock Holmes loved John Watson and maybe that didn't have to be a bad thing.

A/N Please leave a review in the nice little box below :) Till the next time fellow Sherlockians!