athena ➢ sherlock's daughter

Chapter 1

Broken Wrists, Homelessness,
and Meeting her Father

Athena Noelle Holmes lived with a nasty family who hated her more than anything in the world. They thought she was a smart mouth and did not carry the same air of respectability as them. Oh, the Perishes hated Athena indeed.

Mrs. Perish was a short, stout woman who loved to bake and hum. She seemed absolutely lovely to everyone she came across- so long as you weren't odd or special. She absolutely despised anything or anyone that didn't fit into her criteria of normal, which included freshly cut lawns encased in white picket fences, cleanly shaven faces, and pristine makeup and hair.

Mr. Perish was a tall man with beady eyes and very large muscles. He had military-style buzzed hair and wore pristine suits every day, no matter the occasion. And he hated people who could outwit him. He was a decently smart man, but unfortunately for Athena, she was twenty times smarter.

When Athena was only a year old, she was speaking in sentences. Mrs. Perish panicked so much that she took her straight to the A&E and demanded that her child be put in emergency care solely so she could know what the hell was going on with her baby.

When Athena was three, she was reading chapter books about anything she found interesting. She rather enjoyed books about outer space, light, trees, and a little European History. Mr. Perish only had to catch her once and he took her precious books away, claiming that "books of this sort were made for bigger people only" and that she "could have them back when she was old enough to understand."

At age five, her year one teacher was trying desperately to make her parents understand that she had abilities never seen before in a five year old. She could do long multiplication and knew all the world countries and their capitals. Mr. Perish angrily refused and slammed the door in Athena's teacher's face.

She could tell when people were angry or annoyed or happy or sad just by the smallest of signs. And to her, her parents always seemed angry. It took years until she could figure out why. She was eight when it finally dawned on her.

"You don't like me 'cause I'm smarter than most people my age, and that scares you!" she exclaimed with a proud grin. She finally figured it out!

But that grin faded, because as soon as she said it, she was sent to her room with no supper or books for a week.

By the time she was eleven, she was covered in bruises and small cuts and- on the worst days- broken bones from made up accidents. What she couldn't tell anyone was that these things weren't from falling off the trampoline or tripping over a jump rope; all of it was at the hand of beady-eyed, very brute Mr. Perish.

"I don't know, Sally. Maybe well just have to discipline it out of her," Athena heard him say one day, when she was nine, as she walked past the kitchen door from the large book case in the living room. After hearing this, she bit down a quiet squeak and scampered silently back to her room, clutching her encyclopedia tightly to her chest.

But at the very beginning of her tale, she was fifteen years old and sitting at the breakfast table with her "parents." They each had some toast and jam on a plate with orange juice in a tall, slender glass. Mr. Perish was reading the paper while Mrs. Perish gossiped incessantly about Mrs. Walls down the street.

Athena, on the other hand, was sitting as far from them as possible, reading Lord of the Flies. She quite enjoyed this particular book, and she was rather lost in it until Mr. Perish said something that pulled her out of her trance.

"I just don't see how Holmes does it!"

Funny, she thought, they usually didn't bring her up at the breakfast table.