Chapter 1: I'm Not Stupid, I'm a Genius

"But, Mum, I don't want to," Sherlock said, his voice a petulant whine, pulling his mother's hand so she had to drag him up to the school.

"But, why, Sherlock? Don't you want to go to school like Mycroft?" Mrs. Holmes sounded genuinely puzzled, but then, Sherlock thought, she often did. Mycroft said it was because no one, even their parents, understood them. Sherlock, having no one else to compare himself to, was forced to believe his brother. He didn't like it at all; he was sure that he'd be even worse off than Mycroft. At least Mycroft was clever.

"No," Sherlock said, making sure his face was arranged in a well-done pout. His mother smiled sympathetically, pushing his black hair out of his eyes. Normally, he hated these displays of maternal affection, but today, he thought if he accepted it she might not make him go. Mycroft hated school, especially after this year when he'd finally been accelerated three years. He'd always been ahead academically, but now he was so much younger than the other students that it was more like torture. Plus he was still bored; he was still far ahead of his classmates academically, regardless of the age difference. Not that Sherlock's parents noticed much of anything. Mycroft was quick to hide his difficulties adjusting, so that only Sherlock knew about them. On any other occasion he would have been proud to be taken into his brother's confidence; today he was only annoyed and little nervous about his own prospects at school.

"Why not, Sherlock?"

Sherlock didn't meet her eyes, instead scuffing his brand new shoes on the ground. "Everyone's going to think I'm stupid," he finally said quietly. "Mycroft does."

"Oh, Sherlock," Mrs. Holmes said. "No one here will have been to school before. They'll all be starting at the same place. And Mycroft is twelve, of course you don't know as much as he does."

Sherlock shrugged but listlessly let his mother take him into the school building. That wasn't what he meant, and she knew it. By age five, Mycroft had mastered the quadratic equation and was working his way through Shakespeare. Sherlock had only just begun reading Dickens and had almost finished learning the basics of algebra. He was leagues behind Mycroft, something his brother never let him forget.

Sherlock watched his mother talk quietly with the teacher, both of them shooting glances at him every so often. He hated it when people had conversations he couldn't listen in on, but the room was filled with twenty-five other children, all screaming and laughing at the same time. Sherlock was more than a little taken aback, his senses overwhelmed.

"Well, hello, Sherlock," the teacher said brightly, coming over to talk to him. "How about you come over here? I have some art supplies." Anything that got him away from the giant horde of children was fine with Sherlock and he settled into drawing himself and Mycroft with the chemistry set their father had given them for Christmas. He was working hard on accurately portraying the burns he'd gotten when the experiment went slightly overboard when the teacher asked him what he was drawing.

"It's our chemistry set. We're mixing peroxide with water. Only a little, because if you use too much the explosion is too big," Sherlock explained.

"Oh," the teacher said, not really sure where to go from there. "And who's that?"

"That's Mycroft. He's my brother," Sherlock said. "He thinks I'm stupid."

"And why does he think that?"

"I can't read Shakespeare yet," Sherlock answered matter-of-factly.

The teacher was about to explain that no five-year-old could be expected to read Shakespeare when the boy sitting across from Sherlock looked up, "You have a spear? I wanna shake a spear. Can I have it?"

Sherlock's expression grew confused, "No, I don't have a spear. I meant Shakespeare."

"What's a Shakespeare?" the other boy asked, then shrugged and went back to his drawing. Sherlock was about to go back to his when the girl on his other side shoved him out of the way to hand her drawing to the teacher.

"Look it's a elephant," she said happily.

"An elephant," Sherlock corrected.

"Huh?" the girl said.

"It's an elephant," Sherlock said, looking to the teacher for confirmation. "You're saying it wrong."

"You're mean," the girl said, turning her back on him and looking as if she was about to cry.

"But you're wrong," Sherlock said, not understanding why anyone would get upset about this. He hated to look stupid; if someone corrected him he made sure he never made the same mistake again.

"Sherlock, that may be but we don't treat people like they don't know what they're doing. Now say you're sorry," the teacher admonished. Sherlock glared at her. Why was he getting in trouble? It was everyone else that was out of control; he was the only one who understood anything. He pointedly did not say sorry, and ignored the teacher for the rest of the day, except when she announced that she was going to read to them.

"Why?" Sherlock asked.

"Why what, Sherlock?" the teacher answered patiently.

"Why are you reading to us? Can't we just read for ourselves?" He found being read to distracting. There was too much to look at, and here, too many other people around, getting themselves in his thinking space.

The teacher sighed, "Class, raise your hands if you can read on your own." Nobody's hand but Sherlock's went up. "Now raise your hand if you haven't learned to read yet." Everyone else's hand shot up. Sherlock's eyes widened. Why hadn't Mycroft told him none of the other students would even be able to read? What was he even doing here?

"See, Sherlock? This is school. This is where people come to learn to read. It's wonderful that you already can. But not everyone can, and that's what I'm here for," the teacher said, the barest note of impatience entering her voice before she went back to the story. For his part, Sherlock sank into a sulk that didn't lift until he went home and sought out Mycroft.

"You told me I was stupid!" Sherlock yelled, standing in his brother's bedroom door. "You're wrong. I'm not stupid, everyone else is! They can't even read yet!" He was furious but to his surprise, Mycroft just sighed.

"I suppose I knew you couldn't be as slow as I thought. Enjoy it while it lasts, little brother. You'll tire of them soon enough."

"I won't. I'm tired of you," Sherlock said with five-year-old defiance before slamming his bedroom door shut, leaving Mycroft to shake his head. He was right, of course, but Sherlock was too stubborn to ever admit it.