OK… This is a mad, cracky, probably OOC, AU fic, but I just couldn't resist! Inspired by the amazing story 'Gamayun' by the wonderful bedamn – GO READ IT NOW! They've done a much better job of it than I have, and I'm not intending to copy but I just couldn't stop myself! :)

Basically – Sherlock has wings! :)

Warnings: Very brief, non-graphic mentions of child abuse, murder, suicide.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock, not even a smidge of him :(

Sherlock has never liked the colour of his wings.

Mummy used to have long, sweeping white-gold wings, which were beautiful and delicate and shone in any light, however dim. Each feather arranged neatly, glossy and even.

Mycroft's wings had been a dark stormy grey with flecks of brown – more powerful than Sherlock's own, though Sherlock had always relished having a greater wingspan than his older brother. Also, the extra strength came at a price – they were bulkier and more cumbersome than Sherlock's, though he could always fly twice as fast.

He had only seen his father's wings once, walking in him on him once when he was working in his study. He'd got a beating afterwards, but it had been worth it. Father's wings were massive, barely fitting in the room, and jet black. They showed signs of wear and tear, unlike Mummy's, but they were so awe-inspiring that their shabbiness was irrelevant.

When he was very little, Sherlock had used to think that everyone had wings. It was only until he asked Jenna Hargreaves at school what colours hers were, and pulled off her shirt to check when she said she didn't have any, that he realised. He was given a beating for that too, and nearly excluded. PE at school was an embarrassment, of course, but Sherlock would just stand with his back to the wall and change his shirt quickly in order to avoid the stares. Of course, they still called him "freak" and "bird boy", but he learned to let the insults appear to bounce off him, and once he began to hone his deductive powers, no one dared to bully him for the fear of the unwelcome secrets he would reveal to their peers. New kids would try it every now and again, shocked and repulsed because he was different, but after feeling the lash of Sherlock's tongue, the taunts petered out. But although the open hostility ceased, no one bothered to extend their friendship to the skinny, ivory-skinned, ebony-curled boy. There was no one to talk to or play with at break times in the playground.

Despite all the problems they had brought him, Sherlock still loved his wings. When it was dark he and Mycroft would go out flying together, soaring above their hometown, wheeling in the cool rush of the night air, gloriously higher and higher until Sherlock was dizzy. And then they would glide to a halt, and look down at the pinpricks of light beneath them. And Mycroft would say, "One day, it's all going to be mine." There was no trace of arrogance or conceit to his words – just certainty.

And Sherlock would nod, because when he was little he believed his older brother was always right. That was before Mummy got sick, and before Father started drinking.

When Mycroft was seventeen, and Sherlock was ten, Mycroft came home from university at half term and said he wanted to get rid of his wings.

Sherlock hadn't understood. The wings were part of Mycroft – they were Mycroft. How could he get rid of them? And what was more, it meant no midnight flights over the countryside together.

Father and Mycroft had argued with Mummy for hours. Normally, Mummy just agreed with what Father said, but this time she was adamant – Sherlock could hear her sobbing from his bedroom. He heard Mycroft say that wings were "pointless" and that they were limiting his political career, always having that stupid hunchback beneath his shirt, and that they were cramped all the time, and the pain was distracting him.

Mummy begged and cried and cried and begged, but his mind was made up. Finally, she even mentioned his flights with Sherlock, and Sherlock heard Mycroft say loftily, "The freak's got to grow up eventually."

And then he heard a slap, and the noise of Mummy striding up the stairs to his room, and then she was holding him in her arms. She removed her cardigan so her wings could slide out through the slits cut in the back of her blouse, and they enveloped him, hugging him close. He could smell that familiar scent and the soft gentleness of her feathers and the light of them shone about him, but all he could think of was that Mycroft would never hold him like this again, once the wings were gone. He sobbed and sobbed, and so did she, until they fell asleep.

Father took Mycroft to a very private hospital in London, and they cut his wings from him. When Sherlock next saw Mycroft a few months later, his back was smooth and straight and wing-free. He even lifted his shirt to prove to Mummy that the scarring wasn't even that bad – just pale, raised marks at his shoulder blades where the extra bone had been cut off. He looked strange without wings – smaller, somehow. And though he said he was happy, and he walked more confidently, and that superior grin lingered on his face for longer than it used to, there was something in his eyes that was gone. That same something that had shone in his eyes when they had flown together. That joy, that passion, that excitement, that life.

It scared Sherlock.

And then, about a year later, Mummy began to get sick. The doctors came and whispered at her bedside, but nothing they did worked. Father started drinking, every night, and the beatings got worse, until when the blows fell, Sherlock's feathers would fall from him in a soft shower to the floor.

And then Sherlock came home from school one day to find them fighting (again), and Mummy staggered out of bed and began screaming, and Father grabbed her by the wrists, pinned her against the banisters, shook her viciously, and then shoved her away.

Arabella Holmes fell down three flights of stairs, fracturing her skull, her pelvis, and both her legs. Due to her already poor state of health, she never recovered. William Holmes was sentenced to life in prison for her murder, and hanged himself there a year later.

Sherlock went to stay with Mycroft in London, which he loathed. He was a nuisance – he got in the way, and he knew it. And then he went to university to study Chemistry, and he was scrupulously careful in keeping his wings hidden in case anyone found out and tried to lock him away to do experiments on him. In their own small home village, his father's money had gagged the gossiping mouths, but now there was nothing left but the trust fund, and they could never pay off the whole of London. He lost the energy for his nightly flights, and let his world dissolve into a painless, beautiful, drug-induced dream. And then everything turned bad in his head and he bound his wings to his body and tried to jump from the roof of the university, and then Mycroft stopped him, and Sherlock hated him for it.

And then he had met Greg Lestrade (who was only a sergeant at the time) in a bar downing his fourth pint. It hadn't been hard for Sherlock to tempt the information from the man, and then he had solved the case that had been troubling the whole of Scotland Yard for four months in four minutes. Then began to meet at the pub regularly, and Lestrade would give him his cases, and Sherlock would solve them. It became his cocaine, surpassing all other desires – there was only lust for that perfect triumph, the astonishment, the praise, the congratulations, the admiration, the envy. Lestrade forced him to eat and sleep every now and again, through blackmailing him with the threat of withholding interesting cases, but they were never really friends. They were colleagues, with an almost grudging respect for the other's abilities, but never friends.

And then John Watson (obviously a soldier, psychosomatic limp, back from Afghanistan or Iraq) had hobbled into his life, and carved a niche there, in Sherlock's mind, and settled down with his newspaper and his jumpers and his sandy-brown-gold hair and his cups of tea. And somehow, Sherlock grew to care for him, and even more incredibly, John grew to care for Sherlock. Until one day, Sherlock realised that John wasn't just his flatmate, he was his friend, and he voiced the thought aloud accidentally, and John seemed surprised (once he'd stopped laughing) because apparently it was perfectly obvious that Sherlock was his friend – in fact, he was John's best friend. And the thought had, inexplicably, sent a gush of shivery warmth through Sherlock, and he was so confused by it that he merely made a sharp, rude comment, and flustered, left the room. But the way John looked at him, Sherlock knew that he hadn't believed the act for a minute, which was intriguing, and one of the reasons that he liked John so much.

Sherlock stroked the edge of his right wing thoughtfully. No, he didn't like the colour. His wings were a bizarre combination of gold, pale cream, dark grey and chestnut brown. He knew they probably said something about him – his genius and his stupidity, his kindness and his cruelty, his arrogance and his self-hatred. He had created the perfect, cold, compassionless persona for himself, and that Sherlock ought to have dull, black wings, like his father had. The ridiculous wings destroyed that illusion. The only thing he liked about them was the fact that they were so thin and delicate that could fold back in on themselves so easily, like a complex origami model, fitting neatly beneath his clothes, where no one could ever see them.

Strangely, his thoughts wandered back to John.

John was compassionate and gentle and loyal and displayed far more kindness to Sherlock than he could possibly deserve. He sympathised, he listened, he bore the insults hurled at him day after day. He ordered what Sherlock wanted from the takeaway menu without needing to ask, because he knew when Sherlock was tired, down, or "just not hungry, John, for God's sake!" He made the best tea, no question. He gave Sherlock that little look sometimes that meant "not-good". He made Sherlock watch incredibly dull television programmes, which Sherlock couldn't help but enjoy. He scolded Sherlock for not eating or not sleeping. Because, impossible as it seemed, John cared.

A sudden, dangerous thought came into Sherlock's head.

What if he were to let John see his wings?

Is it worth me carrying on, or not? Please review :)