Consulting Sniper (Moran's Story)

Chapter 2: Ignorance is Mycroft Holmes

*Drugs warning goes into effect now.*

I've been asked the following question on multiple occasions. Ever since Mycroft wrote about our identical appearance, even more.

There is a third Holmes?

You're goddamn right there's a third Holmes. And guess who it is?

Let me start at the beginning. The very beginning.

Mycroft Holmes and I, Sabrina Moran Holmes, were born on April 3rd, 1997 at some hospital in Brooklyn. Yes, I mean the Brooklyn located outside New York City. We aren't originally from London, strange as it may seem. But our nondescript house was located a little bit farther away from the city than that. I won't say where.

Mycroft is older than me by ten minutes exactly, strange as it may seem. Because I would definitely not say she acts like it. She acts like she's at least ten YEARS older than me.

As young children, Mycroft and I were very different. I mean, you literally couldn't even make a comparison. We couldn't have been more different but look any more fucking SIMILAR!

It killed both of us to look exactly the same. We dressed differently at a very young age. Since we were four or five years old, we stopped wearing the same clothes. We'd throw a fit if we looked even a little bit similar in our dress. It was bad.

People would mix us up all the time because we were identical. To further my individualism, Mycroft was always just Mycroft. I wasn't Sabrina, I was Sabrina Moran always. I don't know who started it, but I liked it. Some used to think it was my last name.

I certainly didn't mind. Now you can see where I got my later ideas from.

Sherlock was born in August 2004, when Mycroft and I were seven. Her name is actually Wendy Sherlock Scotte Holmes, but no one called her that. She was taking cues from me, early on. She was like a small Sabrina Moran, and it was very noticeable.

Except she didn't look like us. She had dirty blonde hair and was a little bit shorter than us. I envied her differences.

By the time I was in middle school, I was Sabrina Moran to everyone. It was on my attendance sheet at school. But not on my birth certificate.

You see, I'll never escape the name Holmes. Sadly enough, it'll stick with me till the day I die no matter how hard I try to shake it off of me.

I'll always be the "third Holmes" to everyone. The long-lost sibling of Mycroft and Sherlock.

Anyway, by the time I was in high school, people knew I was related to Mycroft by blood and my identical-to-hers-face, but nothing else. We had different friends. We lived very different lives.

When I finally reached high school after years of hell in elementary and middle school, I joined the rifle team almost three seconds after walking in. I don't know why I did, but I saw the picture of the gun on the flyer and I was oddly attracted to it.

I began to write about guns when I figured out how they worked. In that way, I was honing my inner Holmes. All of us had a specialty. For my mom, it was math. For my dad, it was science. Mycroft had memory, and Sherlock had deductions.

I had gun specs and bullets.

Like I said, Mycroft and I were very different people. We had different friends. Hers were the type of friends you can hang out with in your own house with your parents there and no one would care.

But my friends were something else entirely. At first, we would find beer and drink together in the park. Then, someone told us what weed was. We began smoking that as sophomores in high school.

Now, we wouldn't necessarily party. We used these drugs to forget about our problems, get high for a little while and lose our minds into the drugs instead of what we knew to be true in reality.

We wouldn't go to parties on weekends where people would glamorize it. We didn't glamorize the drugs. We needed them.

Anyway, so Mycroft found out about the drugs in the beginning of our junior year. Her room was right next to mine and we shared a vent. When air would blow into the house from outside and through the air conditioner or heater, it would flow into both of our rooms using the same general vent.

She smelled the smoke one day, barged down the door when our parents left, and saw a bong and old-fashioned pipe on my desk. There was a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I was clearly busted. I nearly fell out of my chair in surprise. The pipe had fresh smoke coming out of it, and the pipe had ash spilling out of it. Mycroft would obviously see I was using them. The cigarette fell out of my mouth.

I was trying to write. I couldn't write without the drugs. It was something about guns, I don't remember what, and I was trying to focus.

Mycroft was speechless for a few seconds. I was picking my cigarette up off the floor, still staring at her to make sure she didn't leave. Our eyes were both wide.

"Sabrina Moran... Why?"

"Why? I'm writing, that's why. What is this, a drugs bust or something?" I asked, picking up my cigarette from the floor before it set fire to my room.

Mycroft blinked a few times, as if trying to wonder what was going on.

Finally, she sighed and looked back at me, speaking in a seemingly weary voice. "I didn't come in. I never saw this."

"Alright. You didn't."

"I'm doing you a favor, you know. You should be glad I'm your sister and not someone else."

"I don't think I can say that."

"Your funeral, Sabrina Moran," Mycroft stated before walking out of my room and shutting the door behind her softly so that Sherlock wouldn't hear.

I didn't really know what she meant by that statement she made, but I got back to my writing almost immediately after she left. I didn't have time to be worrying about Mycroft.

My rifling made up for all of this. This was the part of me that Sherlock knew best. Of course she did see me with the cigarettes once or twice, but this was the me that she knew to be her sister. The one who was the best shot in my entire high school; the one that everyone counted on to win the trophy.

I'd put on my noise-canceling headphones, grab my rifle. Walk up to the stand. Place my gun into it. Line it up with the target. Eliminate from my mind all outside distractions.

Lock. Load. FIRE.

And I had all the power in the world.

*If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! Your support and feedback is always appreciated, and I can't wait for you to see what comes next :)