[ Arlecchino hides her pain well. If she had not said anything, Sherlock wouldn't have noticed anything amiss. Even knowing, what he sees could be merely him trying to fit an idea to the evidence rather than letting the evidence speak on its own. And that is something he critiques enough in others.
Could Sherlock do better at hiding his own condition? Yes, but as with his brother's wants, he always failed at doing so. Besides, Sherlock knew the way his mind worked had helped him in his line of work. He tended toward obsession, and it helped him stick doggedly to a mystery, gave him insights others might miss.
Maybe that his drive for the truth is similar to what Arlecchino means. A way to use it for a benefit even as it threatens to destroy him or the relationships around him from those who don't understand. ]
My mother was kind. She taught me so much and shaped how I viewed the world. She loved me, Mycroft, and my father dearly. Then my father died, and she... couldn't accept that. She violently and verbally lashed out at anyone who tried to tell her the truth during her episodes, and the doctor's treatments made them worse. In the end, she couldn't recognize me and tried to kill me in hopes of finding out what I did with her son, me.
It was covered up by my brother. The number of people who know even part of the truth back in my world can be counted with one hand. I'm... still learning how to share than burden beyond asking others to kill me if I ever reached a point of no return. It was something hidden from even myself for most of my life.
[An unfortunate turn, and one that... couldn't be helped, a madness that altered view and thought to the point reality became an unaccepted truth. A condition aggravated to the point some would think a 'proper mother' could never reach; entanglement with love and madness never did end well, would almost always end in tragedy for whomever survived it.
Leaving what one thought of as a kindness and whatever else came to that line of thought as a cruelty that likely aggravated the condition passed on. To how she was understanding it at least.]
Her reality became confusing and torturous, and it would have been hard to see the mother you knew suddenly turn into something she likely never wished to be. I am sorry for your loss, and what it has led you to through suffering at different hands. [Things that should never have happened, but that idealism didn't cause reality to be less cruel for anyone.] Fear of that, and the unknown or unthinkable never mixes well.
The woman who had my siblings and I call her "Mother" had a biological child she brought to the House and treated no differently than us. She taught us how to fight and kill by having us fight to the death as part of a 'game' to see who was strongest. All of it dressed as a pretty little story of who would become "King" to rule over it all, and the Children happy to obey due to her sweet lies of love for each of us. Training them from the start to think she truly did love them, only wanting our happiness despite the truth of the matter they failed to see—save for her actual daughter, and myself. Even as she gave those she considered broken to the Doctor so he could experiment on them, share the results with her.
Her daughter and I grew close, a bond formed from us knowing that truth despite her hoping her mother could change. That one day she and I could leave, see the colorful lights rumored to be in the sky of the far North, feel that freedom to go anywhere we wanted. For years she was the only reason I did not do anything more than stay alive in that house under "Mother"s rule.
[One girl kept her from giving in to her curse, from getting rid of that woman, until—]
She endured her mother's abuse, but then started trying to escape just to feel the wind on her skin and a wish to feel the sun outside of those walls. "Mother" tortured her daughter day in and day out to the point her spirit broke, each time she tried to escape—those who tried to leave were usually killed on the spot, but "Mother" wanted to use her own flesh and blood as an example to the rest of us. Death became the only escape she had left. [A brief pause, to take a breath. Silence for the girl.]
After that I trained, receiving my Vision as if a physical example of what I needed to do, to be rid of that woman once and for all. I did kill her, giving in to my curse enough to push my power to completely be rid of her. This is also part of how I became the Head of the House of the Hearth, was bestowed the title of the Knave, and took the title of "Father" as I refused to be like her despite taking her place.
[Arlecchino felt it only right to tell this in turn, even if some details kept vague.]
Few know this truth, and I used the reputation that woman built up as the Knave -as she was a Harbinger, my predecessor in more than just to the House- to ensure others are reluctant to snoop into my business.
[ Sherlock curses half under his breath because that amount of cruelty is unfathomable, though he does not doubt what Arlecchino says. Professor Gygax ruled the Edelweiss Institute and its unfortunate patients under immense cruelty, suffering, and experimentation. People died or were irreversibly changed. However, enacting that cruelty on children with purposeful deception to encourage such violent rivalry under the guise of love, even her own daughter... What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? This "Doctor" Arlecchino mentions certainly reminds Sherlock of Professor Gygax and possibly Doctor Richter, though the latter's scale was much smaller (but more personal). ]
That... You have my condolences.
[ He doesn't know what to say about it. What can anyone say? As much as he cannot truly grasp how much Arlecchino, her friend, and their siblings suffered--like an unknowable, otherworldly horror--he can see how strong of a person Arlecchino is in multiple ways despite the curse in her blood. Would that he have even half her internal strength. ]
I can see why your children look up to and their loyalty towards you. Know that what you've told me stays in complete confidence. I am not about to reveal what you've shared.
[ He finds himself almost mimicking Lyney's gesture of placing a hand on his heart. To Sherlock, the sentiment equals the solemnity of when Lyney promised to help keep the darkness at bay and kill him should the darkness win. There is no point to reveal Arlecchino's secrets. The assumptions made about Arlecchino and those using her predecessor's reputation protects the House of the Hearth. That is a worthy enough reason. ]
[Those condolences were accepted with a nod; there was little anyone could say to such horrors. Little reason to ever tell the tale outside of those who were allowed in close, and even then only when it was necessary to explain... almost everything in how she operated. The House and the Children would always come first, in anything and everything she did even under the title of Knave—whatever she could do.]
We still must operate as a house of spies, and even at times assassins, in the name of the Tsaritsa and whatever business I must conduct. I train them, but Home will always be as safe as it can be. Traitors must be killed, as the last time they weren't the attack left... Well, those who survived shall never forget it.
[A slow, even breath. Enough time to organize her thoughts and take in that gesture. Part of her knew those words to keep these secrets would be held.]
Those who wish to leave? I do make it so they must prove themselves, even if under trickery to make sure they aren't traitors, and warn them after that I will be killing their House Self. If they can survive that? They will have no memory of that life, free to pursue who they truly want to be with a fresh start—I make arrangements for that, and check on them from a distance. [It was an act she kept up, and would continue to.] My blood is at least useful for literally burning those memories away.
It was an offer I gave Lyney, Leynette, and Freminet when the end to a ghost problem came, due to what had to be done. I never want them to feel as if they owe me anything.
[None of them should, so that when she passed there was nothing to mourn. They could simply move on and continue to live.]
This, too, I trust will be kept in confidence. In turn, I want to make it clear what you have told me in turn will be treated the same. The House deals in secrets, including those that will never come from behind those doors again. Anything you may ever wish to confide past this as well, should you ever wish to take up that offer.
[ Sherlock will appreciate his own time to organize his thoughts and feelings, and he takes a long sip of his drink to help give himself that time. He would be lying if he said he fully agreed with what Arlecchino does. However, even as he considers the unhappy truth of them becoming spies and assassins, Sherlock knows that they are all doing their best with the circumstances they've been handed. It is not as if Sherlock hadn't seen children learn an unsavory trade in order to survive back on his world. The children who had left the scavenger hunt back home are proof of what kind of life they lived and their tragic ends. How many more unseen children ended up abandoned, maimed, or dead?
The sad difference between those children and the House of the Hearth is that those children did not have someone who actually cared like the House of the Hearth has in Arlecchino. They also did not have a way out and some amount of security to purse another life. It says a lot about Arlecchino that still checked in on them, even at a distance.
If they could follow more acceptable lifestyles from the beginning, then they would have already. The children deserve better, but this is better than having no one care. (How might Sherlock have ended up if Mycroft hadn't been there to raise him? No one else would have wanted a child like him; he was too smart for his own good and saw a child no one else could. He was the nuisance people wanted to disappear.)
Besides, the House of the Hearth produced Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet. Sherlock trusts them, and he trusts Arlecchino too. ]
It will be kept so. Anyone who wants that information will have to hear it from you or not at all.
[ A detective deals with his own secrets. He may not let them lie, but he also knows when they should not be revealed. ]
And I believe you when you say that mine will be kept as well.
[Arlecchino knew well how what she was doing wasn't good, but it was all she knew. A hope that with her death that freedom would finally be given to the House of the Hearth, and that it and the Children would be in far better hands with Lyney at the top. Even if at times he felt the weight of time, a fear for what Arlecchino had to do in order to keep them afloat.
... it also was something that the unwanted could use to turn their interested towards something less dangerous to themselves and others outside of a job. A young girl curious about medicines and poisons no longer causing sickness to random test subjects, and a curious boy having anatomy books instead of a family pet or stray; both were far better behaved and used knew knowledge to help take care of sick or injured Children.
Those who had no where else to go, thrown out of homes and unwanted, would always have a place within the House of the Hearth.]
Thank you, and I am glad that you do. There are secrets meant to be kept, for one reason or another, and this certainly falls there.
[ Mycroft was much the same. He knew how to work with numbers and manage a government spy network. He did not know how to raise a child by himself, much less one like Sherlock, and due to the circumstances of the Holmes family, he could not seek help beyond his agents keeping tabs on Sherlock. He tried to mold Sherlock into a productive citizen who would follow his example and work for Queen and Country. It did not work. ]
You're not hiding that information from the people most affected by it. I might protest if Lyney did not know, but he is well aware. This is more like hiding the identity of a murderer when she killed to be free of her abuser. Revealing the secret does her harm and provides no way forward or justice for what she faced. Why then should I inform the police? Who does that serve? As you say, there are secrets meant to be kept, for one reason or another.
[ He runs a finger around the rim of his cup. ]
This is not like Mycroft hiding the truth of my childhood, my family from me. That secret might not need to be revealed to the world at large, but it should have been to me.
[ How different would things have gone between him and Mycroft had Mycroft sat down and told him the truth? Especially after Sherlock started to pick apart the inconsistencies? Might their relationship not have suffered gravely? ]
One thing I will never do is lie to one of my Children, or have them walk unaware into any situation if I can help it. They know what is expected of them, and that any rule of the House also applies to me as much as it does to them. [Her head tipped a little.
Sherlock would have fit amongst them well—] Some secrets meant to be kept, and some people are simply better off dead. A choice made to keep certain things ever being repeated by those same hands.
[She had killed for her Children more than she would admit, memorized their faces and screams to ensure that... she would remember them. Know the voices that haunted her in the night, the flashes of shapes and color; better to put a name and a face than give them some power to be more than that. No more ghosts.]
It should have, even with the pain it contained. Children, no matter their age once old enough to understand, deserve that much. Lies do nothing but cause pain, and create some false life that shatter in the worst of ways.
[A House that held so many secrets, but Arlecchino never wanted those within to live in a lie.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cw: vague references to child abuse
Date: 2026-04-30 08:18 am (UTC)Could Sherlock do better at hiding his own condition? Yes, but as with his brother's wants, he always failed at doing so. Besides, Sherlock knew the way his mind worked had helped him in his line of work. He tended toward obsession, and it helped him stick doggedly to a mystery, gave him insights others might miss.
Maybe that his drive for the truth is similar to what Arlecchino means. A way to use it for a benefit even as it threatens to destroy him or the relationships around him from those who don't understand. ]
My mother was kind. She taught me so much and shaped how I viewed the world. She loved me, Mycroft, and my father dearly. Then my father died, and she... couldn't accept that. She violently and verbally lashed out at anyone who tried to tell her the truth during her episodes, and the doctor's treatments made them worse. In the end, she couldn't recognize me and tried to kill me in hopes of finding out what I did with her son, me.
It was covered up by my brother. The number of people who know even part of the truth back in my world can be counted with one hand. I'm... still learning how to share than burden beyond asking others to kill me if I ever reached a point of no return. It was something hidden from even myself for most of my life.
cw: references to child abuse, torture, death, implied suicide, and violence
Date: 2026-04-30 08:54 am (UTC)Leaving what one thought of as a kindness and whatever else came to that line of thought as a cruelty that likely aggravated the condition passed on. To how she was understanding it at least.]
Her reality became confusing and torturous, and it would have been hard to see the mother you knew suddenly turn into something she likely never wished to be. I am sorry for your loss, and what it has led you to through suffering at different hands. [Things that should never have happened, but that idealism didn't cause reality to be less cruel for anyone.] Fear of that, and the unknown or unthinkable never mixes well.
The woman who had my siblings and I call her "Mother" had a biological child she brought to the House and treated no differently than us. She taught us how to fight and kill by having us fight to the death as part of a 'game' to see who was strongest. All of it dressed as a pretty little story of who would become "King" to rule over it all, and the Children happy to obey due to her sweet lies of love for each of us. Training them from the start to think she truly did love them, only wanting our happiness despite the truth of the matter they failed to see—save for her actual daughter, and myself. Even as she gave those she considered broken to the Doctor so he could experiment on them, share the results with her.
Her daughter and I grew close, a bond formed from us knowing that truth despite her hoping her mother could change. That one day she and I could leave, see the colorful lights rumored to be in the sky of the far North, feel that freedom to go anywhere we wanted. For years she was the only reason I did not do anything more than stay alive in that house under "Mother"s rule.
[One girl kept her from giving in to her curse, from getting rid of that woman, until—]
She endured her mother's abuse, but then started trying to escape just to feel the wind on her skin and a wish to feel the sun outside of those walls. "Mother" tortured her daughter day in and day out to the point her spirit broke, each time she tried to escape—those who tried to leave were usually killed on the spot, but "Mother" wanted to use her own flesh and blood as an example to the rest of us. Death became the only escape she had left. [A brief pause, to take a breath. Silence for the girl.]
After that I trained, receiving my Vision as if a physical example of what I needed to do, to be rid of that woman once and for all. I did kill her, giving in to my curse enough to push my power to completely be rid of her. This is also part of how I became the Head of the House of the Hearth, was bestowed the title of the Knave, and took the title of "Father" as I refused to be like her despite taking her place.
[Arlecchino felt it only right to tell this in turn, even if some details kept vague.]
Few know this truth, and I used the reputation that woman built up as the Knave -as she was a Harbinger, my predecessor in more than just to the House- to ensure others are reluctant to snoop into my business.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-07 04:18 am (UTC)[ Sherlock curses half under his breath because that amount of cruelty is unfathomable, though he does not doubt what Arlecchino says. Professor Gygax ruled the Edelweiss Institute and its unfortunate patients under immense cruelty, suffering, and experimentation. People died or were irreversibly changed. However, enacting that cruelty on children with purposeful deception to encourage such violent rivalry under the guise of love, even her own daughter... What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? This "Doctor" Arlecchino mentions certainly reminds Sherlock of Professor Gygax and possibly Doctor Richter, though the latter's scale was much smaller (but more personal). ]
That... You have my condolences.
[ He doesn't know what to say about it. What can anyone say? As much as he cannot truly grasp how much Arlecchino, her friend, and their siblings suffered--like an unknowable, otherworldly horror--he can see how strong of a person Arlecchino is in multiple ways despite the curse in her blood. Would that he have even half her internal strength. ]
I can see why your children look up to and their loyalty towards you. Know that what you've told me stays in complete confidence. I am not about to reveal what you've shared.
[ He finds himself almost mimicking Lyney's gesture of placing a hand on his heart. To Sherlock, the sentiment equals the solemnity of when Lyney promised to help keep the darkness at bay and kill him should the darkness win. There is no point to reveal Arlecchino's secrets. The assumptions made about Arlecchino and those using her predecessor's reputation protects the House of the Hearth. That is a worthy enough reason. ]
no subject
Date: 2026-05-07 08:15 pm (UTC)We still must operate as a house of spies, and even at times assassins, in the name of the Tsaritsa and whatever business I must conduct. I train them, but Home will always be as safe as it can be. Traitors must be killed, as the last time they weren't the attack left... Well, those who survived shall never forget it.
[A slow, even breath. Enough time to organize her thoughts and take in that gesture. Part of her knew those words to keep these secrets would be held.]
Those who wish to leave? I do make it so they must prove themselves, even if under trickery to make sure they aren't traitors, and warn them after that I will be killing their House Self. If they can survive that? They will have no memory of that life, free to pursue who they truly want to be with a fresh start—I make arrangements for that, and check on them from a distance. [It was an act she kept up, and would continue to.] My blood is at least useful for literally burning those memories away.
It was an offer I gave Lyney, Leynette, and Freminet when the end to a ghost problem came, due to what had to be done. I never want them to feel as if they owe me anything.
[None of them should, so that when she passed there was nothing to mourn. They could simply move on and continue to live.]
This, too, I trust will be kept in confidence. In turn, I want to make it clear what you have told me in turn will be treated the same. The House deals in secrets, including those that will never come from behind those doors again. Anything you may ever wish to confide past this as well, should you ever wish to take up that offer.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-11 05:35 am (UTC)The sad difference between those children and the House of the Hearth is that those children did not have someone who actually cared like the House of the Hearth has in Arlecchino. They also did not have a way out and some amount of security to purse another life. It says a lot about Arlecchino that still checked in on them, even at a distance.
If they could follow more acceptable lifestyles from the beginning, then they would have already. The children deserve better, but this is better than having no one care. (How might Sherlock have ended up if Mycroft hadn't been there to raise him? No one else would have wanted a child like him; he was too smart for his own good and saw a child no one else could. He was the nuisance people wanted to disappear.)
Besides, the House of the Hearth produced Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet. Sherlock trusts them, and he trusts Arlecchino too. ]
It will be kept so. Anyone who wants that information will have to hear it from you or not at all.
[ A detective deals with his own secrets. He may not let them lie, but he also knows when they should not be revealed. ]
And I believe you when you say that mine will be kept as well.
cw: past animal abuse mention in meta
Date: 2026-05-13 02:54 am (UTC)... it also was something that the unwanted could use to turn their interested towards something less dangerous to themselves and others outside of a job. A young girl curious about medicines and poisons no longer causing sickness to random test subjects, and a curious boy having anatomy books instead of a family pet or stray; both were far better behaved and used knew knowledge to help take care of sick or injured Children.
Those who had no where else to go, thrown out of homes and unwanted, would always have a place within the House of the Hearth.]
Thank you, and I am glad that you do. There are secrets meant to be kept, for one reason or another, and this certainly falls there.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 09:08 am (UTC)You're not hiding that information from the people most affected by it. I might protest if Lyney did not know, but he is well aware. This is more like hiding the identity of a murderer when she killed to be free of her abuser. Revealing the secret does her harm and provides no way forward or justice for what she faced. Why then should I inform the police? Who does that serve? As you say, there are secrets meant to be kept, for one reason or another.
[ He runs a finger around the rim of his cup. ]
This is not like Mycroft hiding the truth of my childhood, my family from me. That secret might not need to be revealed to the world at large, but it should have been to me.
[ How different would things have gone between him and Mycroft had Mycroft sat down and told him the truth? Especially after Sherlock started to pick apart the inconsistencies? Might their relationship not have suffered gravely? ]
no subject
Date: 2026-05-22 06:30 am (UTC)Sherlock would have fit amongst them well—] Some secrets meant to be kept, and some people are simply better off dead. A choice made to keep certain things ever being repeated by those same hands.
[She had killed for her Children more than she would admit, memorized their faces and screams to ensure that... she would remember them. Know the voices that haunted her in the night, the flashes of shapes and color; better to put a name and a face than give them some power to be more than that. No more ghosts.]
It should have, even with the pain it contained. Children, no matter their age once old enough to understand, deserve that much. Lies do nothing but cause pain, and create some false life that shatter in the worst of ways.
[A House that held so many secrets, but Arlecchino never wanted those within to live in a lie.]