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Cora draws air into her lungs to finally let out a shaky breath. Her blue eyes glisten as she takes in what surrounds her...

A crackling sound of happy laughter filled the air around her but didn't fill Cora with joy. The sound haunted her core, winding around her like a vice, almost becoming unbearably loud the more it shoved and poked. A voice now began to echo in the distance.

"Don't be such a smart mouth, sister, dear. I'm far smarter than you," the younger voice of her older brother Mycroft uttered, mocking her intelligence.

"Come on now, dear Cora, it's right before your very nose. How can you be so idiotic!" Sherlock's voice now came through, also pointing it out.

"Now, why don't you run along outside like a good girl, Cora and play this far too complex for the likes of you."

"Miss Holmes, can you tell me what the third planet from the sun is?" Cora is now eight years old, sitting in a classroom full of children whose eyes converge on her, waiting for her to answer, but she's gazing ahead, crippled with fear, at the chalkboard before her. The children around her began laughing at her and chanting, "Cora doesn't know! Cora doesn't know!"

A young Cora spoke up at her teacher after taking a deep breath, "Why should I care about that when you're cheating on your husband, Mrs Andrews? With your very own headmaster no less?"

"Miss Holmes! Never have I heard anything so ridiculous in my life. Go and stand outside, young lady!"

Getting up, she slowly headed towards the door, the other children mocking her as she went.

"Cora, do you know anything?"

"What's my father's middle name if you think you are so smart?"

"Stop being such an arrogant little girl!"

Then they began chanting her name, and it got louder until a shrill scream overcame it, and the chanting stopped. A pitch-black room was now before her, only a sliver of light in its corner where a teenage girl sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, rocking back and forth, surrounded by used needles. Cora knows this broken girl before herself as her adult self now approaches her hand, shaking to rest it upon her younger self's shoulder. The girl is shivering soon after the laughter fades away, and she quickly whips her head up and lets out a heart-wrenching scream.

Cora sat up bolt upright in her bed, screaming from a nightmare she'd had over and over for many years, always the same; it never changed, always sending a terrifying fear through her very heart. Something that always had happened after such a big case, she believed, was trying to make her body more normal.

Her bedroom door instantly came crashing open. John wondered what was happening, yet he didn't say anything and saw nothing but distress on the younger woman's face. He wonders where on earth Sherlock is, and he hasn't come to his own sister's aid, probably in too deep a sleep to even care. Even though he hardly knows her all that well yet, John does the best thing he can think of now to hug her.

"Hey, hey, it's alright," John offered soothingly, rocking them back and forth gently like a parent would their child when they were scared. Cora, without thinking, buried her face into his shoulder, which almost surprised him as she took in the faint scent yet the top note of his warm yet citrusy cologne of grapefruit and mandarin with a hint of vetiver, some of his natural musk coming through. He gets the indication of what can only, but the floral scent, jasmine and vanilla of what is possible of expensive perfume.

"I know we don't know each other that well yet, but do you want to talk about it?" John asked carefully. She shook her head, glancing into his eyes for only a moment, not wanting to share something so personal with him, but she was also scared of what John would think of her and that she was weak. She didn't see the disappointment in his eyes, but he understood she wasn't willing to up someone she'd only known for a couple of days.

John started to release his hold on her, but she tightened it and whispered, "John, I know we hardly know one another, but I don't want to be alone right now."

Wordlessly, he nodded and slowly lay back on her bed, neither caring nor thinking about how tired they were. John wrapped a protective arm around her, and she lay beside him, her head resting on his shoulder and her palm flat across his chest, feeling the heat through his t-shirt. He hadn't let a woman be this intimate with him until after the third date, yet he was making the exception for a woman he only knew little about.

Cora somehow felt safe in John's arms. She hadn't been since Sebastian but then learnt he was only using her for his gain and had closed herself off ever since to ever being with anyone again. But something about John felt special. She couldn't figure it out as they both drifted off to sleep.

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