Aylia Holmes

5. Family Strife

"I beg your pardon!" Aylia shouted, rushing across the room and over to Enola, who instantly accepted the protective embrace offered her by her sister. "If you ever hit my sister again you will have me to answer to!"

With her final words ringing in the air, Aylia covered Enola with a robe and rushed her from the room to where Mycroft and Sherlock were sitting, reading to pass the time. Enola wrapped the robe around herself as Aylia turned a ferocious glare on Mycroft. It had been so long since he had seen her truly angry with him that all speech died on his lips. After a long, awful silence, she finally spoke.

"Mycroft, don't do this to her!" Aylia shouted. "Let her be happy! Can't you see that she is happy here!"

"She is a young woman now, Aylia, she needs an education!" he retorted.

"She is educated!" she shouted back. "Just because it is in a way you don't like does not mean that she is some stupid, idiotic girl. I understand that she needs to be taught the ways of this world, but that does not mean subjecting her to the heartless cruelty of that woman!"

"She has no hope of making a husband in her current state!" Mycroft yelled, rising to his feet. "And neither, it seems, do you!"

Aylia drew in a sharp breath, looking away from him as her eyes watered slightly.

"And what if she does not want a husband?" Aylia said quietly, looking back up to stare directly into his eyes.

Her tears hit him like knives, and he couldn't help but feel guilty for everything he had said.

Even so, he cried, "Then that is another thing she will need educated out of her!"

Letting out an angry breath, Aylia said pleadingly, "Sherlock, don't let him do this!"

"Enola is his ward," Sherlock replied in a reserved tone, his mind flashing back to Mycroft's accusations of being judgmental.

"Then take her as your ward!" I shouted back. "You can guild and teach her far better than Mycroft! She is nothing more than a nuisance to him. She is more like you than you realize. Sherlock-"

"Aylia, I'm sorry but there is nothing I can do," Sherlock interrupted, looking up at her. "It's out of my hands."

"Just like his cruelty to our mother was out of your hands?" Enola in a low, condescending tone, so quiet it was all the more piercing. "She has always been remarkable, and if you are both so blind as to not see it then shame on you both!"

"So remarkable she left you in my care," Mycroft replied cooly.

Before she could retort, Miss Harrison appeared, and Aylia said in a low voice, "If you send Enola to that woman's school I will never speak to either of you again."

Shooting each of them one last glare, she went to Enola's bedroom to find her curled up in a corner, tears streaming down her cheeks.

.

"I'm sorry, Enola," Aylia said with the bitter anger of defeat in her tone as she climbed after Enola to the top of a tree. "I can't convince Mycroft of anything."

She sighed. After she had gotten one of her dresses on, the two girls had decided to go outside. Enola went up the tree first, sitting on one of the lower branches while Aylia climbed higher, ignoring the dirt she was getting on her daily dress.

"I also enjoy a sketch," Sherlock said, sitting down at the foot of the tree. "Helps me think, process my thoughts."

"Helps me do the same," Enola replied, a little coldly, switching her drawings before losing her grip.