#enola | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heliads · 4 months

Note

Enola Holmes x sibling!reader who isn’t as smart as Enola and feels inadequate because of it; and gets hurt on a case and worries Enola?

'my mind isn't yours' - enola holmes

masterlist

To be a Holmes is to be beyond anything or anyone else. No one in your family would ever say this aloud, of course; it didn’t need to be said, and all of your direct blood relations knew better than to say things that weren’t needed. You have your mind for the long, extensive, impractical thoughts, but spoken words are meant to be heard and pondered over for generations. A Holmes does not need to state their supposed victory over their neighbours. It is simply known and celebrated in the glorious expanse of their own private intellect.

Sometimes, though, again in the quiet confines of your mind, you wonder if this divine knowledge skipped a beat when it came to you. You may be a Holmes in blood and legal right, but that doesn’t mean you think like them. Sometimes, it feels a bit like being an outsider in your own family, watching Sherlock and Enola race off on proverbial puzzles while you sit back and try to pick up the pieces they’ve already put together.

You try not to let it get to you, but it’s hard not to feel some sort of inferior. You’re a clever student in your own right, but clever alone does not a Holmes make. You’re supposed to be a genius like your brother or a prodigy like your sister, but instead you just feel like you. Y/N Holmes, not a screwup in any sense but worse than that to some– completely, utterly normal. Base level. Right in the middle of the pack if a little bit above.

To a Holmes, though, mediocrity is a mortal sin. Sherlock and Enola seem leagues out of your reach. Since Enola is closest to you in age, you feel the sharp stab of that comparison with extra burn. She excels even despite the extra burden of being a young woman in this world of yours, but you could never burst the bubble and go shooting far beyond the stars like her.

You’ve never brought up any of this to either Enola or Sherlock, of course, but there’s no reason to do so. You have no doubt that they both realized your inadequacies compared to them far early on. Why comment on something that’s so obvious? Every time you’re working on a case together and they both figure out the twist in the plot ages before you, you can feel that deep cut slice open afresh. You don’t have to be a complete genius, you were never planning on becoming a mastermind academic anyway, but goodness knows you really want to feel like something compared to them.

It aches away, but what can you do? With your mother off doing who knows what, Sherlock and Enola are the closest you have to family. You have your friends, of course, but they don’t understand what it is to be a Holmes, even if you don’t entirely feel like one all the time either. To put it simply, it’s your siblings or nothing sometimes, and goodness knows there’s an awful lot of aching in nothingness even when the only alternative makes you feel terrible about yourself too.

And thus you find a way to sit on the outskirts of the case discussion and puzzle solving sessions anyway. Maybe you can’t always be the first to untangle the riddles, but you can be the first to offer up a cup of tea, and sometimes there’s something they’ve overlooked in their grand hurry to get to the finish line that you can point out and feel useful for along the way. It’s not awful, no, not in the slightest. You just wish it could be a little better as well.

You’re reminded of this little agony whenever they stumble upon a new case, which, as luck would have it, happened recently. Mysterious ransom notes are popping up all over town. Some group of strangers is threatening the top businesses around, demanding cash and gold in exchange for being left alone. No one was really taking the notes seriously until a small bank ignored the messages and had their establishment robbed before being burnt to the ground.

Now, the case has been turned over to the Holmes’ possession. Well, it’s been given to Sherlock and Enola, to be precise. They’ve been kind enough to allow you to join their inner circle while they try to puzzle the whole thing out, but you swear there’s this unspoken agreement that they’ll be the ones finding the solution, not you. It’s not like they’d ever bar you from speaking, they just know that you won’t have anything new to say that they hadn’t already come up with.

You sit silently, watching them go back and forth. Sherlock and Enola get lost in their own world at times like this, forgetting there’s even a country or universe outside of their feverish planning. At the end of an hour’s time, though, they’ve decided that the criminals must be hidden somewhere near an abandoned railway station near the southern end of the city, and that their main modus operandi involves bribing secretaries in each building to anonymously drop off the notes, then clue them into easy ways to get into the businesses without getting caught.

More importantly, this group of thieves has managed to get their hands on a master ring of keys to the city through bribing an overworked and embittered assistant of the chief inspector. So long as these crooks have that key ring, they’ll be able to let themselves into whatever building they please, and the demands will just keep worsening until the entire city has been wrung dry.

An idea is occurring to you. You may not have been able to figure out the clues quite as easily as Sherlock and Enola, but you can still be helpful. While they’re haggling over how exactly to move forward, an idea is already occurring to you. You take after your mother in one important manner: you are a person of action. When you are given direction, you follow it exactly. And, when you come across a situation in need of a physical solution, you take charge and get the job down. Adrenaline is your best friend, followed quickly by good balance and good coordination. This, at last, is where you can step in.

Sherlock and Enola are too busy with their plotting to notice when you sneak out of Sherlock’s flat and creep into the city. You’ve got an hour or two until nightfall, which means it’s the perfect time to strike. These robbers will have day jobs and places to be. There’s a reason all of the attacks happened at night, it’s because these people had to keep up pretenses until they could break into the businesses under the cover of darkness.

That means you’ll have a very short window of time in which to find their hideout and grab the master key ring before they come back. You don’t doubt that the key ring will be in their foxhole near the abandoned railway station; they can’t exactly risk bringing it back to any of their respective flats and having it found out by the maids or neighbours.

You stealthily make your way over to the abandoned railway station. The sun is setting much faster than you’d like, so much for taking your time to thoroughly scout out the place. Then again, that doesn’t much matter. What’s most important is getting that key ring and getting out, then seeing the looks on Sherlock and Enola’s faces when they realize you’ve saved the day.

It is this thought of victory that propels you into the station house. You stalk down the dusty corridors, checking in rooms and peering in the drawers of desks. Most everything here seems long abandoned, but there’s one room at the far end of the hall that seems most frequently used, at least judging by the smears of fresh mud outside the door.

After pausing to listen carefully in case of approaching footsteps, you quickly try the doorknob and are surprised to find it opens easily. These guys were so sure of themselves that they didn’t even bother to lock the door. You try a few drawers in the desk in the center of the room, and you grin in silent victory when you find the key ring sitting in one of them, covered halfway by a stack of folders labeled with the names of various buildings in the city.

You grab the key ring and the folders as well, just in case extra evidence is needed. Just as you’re straightening up, though, you hear sounds echoing through the dusty hallways. You panic, quickly closing the desk drawers and heading for the door. You won’t have time to run, though; you can see a silhouette in the corridor, right outside the door.

Instead, you flatten yourself to the wall right next to the door. Moments after you get into position, the door flies open and a man steps inside. Brow furrowed, he calls out a name, likely one of his compatriots.

“Miller? Was that you I heard?”

The second he’s clear of the door, you immediately scurry back outside. You do your best to be quiet, but the man whips around.

“Hey! Get back here!”

You’re not all that inclined to follow instructions, especially when doing so would likely bring great danger onto yourself, so you hurl yourself out into the corridor, dashing down the dusty floor in a mad sprint. The man immediately gives chase. He almost catches up to you by the end of the hallway, but a series of quick turns give you a chance to put more distance between the two of you again.

All that’s left between you and the freedom of the outside air is a wide, rickety staircase. You go up the stairs as quickly as you can. Risking a glance behind you so you can tell how close the man is behind you, your eyes widen when you realize he’s pulled out a knife. You’re almost to the top, so close, but the man lunges at you in an attempt to slow you down and you feel a hot pain as the knife cuts through your sleeve and slices your arm. It’s not a deep cut, or you don’t think so, at least, but it’s the extra incentive you need to push yourself to the top of the staircase and out into the open.

Immediately, you’re greeted with loud shouting. For a moment, you panic, and then you realize it’s the inspector with his men. “You’re alright,” one of them tells you, “Stand aside so we can put the thief under arrest.”

You nod, taking a hasty sidestep so you won’t get in their way. The robber comes up just seconds after you, but upon seeing the police, he immediately starts sprinting down the abandoned railway. The inspector and his men give chase, and you watch them go shouting down into the gloomy distance.

You’re not alone for long. Sherlock comes up to you, shaking his head. “That was an absurd move to pull. Give me the key ring and folders, I’ve got to get this to the inspector as soon as possible.”

You want to protest that you should be the one handing over the evidence since you went to so much trouble to get it, but one firm look from Sherlock reminds you of how much trouble you’re probably in for pulling a stunt like this and you quickly hand over the materials. He starts walking back towards the city proper, trading out his spot by your side with your sister.

Enola. Great. She looks furious. “Just what were you thinking?” She asks incredulously. “That was ridiculously stupid. And look, you’re bleeding. This is awful.”

You frown. “Don’t call me stupid.”

“I’m not calling you stupid, just the idea to break into the robbers’ hideaway,” she clarifies. “I mean, why on Earth would you feel compelled to do this?”

Looking at the tortured expression on her face makes the last of your confidence bleed away. The whole point of retrieving the key ring was so your siblings would finally feel like you might be one of their equals, but now they’re even more convinced of your bad decision-making skills. This was precisely the opposite of what was supposed to happen.

“Well, that’s the thing,” you say desperately. “If I can’t be the smart one, if I can’t be the one making all the clever plans and figuring out the loopholes like you and Sherlock, at least I can be the brave one. At least that’s something right I can do.”

Enola’s face slackens. “What are you talking about?”

You laugh bitterly. “I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now. Come on, you can crack cases and solve puzzles in your sleep but you can’t understand your own sibling? I’m not like you two. I’m not as smart as you and Sherlock, and I hate that.”

Enola shakes her head. “I’ve never thought that in my entire life. We’re both chatterboxes, obviously, but just because you weren’t talking as much as either of us didn’t mean I thought you weren’t as smart. I just assumed you were doing your thinking in your head instead of out loud, which was what I was supposed to be doing, anyway.”

You look at her cautiously. “Really?”

“Really,” she promises. “Y/N, the thought had never so much as occurred to me. I’m so sorry, I wish I had realized you felt this way sooner. You’re my sibling. Of course I hold you in the greatest regards. I mean, I never would have been brave enough to march into the thieves’ hideout like that on my own, not without several hours of planning to make myself better about it. You up and decided it just like that. I was so impressed with the whole affair, only I was so worried about you that I forgot to tell you.”

You smile at her. “I’m glad you think so, Enola.”

“Well, of course I do,” she says exasperatedly. “What else would I think about? Now come on, we’ve got to get that arm of yours bandaged. Maybe I’ll see about getting the paper to put something in about you being a local hero while I’m at it, too. It would be quite deserved.”

You laugh. “That’s more than I was expecting, to be sure. I’ll settle for knowing that you’re proud.”

“That, of course, is already decided,” Enola declares, and starts to lead you back into town. Watching the sun set overhead, you think that this little rescue mission of yours went quite according to plan indeed. Perhaps you’ll have to stage another one fairly soon.

enola tag list: @mayfieldss

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#enola holmes #enola holmes imagines #enola holmes x reader #enola holmes oneshot #platonic enola holmes #enola holmes x sister reader #enola #enola imagines #enola x reader #enola oneshot

71 notes · View notes