I was curious about how John and Mary got together, since we're given just the barest of explanations. Obviously, if they grew that close, at some point John would have had to tell Mary about Sherlock. So... I wrote this :)

Chapter 1:

John Watson had always been somewhat of an enigma. Mary first met him when she started her new job at the clinic. He'd been outwardly courteous, but she immediately sensed something off. He seemed… muted, like fabric that had been washed so many times its color lost all vibrancy. Nobody offered her any information about Dr. Watson beyond a description of his position, and she didn't pry for two reasons. One: she hated gossip, and two: his personal troubles were his business. Mary Morstan of all people understood that some things needed to stay secret—for everyone's benefit. But after several weeks of working with Dr. Watson in such close proximity, she couldn't help but wonder.

He was an excellent doctor; she'd learned that much from listening to patients' praises, yet he almost never spoke to his coworkers unless absolutely necessary. He progressed through the workday like an automaton, doing what needed to be done with robotic precision, and never tarrying. Mary rarely saw him eat or drink anything more than tea or coffee. On the outside, he appeared laser-focused, but upon closer observation, Mary could tell his mind was elsewhere. It was like an autopilot setting. But what could possibly have him so preoccupied?

Mary had attempted small talk on several occasions, but she'd rarely received more than a one-word answer for her troubles. The untrained eye would assume he was simply without a personality, but Mary knew better. The John Watson she saw at work every day was just a shell. She could see in his eyes the dying embers of a spark. He'd once been lively and excitable, but something had extinguished him. The only question was what. Mary couldn't resist the temptation of solving a mystery, so she set out to get John Watson to open up to her. Idle conversation wouldn't work; she'd already tried that many times. She needed to do something bigger, something that couldn't be ignored. So she asked him out.

Looking back, maybe her decision had been a bit rash, but she went through with it nonetheless. She knew his work routine by heart, and she cornered him in his office on a Thursday afternoon. The second she walked in the door, he hurriedly closed his laptop and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"Mary," he said hoarsely. "How can I help you?" Had he been crying? His red eyes, croaky voice, and the earlier drying of his cheeks all pointed to such a conclusion, but why?

"John," she began. "I was wondering if you'd like to come to dinner with me tomorrow night." The request was forward—maybe too forward—but she probably stood a better chance if she got right to the point. Dr. Watson didn't strike her as the kind of person to busy himself with unnecessary pleasantries. After she'd made her request, he stared back at her, mouth slightly agape. Dammit, she'd moved too quickly. She hardly knew the man, and she'd just asked him on a date. Stupid decision.

"Um… I have to think about it," he stammered, tossing items into his bag in preparation to leave for the day.

"Okay. Do you think you could let me know by tomorrow afternoon?" Mary asked. He nodded hurriedly and dashed out the door. It was definitely the weirdest proposal she'd ever been a part of. She shrugged and returned to her own office to pack up. Hopefully, he'd say yes and tomorrow night would bring her some answers.

~0~

The next day, John pointedly avoided meeting Mary's gaze whenever they came across each other. This did not bode well for tonight. How could he possibly agree to go on a date with her if he wouldn't even look her in the eye? At the end of the day, she sat down at her desk, dejected, and double checked to ensure there weren't any more patients to chart. Then there was a knock at her door.

"Come in," she chimed. She glanced up and was shocked to find John Watson in her doorway.

"I'll take you up on your offer," he said bluntly. "Where are we going?"

"Well, I don't really know what you like. I thought we could decide together."

"Alright."

"I haven't lived around here all that long, so I'm not very familiar with the restaurants, but a friend of mine recommended Angelo's."

"NO," John immediately snapped. Mary was taken aback at the ferocity of his reaction. A mere dining suggestion had him sweating and breathing heavily.

"I'm sorry, do you have an allergy or something?" she inquired.

"No, it's not that. That place just has… connotations." He massaged his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand, as if trying to rub away a memory.

"Okay. What do you suggest?"

"There's a decent Thai place not far from my flat, I'll text you the address and meet you there."

"Sounds good. Does 8:00 work for you?"

"Yes. See you then." John turned and swept out of the room, still panting. Mary was puzzled. What did he mean by connotations? Had he gotten food poisoning there once? Suffered a hard breakup with a previous girlfriend? She could think of no feasible explanation for a restaurant to have connotations. It made no sense. Then again, very little about John Watson did make sense.

~0~

Mary met John at the place at 8:00, just as they'd planned. Getting a conversation going wasn't as difficult as she'd feared. She started on what she knew was common ground: work.

"Do you see many strange cases?" she asked.

"Most are routine, but there's always the occasional gem."

"Do you have a favorite?"

"Well, I had this one patient who presented with typical flu symptoms, mainly fatigue. I would've just sent her home, but she said this had been going on for months," he explained. "That definitely caught my attention."

"Months?"

"Yes, months. I knew that was not normal, so I delved into her history. You've probably heard the saying, 'when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras,' but that doesn't always apply. Zebras do exist. I don't know exactly where this hunch came from, but he figured it might be something exotic. So I asked her about traveling abroad—"

Mary interrupted him: "Who's he?"

"Pardon?" John replied.

"You said that he figured it might be something exotic," she repeated, emphasizing the 'he' that had confused her. Instead of answering her question, John zoned out. The expression on his face was indescribable. He appeared to be looking at something that was somehow both incredibly close and impossibly far away. Mary found herself flummoxed. Just as she was beginning to worry, he shook himself back to reality.

"I must've misspoke. I figured it might be something exotic," he clarified. He was lying. Mary could spot a liar from across the room, and John was right in front of her. But why? What was he trying to cover up? Who was he?

Ignoring Mary's evident perplexity, John continued with his story, "I asked her about traveling abroad, and she told me she'd been hiking in the Appalachians with some family members over in America, and had contracted Lyme disease from a deer tick. I did some research, and discovered another infection often carried by deer ticks: babesiosis."

"I've never even heard of that," Mary admitted.

"Not many people have. It's quite rare, and the symptoms are often so general it's tough to diagnose. This patient had her spleen removed several years prior, and that's what allowed the infection to take hold. Anyway, that's the story I tell whenever people ask about interesting cases, both because it's so rare and because I'm rather proud of having figured it out."

"Wow, that's incredible," Mary remarked. "Almost like detective work."

Instantaneously, John's face fell. His amused smile was replaced with a quivering lip, and the slight sparkle that had ignited in his eyes vanished. Mary could almost feel the warmth of the room evaporate, to be replaced with an eerie chill. She had never seen such a drastic transformation in a person before, and it frightened her. Had she said something to shut him down? She thought she'd been careful, avoiding subjects many people found touchy, but evidently she'd accidentally stumbled upon a trigger. She looked again at John's expression, which could only be described as haunted. His gaze was fixed on some point over her shoulder, and he was mouthing words. She leaned one way and then the other to draw his gaze, but he was absolutely stolid.

"John?" she said tentatively. He blinked several times in quick succession, and then shook his head back and forth before returning his focus to Mary. "Was it something I said?"

"No, no. I just need to… um…" he stammered. "Pull yourself together." The last part was murmured under his breath, a self-reminder and not a command directed at Mary. He shook himself again, like a wet dog flinging water off itself, and returned to almost normal. There was still a look in his eyes that Mary could not pinpoint. "I'm sorry," he added.

"It's okay," Mary assured. "I just want to know if I said something that offended you, so I can avoid doing so in the future."

"It's nothing." Mary knew he was lying. There was no way all of that was for nothing. Something in her last sentence had thrown him for a loop, but she had no idea what.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'm fine."

Reluctantly, Mary accepted this answer. The rest of the night was pleasant enough, but any enthusiasm John had at the beginning of their date had evaporated. He participated half-heartedly in the conversation and barely picked at his dinner. Now Mary understood why he was so skinny—she'd never seen him actually consume an adult-sized portion of anything. Mary was concerned; something obviously troubled this man deeply, and he was bottling it all up inside. That was never a good thing.

At the end of the night, they bade each other farewell and went their separate ways. Mary was no closer to finding out what was wrong with Dr. Watson, she'd only reinforced the fact that he needed help. She was no psychologist, but anyone whose mood could so suddenly turn was not one hundred percent sane. At first, this little escapade had been purely for curiosity purposes, but now Mary saw that it was more urgent than that. It pained her to see a man struggling with some internal grief unknown to her. Not only did she want to know what was wrong, she desperately wanted to help.

~0~

Throughout the next several weeks, her relationship with John progressed. They'd been on several more dates, and Mary thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them. She hoped John was having fun too, but sometimes it was difficult to tell. His smile never reached his eyes, which always remained somewhat distant no matter what the topic of conversation. However, she noticed that her presence always affected his mood positively. He wasn't generally grumpy—sulky was the word she would use if she had to choose one—but he brightened up significantly whenever she stopped by for a chat.

She'd gotten him to talk a lot more about his past life: his childhood, university days, and his time in Afghanistan, but for whatever reason he never told any recent anecdotes. It was as if he'd hopped in a time machine a few years ago and jumped to the present, for there was a very distinct gap. She tried to work in questions about that time period, but doing so subtly was incredibly difficult. "Where were you on the night of August 19th 2010," sounded far too much like an interrogation. She didn't want to grill John, she wanted him to trust her enough to tell her of his own accord.

The more she got to know him, the more Mary liked John Watson. She could now see him as more than just a male damsel in distress. It wasn't just a mother hen complex that drew her to him; he had a certain spunk that she couldn't help but be attracted to. Their relationship was no secret, the entirety of the clinic knew that they were together, and they were all very supportive. But one day she overheard a conversation between another nurse and the receptionist that piqued her curiosity even further:

"Of course I've heard about John and Mary. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think she's exactly what John needs right now. He's been in a horrible funk lately."

"Well, who could blame him? We all know what happened, it was all over the papers."

"The poor dear took it so hard. I didn't think he'd ever speak again."

"Neither did I. But he's really started to come out of it now that he's spending time with Mary. I haven't seen him this content since before the whole scandal."

"Hopefully she won't turn around and break his heart. I'm not so sure he'd even survive."

"No, Mary wouldn't do that. If things go south, she'd at least let him down easy. Nobody in their right mind could be cruel to Dr. Watson, he's as innocent as a puppy."

Just as the two women walked past her, Mary dove out of sight. She hadn't been eavesdropping per se, but she didn't think they'd be too happy if they found out she'd overheard what was supposed to be a private conversation. Her brain attempted to process this new information. She now knew that some newsworthy scandal had greatly impacted John's life. Had he found himself on the wrong end of some legal issue? Endured a bitter divorce? There were just too few clues! There was no way for Mary to build a solid story on ninety five percent conjecture. There was only one reliable source for the real story: John Watson himself.

~0~

Several weeks later, John invited Mary to his flat for dinner. She'd had him over multiple times since they'd started dating, but he didn't reciprocate the invitation until now, claiming his flat was too messy for company. Upon seeing the inside, Mary knew there was no way this place had ever been at all untidy. There wasn't even enough stuff to make a mess. It was actually somewhat depressing. Typically, a person's house told their life story. That was not the case with John. Looking around, Mary didn't see a home, she saw a temporary barracks. The walls were devoid of photographs or artwork, and the furniture was incredibly minimalistic. The counters were bare, without so much as a newspaper to clutter them up. The only decoration of any sort she could find was a small Union Jack pillow tucked in the corner of the sofa.

"How long have you lived here?" she asked. She thought maybe if he'd just moved in, his belongings were still in storage or at the old flat.

"Not long," came his frustratingly vague reply. Mary was beginning to get fed up with his refusal to reveal the information she wanted. Whatever happened was clearly a huge event in his life, and he still hadn't told her after months of being together. She couldn't continue in a relationship with someone who kept secrets. She knew that was hypocritical—she'd hidden her true past from John—but that lie was for both her protection and John's. She wasn't used to being the one in the dark, and it infuriated her.

As she sat down to eat with John, she decided that her only option was to snoop. It wasn't the most morally straight solution to her problem, but it was better than asking him outright and risking him getting so upset that he kicked her out. She trusted her reconnaissance abilities enough not to get caught. So about ten minutes into dinner, she excused herself under the pretense of going to the bathroom.

Instead, she snuck into the bedroom to investigate. Just before she opened the door, remorse crept up on her and made her hesitate. Was this the right thing to do? Did she have any other choice? In the end, her thirst for answers won out. She slowly slid the door open and stepped inside. She opened the first drawer on the table by the head of the bed, and found a gun. Her internal alarm bells rang, but then she remembered John was former military. Most of them kept guns close at hand, so it wasn't than unusual. She slid that drawer closed and opened the next. A half-full bottle of Ambien. Sleeping pills? That was definitely worth noting. The bottommost drawer contained nothing more exciting than socks. Just to be sure, she rifled through them. Each pair was folded loosely and tossed in the drawer haphazardly, so she wasn't concerned about messing up any type of organizational system that would alert John to the fact someone had rifled through his things. She just needed to hurry up so that her excuse of a bathroom break was still valid.

She was just about to close the drawer when something caught her eye. Toward the back, a corner of a piece of paper stuck out from under a pair of socks. Mary quickly extricated it and turned it over in her hands. It was a photograph of John and a taller, curly-haired man. This John was smiling brighter than Mary had ever seen. She knew immediately this was what John looked like when he was truly happy. But who was the other guy, and what was his relation to John? More importantly, where was he now? Mary looked at the picture more closely, and saw marks where trails of water had dripped and dried many times. Were they tears? Did John pull this picture out of his sock drawer to cry over it? Maybe this other man was the he John had referred to when he told her about the babesiosis case. From this information, she concluded that whoever the other man in the picture was, he was now dead. All that was left to figure out was the man's identity.

She returned to the table, hoping her absence hadn't been long enough to warrant suspicion. Much to her relief, John didn't even bat an eye at her late return. If her surmise was correct, the man before her had suffered a great loss. It would certainly explain the hollowness in his gaze and the barely-concealed tears occasionally shed at work. Even here in his own flat, he looked as if he didn't belong. In that moment, pity overwhelmed Mary to the point where she almost cried. But this was nothing compared to how she would eventually feel upon hearing the whole story.

~0~

Mary already knew that Angelo's restaurant was problematic. When she mentioned it that time, John had reacted viscerally. Apparently, it had "connotations." Maybe he'd met the curly-haired man there. Or maybe they'd dated and that was their favorite place. That was a trigger Mary could comprehend. But sometimes she'd say something that shut him down, and she couldn't figure out which word or phrase had caused it. She wished she knew so she could avoid upsetting him, but whenever she asked he either denied that he was distressed or insisted it was nothing she did. Mary was endlessly frustrated with his resolute refusal to admit that anything was amiss.

Another incident that puzzled her occurred when she had John over to her flat for dinner. She didn't enjoy cooking very much, so she usually turned on music to make it more bearable. That night, she'd tuned into the classical radio station. At half past seven, her doorbell rang, and she went to let John in. She opened the door, and he smiled at her briefly. Suddenly, his expression changed and he tilted his head as if listening for something. He barged past her without even a greeting and rushed into the flat.

"John, what's the matter?" she called. She closed the door and followed him into the house. He'd rushed off so quickly she couldn't even see where he went. "John?" she repeated. She found him in the living room, clutching her radio in a white-knuckled grip. "What's wrong?" she asked again. He stopped staring at the radio to glance up at her, and she saw pure defeat in his expression.

He cleared his throat and gently put the radio back on the table. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I heard violin…" the last few words were unintelligible, but Mary thought she heard something along the lines of "sounded like him."

"What about violin?" she questioned.

"It's nothing." Mary had learned long ago that whenever John said it was nothing, it was definitely something. But violin music? The list of things he reacted to just kept getting longer and more baffling. Mary wanted to question him further, but John clearly wanted to abandon the topic, so she let it slide. If John didn't want to talk about something, it was little use attempting to pry it out of him. She turned off the radio and the remainder of the night progressed without incident. In fact, they had such a good time that John decided to stay the night. It was the next morning that would finally bring Mary's mission to a close.

~0~

Mary awoke before John, so she crept into the kitchen to make her morning coffee. She reflected on the previous evening, still clueless as to why the sound of a violin had instigated such strange behavior. She recalled his face when he first heard it emanating from inside her flat. He'd looked… hopeful, as if he'd find answers by following the melodic sound of the instrument. Afterwards he'd seemed absolutely dejected.

Fifteen minutes later, John stumbled into the kitchen with a muttered "good morning." One look at him told Mary he had barely slept a wink. His hair was ruffled from tossing and turning, and the dark circles beneath his eyes made him look like he'd been sucker-punched. Then Mary remembered the bottle of sleeping pills she'd found in his bedroom, and immediately felt guilty. Of course he wouldn't think to bring them with him, he hadn't known he be staying the night. The thought of how long he'd lain awake and miserable while she slept peacefully broke her heart.

"Get any sleep?" she inquired, wanting to know if he would lie to her to protect her peace of mind.

"Yeah," he yawned, rubbing his eyes.

"Are you sure? You look knackered." Mary looked back at John, and from the expression on his face she could tell he knew he'd been found out.

"Actually, not really. It wasn't great. More of a nap. But I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Is there anything I can get you?"

"Mind if I have some of that coffee?"

"Of course." Mary took the first mug and gave it to John, putting milk, cream, and sugar on the table for him to use. She left her own mug to cool off for a minute while she went to get the morning's newspaper. It was somewhat of a ritual for her to read the front page stories; she liked to stay on top of current events.

The headline this morning was one she'd seen in several previous papers: a serial killer had struck again. This had been going on for a while now—he was on his fifth victim—and apparently the police were clueless. Either this guy was really tricky, or Scotland Yard was sadly incompetent. She glanced over the top of the paper and noticed John staring at her while he tentatively sipped his coffee.

"Do you read the news often?" she questioned, turning the page to continue the serial killer article.

"No. I find most of the stories nowadays to be… depressing," he replied, drumming his fingers against the mug. Honestly, he was one hundred percent justified. Very rarely did anything good make the news.

"Even so, you must have heard word of this murderer Scotland Yard has been trying to catch for the past month. He's now killed five people, and they're no closer to catching him than they were at the beginning."

John's response to this question had Mary bewildered: "At least an 8."

"Pardon?" She put down the paper to look at him properly, only to find tears silently rolling down his cheeks. That was it. She wasn't going to sit idly and watch him suffer anymore, she was putting her foot down. She stood up and strode over to him, gently placing a hand on his shoulder.

"John, I'm sorry, but things can't keep going on like this," Mary proclaimed. "No matter how hard you try to conceal it, it's rather obvious that something's plaguing you. I feel like I'm walking blind through a minefield sometimes, watching you plummet into despair with no idea what I did to set it off. John, I need to know what happened so I can help you."

John looked at her earnestly, still soundlessly weeping, before collapsing miserably against her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and just let him cry. She could feel every quiver as massive sobs wracked his small frame. The only discernable word she could make out through his choked mumbling was, "Sherlock." She'd never heard of it before, but logic told her it was the name of the mystery man in the photo she'd found in his sock drawer.

When John finally began to calm down, she gently lifted his head from her shoulder and ran to the other room to grab a box of tissues. Muttering a thank you, he took one and dabbed gently at his eyes. After a few deep breaths, he was composed enough to speak clearly.

"I'm sorry," were the first words out of his mouth.

"John, you have nothing to apologize for." Mary gave him another hug. "If anything, I should be sorry for upsetting you."

"It's not your fault. You didn't know."

"Should I know?"

"Well, I probably owe you an explanation. But first, I want to thank you for putting up with me even though I probably frustrated you to no end. Nobody wants to date a man who can turn into a muddled heap of sorrow at the drop of a hat."

"There's no need to thank me. It really hurts to see you like this, and I just want to know so that I can help you. But I can't help you if I don't even know what's going on.

"Mary, I'm sorry. At this point, I may be beyond help. I don't want to drag you down with me."

"That's not going to happen," Mary scolded. "However, what is going to happen is this: you're going to tell me everything, and I'm going to listen, let you cry or get angry if you need to, and I'm going to help you get through it. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, we'll begin with something simple. Who's Sherlock?"

Note: This story is divided into 2 parts, the second of which will go up in a few days