Joan Watson, cropped blond hair a light mess on her pillow, wakes from the dreams of the past clawing at her sleep. She shakes off the sand that once touched her skin, though the feeling remains intake, and gulps in a long breath of musty air. Sometimes she'd forget she ever left until she looks around the small beige room she is told to call home.
She sits up on the bed, deserting sleep, and opens up her barely used laptop. The piercing light from the screen seems to drown out the dark, a blank document stares at her as if to say 'This is what your life is now. A blank page'. Joan sits in front of the screen and pretends to type whilst her fingers hover over the keys, brushing them with her nails occasionally so to feel the sensation that she might actually be getting something out of life.
Joan had never been a woman to lie, and yet that's all she did with herself now.
It was mid afternoon when she decided fresh air might make her feel better; this is what she told herself every Saturday afternoon. Bumping into Michelle Stamford was coincidence disguised in the form of coffee, odd bits of silence and mindless chit-chat.
"You mentioned something about looking for a flat-mate, right?" Michelle said, mid-coffee sip
"Who'd want to be a flat-mate with me?" Joan said, shoulders hunching slightly
"I know this woman from work, bit odd but you might like her" and with a small nonchalant shrug Joan had unintentionally made a choice that would change her bleak vigilant life into something more like the war she craves.
Bart's is a short cab ride away and soon Joan is walking through walls of white to what Michelle tells her is the morgue. Standing hunched over a large microscope is a tall woman, she looks up from her work and smirks as if to say their arrival was something she expected. Her face is sharp and curved like a bowie knife; her long black wisps of hair a harsh contrast to her almost luminously pale skin. A long coat hangs off her shoulders and like a second skin it tugs into her thin frame as she moves
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" she says, her voice like a bullet through the silence shot directly at Joan
"Afghanistan… But how did you-" Joan's voice trailed off
"Not many female doctors in Afghanistan are there?" the woman didn't look at Joan, she observed her. Her eyes were scanning every inch of the doctor's body like it were a map and she were a tourist
"That's not why I left" Joan huffed
"I know that, you were shot in your shoulder but I'm sure you're not here to tell me all about your war days" she smiled and looked back down at her work "There's a place I've been looking at, the landlord owes me a favour so the price isn't a problem. Plus it's nice size for two"
"Hang on, how do you know I'm here about the flat?" Joan said, her eyes wide
"I told Michelle this morning I was looking for a place and now she's here with an ex-army doctor from her schooldays, it's not hard to put the two together"
Watching this woman talk was like watching the cogs at the back of a clock churning, the words seemed to slide out of her mouth before the question she was responding was even asked.
"We've only just met and you're asking me to move in with you" Joan said in a tone of slight exasperation "I don't even know your name"
The woman gets up from the bench, straightens her skirt, and with a sheer look of delight walks towards the doorway. Her jacket propels outwards like a pair of wings, maybe she is some kind of alien Joan thought as she watched the strange woman walk
"The address is 221B Baker Street and my name's Sherlock Holmes" and with a slight curtsey she sturts out of the room, coat trailing along behind her
Joan Watson supposes that Sherlock Holmes is the strangest person she has ever met.
Driving through London with a woman who's eyes see every inch of the world was like being in the battlefield again for Joan, where you needed to see what the enemy could not. Joan suspected Sherlock could see the earth turn, maybe she could feel it too
"How did you know about Afghanistan?" Joan ponders, biting her tongue when the sentence comes out. How Sherlock must mock the average, she thinks. Sherlock then goes onto dissect every aspect of Joan into a few mere sentences, commenting on each feature she could've possibly seen. She doesn't even stop for a breath as words come out of her mouth as if she were gasping and now she is finally breathing again. Sherlock was either a mad woman, a magician or the most impossible woman Joan has ever encountered. Joan was sure that at least two of these were true
"That was amazing" Joan exclaimed, showing no attempt at holding back her enthusiasm. There was a moment of silence in which Joan swore she could see Sherlock's frown turn into a smile
"You think so?" Sherlock said as modestly as she could
"It was amazing, brilliant it really was" Joan replied, a wide smile filling up her cheeks
"That's not what people usually say" Sherlock remarks
"What do they usually say?" Joan snatches at the whim of conversation
"Piss off, bitch"
"How is it you know so much about people anyways?" Joan said
"I don't know I notice" Sherlock's eyes gaze out through the window at the quiet city streets, people and cars bustling about in the never ending motion of the world. To Joan this was loud; to Sherlock this was putting the world on mute
"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Joan said
"Tired of what?" Sherlock turns her face to Joan's, her eyebrows creased in a confused frown
"Noticing"
"When there is nothing left to see, Joan"
Joan realises this is the first time Sherlock has said her name and it pleases her. She likes the way it rolls off the detective's tongue, like it's recognition of some sort. Joan.
Pulling the trigger was easy; watching the living become the dead was something Joan had grown to become neutral to. Bodies had dropped at her feet before and what was another to add to the list? She wouldn't call herself a killer, more an eradicator of the unwanted humans. It was even easier when she became a saviour, when she killed to prevent another fallen body by the enemy's hand.
The bullet had drawn through two windows to hit her victim, and as the bullet hit the body Joan had made a run for it. She didn't want traces of her to be found in the eye of the police.
Joan stood behind the caution tape as a spectator, Sherlock stood in the crime scene as a victim. An incredibly orange shock blanket had been forced onto Sherlock's shoulders, although she kept insisting on the fact she wasn't in shock. The various policemen she has made feel like an idiot are laughing in delight at seeing the genius become a mere form of comedy; Sherlock looks less than amused. She proceeds to walking over to Joan and cleaning the act of confusion from her and showing the soldier. They laugh and leave, both seeing the other in a light of proudness and crime scenes as playgrounds in which they dwell.
Two am, a bullet is shot. Joan runs from her room, adrenaline and worry kicks in at the sound of a bang like a switch. An enemy, the police, Joan runs the possibilities of danger through her head as she heads to the source of the shot
"Sherlock! Are you o-" Joan's face falls from a look of panic to a look of un-amusement, every crease of her forehead showing. Sitting indifferently on the couch with nothing but a thin purple dressing gown is Sherlock, gun in hand and gloomy expression on face
"What are you doing?" Joan cried, holding the urge to stamp her foot in pure rage
"Bored, Joan" Sherlock muttered, using Joan's name as if it were punctuation rather than a person
"What?" Joan sighed
"Bored!" Sherlock stood up from the couch and took another shot at the wall, her long hair hanging over her face as she continuously pulled the trigger. Each hole in the wall was the markings of nights without cigarettes or cases, the smoke had calmed the unsettlement of the quiet and the cases had drowned the thought of 'dullness' from Sherlock's head. Bored had turned into bore, and dull had become duly. The routine of a gunshot was one that had stuck at 221B, whether Joan had a say in it or not.
"I'm going for a walk" Joan huffed, hastily putting on a jacket to keep out the cold
"Bring back some milk, I had to sacrifice the last bottle for a hand"
"You put a hand in a milk bottle?"
"It was either that or a baked beans can, it seemed more hygienic"
Sherlock's tone didn't hover and Joan began to wonder how much of an idiot she took her for, or if she was just being herself. Herself being the higher genius and uncommonly mad detective; Joan being the average sane companion of the two. Companion didn't even cut what she was to Sherlock; Joan was her key to humanity, the head and heart, as people would call it.
Joan made her way to the door whilst Sherlock made her way to the ringing phone. The phone was more a warning than a ring, the explosion was more a chess move than a danger.