Hey everyone.
I'm sorry I've not been posting for a while. Inspiration isn't low, I'm simply working on another writing project that has taken up my life. In the face of that, I did manage to write this John and Mary fic - but it's a lot more Mary centric.
As usual, nothing is mine.
Mary had seen the fall of her career as a spy coming. Even before her mission to Russia, she had known that the details of her identity were being leaked (it had been in the works from one of her enemies for a long time). Her specific skillset, made for espionage and murder, was irrelevant, because she was now a liability for the CIA. Relocation was necessary, and nothing else would be granted to her beyond whatever she could already save.
She moved. She could shift into an English accent with ease, so it wasn't a problem to pass off as a local. She had a small fund which would help her set herself up. She was Mary Morstan – an orphan.
Beyond that, Mary could not find it in herself to fit into this character.
Mary Morstan felt like someone else to her – not one of her identities. And Mary used to have many – she could shift into Iva, the black wearing goddess of diamonds and seduction. She could be Alice, the secretary with glasses who was clumsy. She could be Rebecca of the efficiency, the paperclips and onwards. She could be any one of these girls.
But Mary Morstan was a blank slate. Mary Morstan was someone without a personality.
Mary was used to filling her character with what was needed during the mission itself. But there was no mission anymore. There was only life.
And without a character to fit into, Mary had forgotten what it was like to just be herself.
It had been hell the first month. She wasn't able to find a purpose, she wasn't able to get a grip on what she was supposed to do. She spent her days in her flat, gripping her knees, having a small existential crisis. What did Mary Morstan do with her free time?
It felt completely empty inside her. And Mary got the strangest feeling that all those girls she could shift into were fighting for dominance. Iva wanted her to go shopping, Rebecca needed her to clean the flat. Alice wanted to read a book.
Mary suppressed them because she no longer knew whether it was her that wanted this or just the characters she had created. It was when she had seriously considered ending her life.
Abigail G.R Alastair used to like baking. Even when her father was drunk and her Mum was dying, she used to bake cookies, and the whole mansion used to smell of cookies.
The cookie dough stared at her offendingly. She had bought it, on a whim, and she wasn't able to trace the urge back to any of the characters. It continued to watch her, and Mary found herself getting up from her spot on the sofa to grab the bag.
It felt like someone else's body, mixing the batter, reading the instructions. Someone else's body that was doing things according to urges she couldn't trace – she was humming 'Dancing Queen' by Abba, and as the cookies came out, she smelled deeply.
This she could remember.
She was shopping when she picked the red coat up.
It was one of the urges she didn't understand – one of those things that popped up the way her jokes did, or the way she snorted when she laughed.
It was so large, red, baggy, and a weird looking coat. Happy and odd at the same time - a little like the blonde haircut she was supporting. It fit and it didn't. It was something she couldn't help thinking of as hers. Hers, her personality, her thoughts.
Her apartment seemed to be a mess, but Mary could tell what was happening. Iva had found a place in her life with the sexier dresses. Rebecca was in the order, in the efficiency. Alice was among the books and cookies. She stopped denying her characters what they wanted, but decided to fashion someone else out of them.
Someone who was a bit of all.
Mary Morstan liked comfortable couches and footrests, but she also liked neatness, efficiency and order. She liked dresses which women who were thirty could carry off with ease, but she liked clothes which were odd and weird but suited her.
Abigail used to escape by reading. When her Dad was beating her Mum, and the servants were whispering in corners, Abby Alastair would read.
Mary Morstan had a bookshelf which was increasingly impressive. She read mostly fantasy fiction and romances, along with a few well thumbed cookbooks.
The man had been choking, and Mary hadn't thought twice. The standard Heimlich Maneuver worked, and the man coughed out whatever he was eating. But then his body started seizing, and Mary fell blank.
That was when a blonde haired man ran inside, gave her a swift, smile, and began to do whatever it was that doctors did. Mary could only stir at this man – this man who seemed to be used to being on his toes.
"That was quick thinking," he told her. His voice was so pleasing, so roughened but at the same time comforting.
The funny thing was, Mary had known what it had been that was wrong with the man. She had known how to fix it. She simply hadn't – because her brain had become curiously blank.
She had wanted to fix the problem. Mary Morstan didn't like being curiously blank.
She went through two years of nursing school, had some contacts of her rustle up some credentials for the things she already knew. School certificates and so on – important things which she had needed Mary to have.
She threw herself deep into her books, determined to be the best damn nurse possible. The false credentials would not fool her into becoming complacent, and she was going to erase that blankness that had happened upon her that time.
She even managed to make friends. The girls at nursing school came from homes like her – broken, in bits and pieces, unable to afford the better colleges or the better forms of life. Possibly with young children to support and care for.
And they were her friends, these girls. Sam, who was slow on her rent. Ginny, who had run away from home and was waiting tables and using up funds to pay for nursing school. Monica, who wanted to be a nurse like her Mum had been.
She got a job. It was one of the best days of her life – she celebrated with the girls. They laughed, as she used up the remaining money of her fund saved from her other life on drinks for them.
It was over. Mary Morstan was real. She was alive.
She was happy. She existed.
And then she met him.
She had not expected him to be there at all. But his smile was dead, and his brow was bent. There was something terribly wrong.
"Hi!" she said to him.
"Have we met?" he asked, and Mary could feel the pain that he seemed to be supporting.
"You saved a man's life in a restaurant four years back," said Mary helpfully. "I went to nursing school after that, and now, here I am. I did the Heimlich on that man, incidentally."
"Oh," he said. She saw recognition in his eyes, but a lack of enthusiasm. "It's good to meet you - ?"
Mary tilted her head at him. She was Mary Morstan, and she didn't hero worship. Not this man, nor any other. She could deduce that this man had lost a hero.
"Mary. And you are?"
"John. John Watson."
She felt reckless in the face of his sadness. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be fine," she said.
"What?" he questioned.
"Whoever it was that you lost," clarified Mary. "I'm sure you will be fine."
"How could you tell?" asked John, his eyes wide.
"You seem sad," she said. "I've seen it a lot in... patients."
Abby Alastair had always found her father's eyes terrible to look at after her Mum had died. It was strange to find him mourning a woman he had said he hated.
It was when John Watson smiled at her, in that curious sort of way that her whole new life hit her with new force. It was when weeks of friendship were finally rewarded: a smile. Something that he almost didn't know how to do without bitterness. A smile born of joking, of laughter, of something more exciting.
John Watson was laughing because she had made a joke about death on one of their patients.
Oh he saw her, alright. He saw the red jacket, the short haircut, the cookie dough, the baking. He saw Mary's organisation, the way her mind was able to go through every problem, combing, meticulously. He saw the skills she had honed in another life. He saw the way she would smile and laugh, but think about her childhood and turn away. He saw the way Mary could not help being able to wield the scalpel with better precision than most doctors.
John Watson saw her. He did not see Iva, or Alice. He saw Mary in a way that her friends had never seen her.
He saw Mary, the woman who had struggled for an identity.
He saw the Mary that was a mesh of too many qualities.
He saw the Mary, that was, coincidentally, very much in love with him.
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