A/N. Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Sherlock. They are the property of their creators. No infringement intended.
This is the third part of "The Day..." series. Thematically, it is closely tied to "The Day We Stopped Running" which describes John/Mary relationship through John's eyes. This time, primary focus is on Mary and her desperate attempts to lead a normal life, or other people's definition of it.
If someone had said to Mary that this was going to be a fun day, she'd probably smile, politely, and brush it off. She'd always been very liberating with that sort of thing. "Fun" was by far the most polysemantic word in people's vocabulary. "Go" didn't come anywhere close.
At most, people's definition of fun included a fast, if a bit reckless, drive on a motorway, or a drunken night at a pub with no memories of it on the next day. For Mary, however, "fun" was always about memories. These pieces she could record, stuff in her head, and then replay whenever she wanted. Was she an addict? Of course, she was. She'd be the first to confirm it. Denial could be a nice thing, but then again, what was the point of lying to yourself. You could lie to other people, she herself certainly did - was rather proficient in that, in fact, but lying to herself… she'd always despised the thought. It was for the people who didn't know what they wanted. Mary had a lot of faults, but this one wasn't among them.
She wanted to live. She wanted to breathe. She wanted to take every chance, no matter what it would bring. At least, it didn't matter until now. Until she caught a glimpse of John Watson. Sad. Resigned. Hurt. Yet determined. Determined to do… something? She wasn't sure about that part, but she needed to be. She needed that so badly that nothing else seemed to matter anymore.
After that, she didn't have much fun. She had memories, though. Every day would make for a decent one. No near-death experiences. No guns. No killing. And yet, the 'thrill' folder in her head seemed to grow in proportion every single day. The thrill of being alive instead of surviving. The thrill of smile in John's eyes when she managed to cheer him me up - well, in all honesty, there were only some faint traces of it, but even those were enough. Enough to put another kind of meaning in her life. Another kind of fun.
Fun of the now-gone days. All but a sometimes-too-distinct memory. She'd revisit it once in a while. She'd keep herself up-to-date. It wasn't the fear of forgetting and losing that drove her. It wasn't the feeling of necessity, or nostalgia. It was the need. The need that never really went away.
It could sleep for days, for months. And then it would just wake up, violently and only too-predictably to keep ignoring. It was when she revisited her memories. When she made her decisions, the most important of which being "What to do with John?"
She didn't like solving that puzzle. Too much depended on its outcome. Too much. She never liked being overwhelmed by things but here she was. Overwhelmed. Confused. Lying. Wanting to confess and lying all the same. Confessing would have been a way out. A relief. An absolution. That was what she was taught to believe. Maybe it was even right. But not for her. People like her… truth never brought them anything but contempt and dismissal.
A way out, indeed. A way out of normal, sane life, or at least the sanest one she was capable of having. A way to lose her last chance.
Would she fall apart? Kill someone? Kill herself? All of these were plausible, but none described the real consequences.
"Do you know what will happen if you leave me, John?"
"You will stalk me for the rest of my life?"
"No. I will HAUNT you. In this life, and the next. And then I'll ask you one question: why?"
"Sometimes I think you should have become…"
"I did. Everything you can imagine, and more."
Much more, in fact, but John didn't need to know about that, did he?
Why? Why would you leave me?
She knew the answer, she knew it all too well, and that's why the urge to ask was nearly unstoppable. She smiled when she asked it, even laughed. Her voice trembled from the emotional extortion but she knew that she could rely on her cheerful disguise. It could hide almost anything. And this… this was but a small piece of 'anything'. A very small piece that needed to be let out before it strangled her.
Mary had been used to emotional rollercoasters. To the excitement, to the fun of them. It never lasted too long, though. The aftermath came with a price tag attached.
The cost of emotional matters was the highest. The more emotions were involved, the messier it got. Mary had been trained to deal with messes, and even better, avoid them. It might have been the title of her job description if they were given one.
Avoid the mess because once it's started, you lose all control, and once you lose all control, you're the victim.
Victims were weak and helpless. A punch bag for others. The sufferers of this world. And if Mary knew one thing it was that life wasn't meant for suffering. It was meant for living. Living like there is no tomorrow.
Living with John made her aware of tomorrow. Made her aware of too many things in fact.
Mary cringed at the thought. The message was true, though. You could either have an ordinary, uneventful life or another kind of life. And these two very rarely made for a good mix.
Everything in-between was a trap. And one of those had just closed behind her.
You could still have fun in a trap, though, and Mary was making the most of it. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes she thought she could escape. But she knew that nothing could prepare her for what was really to come.
Fun meant different things for different people. For Mary, it meant struggle. And now she was struggling for balance. For acceptance of who she was. For John. For the traces of laughter in his eyes. For his trusting expression she didn't deserve. For all these things that made a life "normal" and made her forget that there was another kind of fun.
There was a third meaning, though. Fun could also mean something strange, unexplained, bizarre. She'd certainly encountered these things in her life.
This, however… this was nothing short of madness. And also, the last thing she would've expected.