The first time John encountered her, he saw, but he did not observe.
He was down at the coffee shop, one of his facades of normal life that he'd fallen into the habit of since the hospital. He'd kept his job, he'd kept his flat, he'd kept his dignity, and it was only in the privacy of his own head that he allowed that he'd lost everything that mattered. John was a rational man; he had managed to live his life before Sherlock, and he would manage to live his life now that he was gone. The tremor in his hand was a little more prominent, but what of it? He had been in a war. He was permitted to have little traces of it, etched underneath his skin.
Coffee, black. A scone if he's feeling really lavish, pointedly ignoring everyone else putting sugar into their drinks. John turned away from the serving counter, blowing carefully over the surface of his coffee cup to cool it, suddenly struck with what exactly his life has become. Nothing happens to me. There was nowhere to escape from everything; he hadn't been lying when he'd told Mike that he couldn't afford London on an army pension, and Mrs Hudson had been giving him a fantastic deal out of...sentiment? Affection? Either way, 221B had remained home, and that meant that reminders of Sherlock were everywhere.
He burned his tongue just before he saw her. Groaning a little under his breath and holding out the cup away from his body, trying not to spill on himself from the jerking surprise of the burn. She was right behind him, trying to step quickly out of his way so she wouldn't be scalded either. "Sorry, sorry," he muttered, side-shuffling out of the way. She smiled at him, but he was too distracted to notice (too young). Holding his coffee cup away from his body like it had personally offended him, he left for his shift at the surgery.
The next time he saw her, she was getting into a cab, and this time he noticed her. Looking back on it later, he wouldn't quite know why. It wasn't that she wasn't pretty; she was petite and slender, all dark hair and dark skin and bright intelligent eyes, by all intents and purposes, beautiful.
But there were a lot of beautiful women in London; that wasn't it.
It could have been her clothes. She was wearing the same coat from the other day, a deep blue that wasn't quite the shade that made guilt boil up, hot and insistent in his stomach, with the memory of Sherlock. She was like art made movement, lightness of step added to the blue of her coat amounting to the sensation that she was floating instead of walking. As John pulled the door to the flat closed behind him, shrugging into his jacket as he went, the thought crossed his mind that if he could get that kind of impression in a split second, there was no telling what she'd actually be like to be around.
But it wasn't her looks, or her clothes that made John remember her. No, much as he refused to admit it to herself, John remembered the girl in blue because just as he turned to head down the street away from home, and she got into her cab, he got a look at a tall figure in a long coat slipping into the cab behind her, pulling the door shut quickly. It was nothing to go on, merely a glimpse – a glimpse, just a teeny glimpse – but it made John irrationally want to chase after the departing cab, demanding just one look, just to be sure.
He hated the brief moment of weakness. Dead men don't order cabs. One blink later and he was back to himself, straightening his spine, curling his hands into fists at his sides, and striding down the sidewalk, chin level with the ground. Soldier on.
A few weeks later, he met her. He was working at the surgery, and had taken a half hour to himself in his office for his lunch, carefully putting away neat bites of food into his mouth, meticulous and assured. There was a knock at his door, and he dabbed a napkin at his lips, about to ask that they come back in a little while, he'd be seeing patients then.
She was wearing the blue coat again. The Girl in Blue, John thought to himself wryly; it sounded like one of his blog titles. A memory of a voice ghosted in his ear: Why does it need a title? He shook his head sharply to clear it, and she was still standing there, her bright smile almost hesitant. "You're Doctor Watson, right? John Watson?"
He swallowed, straightening up a bit in his seat and folding his hands on his desk in front of him. "That's me, sorry, I'm actually on lunch at the moment..." He paused. "American?"
She grinned, all bright teeth and unworried charm, closing the door behind her. "Canadian. I get American a lot though." Her grin didn't fade; she just kept staring at him like he was the answer to all of her problems. John cleared his throat.
"Sorry, um...was there something I could help you with?"
She laughed. "Not help. Actually, I was hoping that you'd want to go out for coffee with me. You won't be working too late tonight, right?" She leaned up against the door, not quite bashful. It was like she didn't want to step on toes, even while she was being so up front, ambushing him in his office this way.
John blinked. "Coffee?"
Her smile got wider. "Yeah. That place down on the corner, you stop there in the mornings right? We can meet there, it's really one of the only places I know here so far without getting lost." She laughed. "I know this is really weird, but just...yeah." She laughed again. "I'll see you there, okay? Okay." She reached for the doorknob behind her. "It was really good to meet you, John." The door clicked quietly shut behind her.
John sat, mildly stunned, his hands still folded in front of him. Furrowing his brow as he tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened, he sat back in his chair, pressing one fist against his chin contemplatively. The Girl in Blue.
Of course he went. The last time a stranger had picked him up off the street like this, it been Mycroft, and while the younger brother of the man who was the British government was now buried in a little churchyard under a polished black stone, John had good reason to believe that Mycroft's CTV cameras were will keeping a rather sharp eye on what he did. This girl probably wouldn't have been allowed to get too far if she meant him any actual harm. In all actuality, she was probably just Mycroft's new assistant anyway. John heaved a sigh as he made his way down to the shop, turning up his coat collar against the wind (for practicality, not to just look cool, like some people had done) as a lazy drizzle started to fall over London. Mycroft had been trying to make amends ever since Sherlock had...well. John wasn't quite ready to consider forgiving him yet.
That thought already planted into his mind, John ducked into the front door of the coffee shop. The Girl in Blue was already there, sipping carefully at a cup of green tea, still with her coat on, as if John wouldn't recognize her without it. He sat down across from her, his spine straight, his expression guarded.
For a long while, she didn't talk. She watched people coming in the front door, slowly slurped at her tea for a bit before seeming to forget that she'd even purchased it, leaving it sitting idle on the table between them. After several silent moments, she met John's carefully masked expression, and she smiled again. It seemed to be her expression of choice, like he was a very old friend that she was very fond of, and couldn't believe that they'd actually managed to stay in contact over so many years. "It's my birthday today," she said comfortably.
"Er..." John blinked a few times, his forehead wrinkling in concentration again. He needed to get a jump on where this conversation might be going. "Happy birthday."
"Thank you." Her smile didn't fade. She tapped her fingertips against the edge of the table, her brightly coloured rings catching John's attention despite himself. "I didn't think I'd be getting a present," she admitted. "I've got a friend that's kind of...well. All sorts of big ideas, you know, but never manages to follow through with them." She seemed to be trying to peel back John's expression, looking for something there. "All sorts of thoughts crashing together, you know? Only room to look for what's important."
John's head snapped up from where he'd been absently looking at her rings, suddenly dead-set focused on her face. "Sorry what?"
She grinned again. This girl was made up of all charm. "You know just what I mean, don't you?" She nodded in agreement with herself. "Yeah...you know, you look just like I thought you would. I read in the papers, you know. About what happened to your friend." For the first time, her smile faltered a bit, but she perked up almost immediately. John was careful not to flinch at Sherlock's unspoken name. Soldier on. "But I ended up getting a birthday present anyway," she confided. "And now I'm here to give you one."
John cleared his throat, looking over her face, trying to figure out something, anything from it. "Sorry, who exactly are you?"
She moved as if to reach across the table for his hand, but stopped herself partway. "A friend."
The door to the shop opened again, and John's breath caught sharply in his throat for a moment at what he saw when he turned instinctively at the noise of the bell. Long dark coat, thin pale fingers clutched around a mobile phone, tousled dark brown hair. Sherlock. The name was poised on John's tongue, and he bit it back just in time. The hair was too long, the coat the wrong style, and the individual decidedly too feminine to be whom he'd first thought. Disappointment, irrational and angry, festered in his stomach. Dead men don't order cabs, and they don't stride into coffee shops. Across from him, the Girl in Blue was getting to her feet, her tea still completely forgotten.
"It was so nice to meet you John," she said sincerely, buttoning up her coat and tugging up the hood of it over her head. Next to her, the other woman didn't even glance up, tapping away rapid-fire at her mobile phone. "I'm glad that it got to be me." She looked over at the other woman – clearly they were acquainted somehow – with a warm, long-suffering smile. "Sorry, she's really no good with people."
"He says that'll be enough for him to go on," the taller woman said, still not looking up for her phone. Her accent matched her companion's. "Says the parallels are getting too obvious now." She glanced quickly at John, as if not sure that he measured up for whatever errand she'd been asked to do, before returning her attention to her phone. "Come on, Tar. We shouldn't be here when he figures it out, we can't answer his questions." Turning on her heel, she swept out of the shop, her coattails whipping around the corner of the door in a decidedly dramatic fashion. John didn't even bother to try and push away the memory of Sherlock; she probably had no idea how much she resembled him in that moment. She looked strangely out of place next to the ordinary figure of John Watson, and the rather extraordinary individual that was the Girl in Blue. Tar. A nickname?
"Here!" The Girl was holding out something to him, waiting for him to take it. A mobile phone. "I've got to go; she's right." She grinned as she pressed the phone into his hand, John not having realized he'd even reached for it. "I don't even know why stuff like this happens to me; I'm not even that fun to talk to." Sticking her hands into her pockets, she slipped out through the door after her friend.
Bewildered, John looked down at the mobile in his hand, momentarily stunned from reacting. It wasn't new; it even looked considerably battered, like it had fallen out of someone's pocket while they were running across the road in a hurry. John turned it over in his hand, brow furrowing, before flipping it open. The screen was scuffed and scratched, but it lit up regardless, and John nearly dropped it. He knew this mobile. This mobile was meant to have disappeared when its owner had flung himself off the roof of St Bart's Hospital.
Sherlock's mobile.
The chair fell backwards to the ground behind him with a clatter as John jumped from his seat, flinging the front door open as he pounded out onto the street, looking wildly back and forth along the sidewalk in the rain to see where the two women had gone. Across the street, a tall figure was ducking into the backseat of a cab. John called out over the traffic, and the smaller figure, a girl in blue, looked up. Ever-smiling, she raised a hand to wave, before ducking into the cab, pulling the door shut behind her as it began to pull away.
Looking down at the phone in his hand, John found he was breathing heavily, flooded over with a million sensations that he had no idea what to do with after so many weeks of building a wall between himself and his grief. The phone was a sign, that much was obvious. A sign of...what? Of life? Impossible...
John tightened his grip around the battered phone. The tremor in his left hand was completely gone.
The Girl in Blue.
Standing there in the rain, John let his head fall back to turn his face up to the sky, weak with relief, and laughed.