Psycho-boring disclaimer alert: If I owned Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Graves or Andrew Scott, the world would know. Trust.


A Study in Hot Pink.

Old friends and new possibilities.

The thing that really ticked Johnnye off most was the way that strangers stared at her, she could feel them, staring at her. Giving her their pity. She didn't need it. She didn't want it. What use would it have for her? A woman who only got shot because she was trying to save the life of a mortally wounded soldier who couldn't be moved.

She felt like a circus clown, hobbling along by the use of her damned walking stick. She tried to take pleasure in the serenity and beauty of the park, but all that went through her mind was thoughts of the war zone, the machine gun fire, the bombs.

"Johnnye! Johnnye Watson!"

Stumbling around, she came face to face with a podgy man wearing thin, rectangular glasses and nostalgic smile. Frowning, she grasped desperately for the name of the man. That's if she knew him at all. He raises a hand to point to himself and say "Stamford. Mike Stamford. We were at Barts together."

Realisation made her brows disappear beneath her block fringe and her mouth to form an 'O' of surprise. Mike Stamford? The same Mike Stamford who'd once asked her if she had an eating problem when he'd seen how much she could eat and still stay the same slim shape? Apology clear in her voice, she said "Yes, sorry, yes. Mike, how're you?"

He waved his hands at his large stomach and said "Yeah, I know. I got fat." She didn't know how to recover from that. How was she continue from that? It struck her as ironic that she could recover from being shot at, seeing her friends die, and being violently shot in her shoulder, but can't carry on a decent convo anymore.

Mike carried on for her, saying with curiosity "I heard you were abroad getting shot at. What happened?" It made her cringe a little inside, but by now and with her military experience she could restrict her facial expression. She hoped.

"I got shot." She said simply, trying to be casual as possible as she shrugged her shoulders and turned her gaze away from his, so that she didn't have to see the pity. She couldn't stand the pity.

###

A quarter of an hour later, Johnnye sipped at her tea before she said "Are you still at Barts? Or have you left the nest?"

"Teaching now, yeah. Bright young things like we used to be. God, I hate them." They shared a smile and a light chuckle at Mike's humour. "Except for you'a course. You weren't bright, Johnnye." Johnnye raised an eyebrow so that it disappeared underneath her curtain of hair and a confused look in her beautiful eyes. "You were extraordinary." She laughed at Mike once again, suddenly wondering why she hadn't tried to make contact with any of her old school friends before now.

"What about you? Staying in town until you get yourself sorted?"

She scoffed, rolling her eyes so hard that her pupils almost disappeared beneath her eyelids. "I can't afford London on an Army pension, Mike. And it's not like I can just go out and get a job with this leg." She tapped her crippled leg with her stick, sighing when she thought about the prospects a cripple like her has at getting a job in the medical profession.

"And you couldn't bear to be anywhere else. That's not the Johnnye Watson I know."

Anger bubbled up inside her, her trembling left hand clenching at what Mike just said. Her mouth lashed out at him, moving so fast that she snapped the words before her brain could decide how horrid she was being. "Yeah, well I'm not the Johnnye Watson you knew." She sighed and unclenched her hand, only for it to be furiously clenched once more when she finds that it trembled once more. She tried to explain to him her situation by telling him softly "People change, Mike. War changes even the best of us- it strips us down and takes away life right before our eyes. And every second, every breath we take, every soldier knows it might very well be their last." She looked into his baby blue eyes and tried to put across her apology without having to exercise her voice any more than necessary.

"Couldn't Terri help?"

Again, the words cam out of her mouth before she had the time to censure what she was saying to her old friend "Yeah, right! I still have my principles, Mike."

"Pfft... I don't know... get a flatshare or something?"

"Oh, come on! Get real, Mike! Who in their right mind would wanna have me for a flatmate?" At Mike laughing while looking away, it struck Johnnye that he looked quite pensive. She smiled a little and asked him, half laughing "What's so funny?"

Mike still looked amused as he told her "You're the second person to say that to me today."

Curiosity had always been her downfall, it was so insatiable that she normally got in deep shit for following that little voice that told her to explore, to discover, to learn. She just hoped that this was not one of those times that she would end up regretting following her instincts and her curiosity.