A Hint Of Femlock - A Study In Pink

The Sum Of Two Alones

Joan woke to a dark room, but not the same one she had fallen asleep in. This one was rounder, more fragile. It took Joan another nine seconds to work out where she was, and that it was a dream. She was in a tent. A medic’s tent in Afghanistan.

Now on her feet, she stepped outside to see an overhead cargo plane fly past her miles above. A rush of wind hit her in the face, pushing her short, blond hair up in the air. In the distance the sun was only just beginning to rise and it created an orange and yellow glow by the edge of her vision. It was a beautiful sensation, a memory that she had failed to recall when asked what things she missed by her therapist. Like a fool she had said nothing.

Joan looked at the dusty ground, swirling her bare foot in the dry grass. Something red showed up on one of the limp blades. It was a bright red dot, and it started to move toward her. First it touched her foot, then up her leg, past her hip, then stopped on her heart. This never happened, she thought.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Bang.

Dr. Watson opened her eyes. She was lying on her side, and a tall, shadowy figure stood right in front of her. Luckily, she was smart enough to know who it was.

“What do you want, Sherlock?”

Sherlock didn’t move. Neither did Joan. It took her a few moments to register the question.

“Wait, what did you say?”

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” Joan sat up almost immediately. Hearing no response, Sherlock made it clearer. “You’re a former army doctor, correct?”

“Who told you that?”

“You did.”

“I did?”

“Yes. Not literally; it was easy to tell.”

Joan nearly laughed. “But seriously, who told you?”

The facial expression remained the same on Sherlock’s face. Joan did not believe her. Probably thought she was mad, too. Great, she thought. Giving up, she turned on her heel, pausing only for a nanosecond at the doorway.

“Where are you going?” Joan blurted out curiously, just before Sherlock walked out of sight.

“You really want to know?”Joan stopped smiling and stood up.

“I’m all ears.”

“Let me ask you a question, Joan.” Dr. Watson perked up at the use of her name: it sounded different when Sherlock said it. “Have you seen many injuries; violent deaths?”

“Enough for a lifetime.”

“Want to see some more?”

Joan didn’t need to think, she had done far too much of that. Little did Joan know that her answer would change the course of her life. “Oh God, yes.”

And with that, Joan Watson found herself following the mysteriously morbid Sherlock Holmes down the stairs of 221B Baker Street.

“Have you heard about the three serial suicides on the news?” She asked.

“Yeah, what about them?”

“There’s been a fourth, and this time there’s a note!” Sherlock exclaimed, much like a child excitedly opening a Christmas present. If she hadn’t said it like that, Sherlock may have seemed just a simple journalist, but at that a dark impression of Sherlock’s occupation came out; a grim shadow of what she strived for.

Under the clouds, the duo climbed into a cab.

“Brixton, Lauriston Gardens.”

Despite the common interest seemingly bonding the two, an awkward silence had arisen between them. Perhaps it was of Sherlock’s normal lifestyle to feel alone, or just Joan’s isolation from the continuity of her adventure in the army that dampened her social skills.

“How could you tell then?”

“Tell what?”

“That I was an army medic.”

This was the first time Sherlock looked at Joan during the entire cab ride. Properly looked at her. Not just for deductions. The majority of it she had spent staring straight ahead like a robot, with the occasional flickers out the window, but even in the midst of the darkness above, it was also the first time Joan got a proper look at Sherlock too.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Joan said, giving her a weak smile. An honest smile.

“First, the tan: look how your face is tanned but no, that’s not your natural pigment, you can see the difference on the wrists, so recently been in a hot country then. Next, your haircut, the way you hold yourself, it says military. Then there’s the simple fact of Mrs Hudson telling me you work at a walk-in health clinic. Military, hot place, medical profession, I’d say army doctor in the warmer climates. Then there’s the psychosomatic limp. All through my visit to the flat you didn’t sit down, like you’ve forgotten it, but to anyone else it’s obvious you’ve got that limp. The exception of lying down in your room was clearly to get away from me. So it’s at least partly psychosomatic. And with a limp like that, it’s quite likely you’ve been invalidated. Injured in action. Where has there been a lot a military action lately? Afghanistan or Iraq?”

As she spoke, Joan recognised the familiarity of her reasoning and matched it with that of what she read on Sherlock’s website. Now hearing it in reality made Joan realise how amazing it really was. How amazing she really was. It was only then that she remembered what the website had been called – The Science Of Deduction. This woman sitting beside her was no mere author, she finally understood, but a detective. One far beyond the boundaries of normality.

Caught up in the brilliance of the situation, Joan lost the ability to contain her own thoughts.

“Amazing.” Surprised, Sherlock was taken aback, and though she tried her best to not show it, Joan seemed to catch on. “You look a bit shocked,”

“Oh, it’s just not what people usually say.”

“What do people usually say?”

“Piss off.”