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004 - sherlock holmes and joan watson - almost
There are moments of recognition; that's the worst of it. Moments of something -- not in form, which is wholly different (and that shouldn't matter, but in combination with the rest, it does), but somewhere else, in some abstract and unquantifiable quality, there in a smile or the movement of a hand or the edge of a sigh. Sherlock doesn't know if he could've adored it, given the absence of prior experience, but he thinks he might've done. He doesn't believe in fate, but he does believe that people fit, bear qualities which make them mutually beneficial to one another on an emotional level and in their traversal of the physical world. Perhaps something carries over, across universes, that one undefinable thing that makes a John Watson (or Joan Watson, apparently) singular.
It's a wildly uncomfortable state of affairs, because they aren't at all the same, this woman he knows, in the end, not half as well as he knows John. He's seen enough to know that their lives have been very different, have shaped them in utterly independent ways, and yet he looks at her and he wonders how long it'll take for the familiarity to fade and for her presence to eclipse John's absence. He stubbornly considers it impossible, and maybe it is, but the fear that it mightn't be settles in his chest all the same.
He dislikes her, or he attempts to, and she dislikes him, he senses, save for the curiosity. That's not entirely like John, is it? It's colder, more like Sherlock is, and that alone would be enough to set him on edge. Then again, maybe John was simply subtler about it. Maybe he too machinated to disassemble Sherlock down to his constituent parts, only Sherlock never realised. It's so difficult to tell when he can't just look, when he's confined to trawling through memories to suss out some sign, to find where the similarities lie.
It's a torturous exercise, and why he bothers he doesn't know. Perhaps because his life here is confined to this, to remembering, because not remembering isn't an option (or not one he would willingly choose) and there's little else to do, most days. It's pathetic even to him that he clings to these points of overlap, searches out any hint of comfort in places he shouldn't, in people he ought to leave well enough alone.
It's a miserable state of affairs, but then there she is, and let's go run, and all of the utter, utter nonsense aimed at sorting out the tangle in his head. Misguided, because being miserable with it is better than not having it, and why can't people try to find a way to make the tangle nicer, some sort of elegant protein fold, rather than trying to set him up the way they are? Is it so hard to imagine?
Maybe it is. Sherlock has sought to examine them down to their cores, the real people, and John, who is something else entirely, though you'd hardly know to look at him. He's tried, and that's not even almost, not even as close as different minds and different faces can be close.
So sod it. It'd be the work of a lifetime to sort even one person out, and maybe this is better than nothing, having her here, even if she is a pretender to the throne, as it were. Maybe it'll stop, the disliking, though it still appeals more than the weary acceptance that likely must follow. Maybe it already is, maybe he's already settling into the understanding that that's all that he gets: only almost.
It's a wildly uncomfortable state of affairs, because they aren't at all the same, this woman he knows, in the end, not half as well as he knows John. He's seen enough to know that their lives have been very different, have shaped them in utterly independent ways, and yet he looks at her and he wonders how long it'll take for the familiarity to fade and for her presence to eclipse John's absence. He stubbornly considers it impossible, and maybe it is, but the fear that it mightn't be settles in his chest all the same.
He dislikes her, or he attempts to, and she dislikes him, he senses, save for the curiosity. That's not entirely like John, is it? It's colder, more like Sherlock is, and that alone would be enough to set him on edge. Then again, maybe John was simply subtler about it. Maybe he too machinated to disassemble Sherlock down to his constituent parts, only Sherlock never realised. It's so difficult to tell when he can't just look, when he's confined to trawling through memories to suss out some sign, to find where the similarities lie.
It's a torturous exercise, and why he bothers he doesn't know. Perhaps because his life here is confined to this, to remembering, because not remembering isn't an option (or not one he would willingly choose) and there's little else to do, most days. It's pathetic even to him that he clings to these points of overlap, searches out any hint of comfort in places he shouldn't, in people he ought to leave well enough alone.
It's a miserable state of affairs, but then there she is, and let's go run, and all of the utter, utter nonsense aimed at sorting out the tangle in his head. Misguided, because being miserable with it is better than not having it, and why can't people try to find a way to make the tangle nicer, some sort of elegant protein fold, rather than trying to set him up the way they are? Is it so hard to imagine?
Maybe it is. Sherlock has sought to examine them down to their cores, the real people, and John, who is something else entirely, though you'd hardly know to look at him. He's tried, and that's not even almost, not even as close as different minds and different faces can be close.
So sod it. It'd be the work of a lifetime to sort even one person out, and maybe this is better than nothing, having her here, even if she is a pretender to the throne, as it were. Maybe it'll stop, the disliking, though it still appeals more than the weary acceptance that likely must follow. Maybe it already is, maybe he's already settling into the understanding that that's all that he gets: only almost.