It's good to talk
BBC Sherlock
Rating 12 (violence)
Summary: A therapy session brings a shock for Ella. Set after A Study in Pink and spoilers for that.
Originally inspired by the therapy session in Fengirl's fic Sleeping Beauty and betaed by the wonderful Blooms84
John had spent most of the last three therapy sessions raving about Sherlock Holmes and his abilities. Which was fine by Ella, because at this point anything that got John talking freely was helpful . But this time, even as he launched into bizarre anecdotes about their latest case, she sensed something more, something that his mind was worrying over. He'll get to it in a bit, she thought, don't push him.
But she was still surprised when after half an hour of him telling her all about how Sherlock had helped a boxer being pressured into throwing a fight, John blurted out: "Mycroft thinks I should stop seeing you."
"Mycroft?" asked Ella. Best with John to start with factual questions.
"Sherlock's brother." A pause. "He stole your notes on me."
Ella winced. She'd presumed the Secret Service, or whoever they were, would have been less blatant.
"Requisitioned, officially," she replied, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "I'm so sorry, John, for the breach of confidentiality, but-"
"He had a gun to your head?" He didn't sound angry, even though he had every right to be. But then John's reactions to most events were atypical.
"A metaphorical gun," she said. The question, Ms Thompson, isn't whether I get the information I need about Dr Watson, the man had told her. The question is how much of a career you have left by the time I do.
"He's hard to resist," John replied mildly, and then added. "He thought you were wrong about me."
She forced herself to smile, because she knew he found irony, obliqueness, easier to deal with.
"And you trust the judgement of a man who obtains your psychiatric records like that?"
"He's a very clever man."
"So is Sherlock. Is he always right about people?" Sometimes obliqueness helped her as well. It certainly wouldn't be constructive to say exactly what she thought of Mr Mycroft Holmes.
"No. He's very good, but no." There was a long pause and then he added, "Mycroft said I missed the war."
"And do you?" It wasn't a question she'd thought to ask. But then John wouldn't have given her an honest answer before. She watched him frown, thinking. Probably trying to work out if he should say "no", or "a little bit", deciding which the right answer was. As if there was some right answer that an ordinary person ought to give.
"Yes, I do," he said at last. "Well not all of it. Not the people dying bit, obviously."
"But other aspects of it? I know how important the comradeship of the army is to many service personnel."
"It's not just that...it's that what I did then mattered. I had a purpose."
"And you lost it when you were discharged?"
"Being a blogger's not enough."
It was all I could give you. It was all you'd let me give you. You wouldn't let me near, but you'll listen to these men, believe what they say. Focus, she told herself firmly. This is about John, not you. If something in him had changed, it didn't matter what the catalyst had been. The important thing was to harness these new insights.
"What about helping Sherlock with his cases?" she said. "It sounds like that's giving you a sense of purpose now."
"Yeah," he said. "But it's not just that. Even when there aren't any cases on, it's still good. Sherlock likes having me around. Needs me around. We look after one another."
"Friendship is an important part of most people's lives," Ella replied, "and Sherlock certainly sounds like a remarkable man. It's not surprising he's made such an impact on your life." Here's your opportunity, John, if you want to say something more about Sherlock. Not just what he does but what it means to you.
"Yeah, but he can be so bloody stupid," John replied, smiling. Obviously nearly through the infatuation phase, thought Ella.
"I mean it's not just the fact that he doesn't know Gordon Brown's prime minister," he went on, more soberly. "That's just wilful ignorance, I can live with that. But he doesn't seem to understand what he's getting himself into sometimes, doesn't think straight. Why does someone risk his neck like that? He could have killed himself taking those poison pills, if I hadn't shot the cabbie first-"
Oh God, thought Ella. He must mean the Pink Lady serial killer. She looked down at her notes, waiting for him to say he'd misspoken, that it was a joke, that he hadn't really shot anyone. But John was just sitting there, the silence lengthening between them. And then he said, very quietly:
"I don't regret killing him, you know."
She wanted to scream: You spent three months telling me nothing and now you confess to this? What on earth should she do? She couldn't just ignore what he'd told her, not something as big as that. Oh, but there was one easy get out.
"Does...does Mycroft Holmes know about this?"
"He hasn't discussed it with me, but...he turned up right after it had happened, and...yeah, I'm pretty sure he knows."
There you are, she told her conscience, you don't need to go to the authorities, because they know already. You're in the clear. Except, of course, she wasn't. Not morally. If John Watson - this steady, harmless looking man - was a danger to other people, she couldn't just ignore it. She had to assess the situation; it was her professional duty.
She put her notes down, deliberately, on the rug beside her. A promise of confidentiality that he must know might be a false promise.
"Tell me what happened," she said, her voice the steady one she'd used for so many years with the hysterical, and the depressed, and the psychopathic.
He paused, looking at his hands for the moment - not shaking, she noticed - and then said, in the impersonal voice of someone recounting a medical experiment:
"Sherlock went off with Jefferson Hope, the cabbie, without telling us anything. I was worried about him, followed. I tracked him to an FE college, couldn't find where he was on the site. And when I did, Sherlock was just about to take the poison. Well, probable poison. I was too far away to stop the cabbie or Sherlock, so I used my gun."
"If you'd been able to find Sherlock earlier...what would you have done?"
"Jumped the cabbie, grabbed the pills. He had a gun, but it was obviously a fake, and he wouldn't have been up to fighting."
"You wouldn't have shot him?"
"You never fire a gun unless it's necessary, it's too risky. I wish I could get Sherlock to understand that. If my aim had been off, I might have killed him."
"But you would do the same thing again in a similar situation?"
"If necessary, yes. Though it'd be a hell of a lot easier if I could teach Sherlock not to wander off with serial killers." He smiled at her. "You'd have thought his mother would have told him that."
The first soldier she'd ever had as a client had said to her once: You don't understand. There are times it's necessary to kill people. And she'd replied: I know, but it's so hard to see what it does to the killer.
"Did you feel anything when you shot the man?" she asked.
"Fear that I wasn't going to hit him. Relief that I did. Not much afterwards, really."
"You were numb?"
"No, just unconcerned." He licked his lips and then sat there in silence, thinking. Not worrying about how he felt, she was sure, but how to explain it.
"It was the second body I'd seen that day," he said at last, and there was an edge to his voice now. "The first was the Pink Lady. One of his victims. She'd scratched the floor with her fingernails as she lay dying. Came up to London for an overnight stay. Not going home ever again."
"And that was why you killed Mr Hope?" she asked.
"No, I killed him because he was about to kill Sherlock. The Pink Lady is why I don't regret killing him. He was not a good man."
"There are a lot of...bad men in London," she said. She'd trained herself not to use language like that, but she needed to get through to him.
"Mycroft called it a battlefield," John said, "which just shows he knows sod all about war." It was a declaration of some kind, but she didn't know of what. She'd have to risk being more explicit.
"Do you still have the gun?" she asked.
"Yes. But I'm not about to become a vigilante, if that's what worrying you." He smiled unexpectedly. "Though obviously, you'll have to take my word for that."
There was a core to him that he still wouldn't let her near. Or perhaps this was the core. A man who wasn't scared of making such life and death decisions, who didn't regret them. Perhaps it came with being a soldier...or a doctor.
"If you tell me you're going to act only in self-defence, or defence of someone else, I'll believe you, John."
He nodded, and she added: "And I presume you're also not planning to use the gun on yourself?" She hoped she wasn't giving him ideas, but a doctor would know plenty of ways of killing himself.
"Not now," He said with a rueful smile. "Got a job to do, you see, minding Sherlock."
"A purpose in life. You said." She smiled back. She ought to wrap things up, she thought, get herself out of this, but some instinct was telling her to wait, that there was something more to come. John's hands were fiddling on the chair arms now.
"What are you going to write in your notes?" he asked abruptly. "About this session, I mean."
She stared at him, unable to speak, and she knew her mouth was gaping. Layer on layer of complication there, for John's future and hers. She had to choose what to do, but there was only one choice that she could live with.
"Nothing," she said firmly. "Nothing that you don't want me to say. Just that your friendship with Sherlock is having a positive impact. Helping your social adjustment, making it easier for you to open up more, relate to other people."
He smiled, and then said calmly: "I don't think Mycroft will be coming back to you. He's got other means of keeping tabs on me now."
"Be careful, John! He's a dangerous man."
"I know," he said quietly, "but so am I."
He smiled at her again: a small, battered, inoffensive man. Ready to save people or kill them. To survive, thrive in this new life he'd found himself.
"There'll be a small amount of paperwork to sort out, if this is our last session," she said at last. "Confirmation from you that you've chosen to end the therapy. But you don't have to give any specific reasons."
He didn't move, just sat there, looking at her now as if she was a puzzle he was trying to solve. That was new, she thought: another effect of Sherlock? She waited, and then eventually he said.
"I'm not sure...the thing is...it's going to be more complicated than I realised. With Sherlock, I mean."
"In what way?"
"I've never known anyone like him before. And it's good, it really is good, but it's quite hard as well. He has things in the flat. Like eyeballs."
"So you're having to adjust to living with, living alongside, someone very different?"
"Yeah. It is a bit of an adjustment. And when the adrenaline wears off, and you've got to worry about bills, it's..." He gestured vaguely.
"It's coming down to earth, quite literally. You can't spend all your life running over rooftops." Even when people got what they wanted, it wasn't always easy for them.
"There are still ordinary days," he said. "Which I don't mind, but Sherlock finds hard. Like I said, it's complicated."
Your idol has feet of clay, and you're starting to come to terms with that.
"It'll take you time to adjust to this situation, as well," she said. "But you will manage it, I'm sure."
"I guess so." He paused and then added abruptly. "If I did decide to keep coming, to talk about...things, that would be OK, would it?"
"Sometimes what people want from these sessions can change." How could she say I know what you want to talk about without being explicit? "There are times when your world suddenly alters, when you have to re-evaluate some of your most basic assumptions about yourself. Therapy can help with that sometimes. And I won't be shocked, John, by whatever you might say."
He nodded. "I might come back next week, see how it goes. Thanks for everything." He stood up, and they shook hands. The strong grip of a man who knew how to kill. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he still needed her help, perhaps even wanted it.
***
She had ten minutes after John left before her next client arrived. She spent them carefully tippexing out her notes from the last few sessions and then rewriting them. John was probably right that Mycroft Holmes wouldn't be back; if he was, he doubtless had techniques for reading even erased documents. But at least she'd made it harder for him. She didn't like to think of the complications if, when he spotted the clues that she was starting to piece together about John. What might Mycroft Holmes do, she wondered, when he realised that John was falling in love with his brother? And what was she going to do, when, if, John finally talked to her about that?
Rating 12 (violence)
Summary: A therapy session brings a shock for Ella. Set after A Study in Pink and spoilers for that.
Originally inspired by the therapy session in Fengirl's fic Sleeping Beauty and betaed by the wonderful Blooms84
John had spent most of the last three therapy sessions raving about Sherlock Holmes and his abilities. Which was fine by Ella, because at this point anything that got John talking freely was helpful . But this time, even as he launched into bizarre anecdotes about their latest case, she sensed something more, something that his mind was worrying over. He'll get to it in a bit, she thought, don't push him.
But she was still surprised when after half an hour of him telling her all about how Sherlock had helped a boxer being pressured into throwing a fight, John blurted out: "Mycroft thinks I should stop seeing you."
"Mycroft?" asked Ella. Best with John to start with factual questions.
"Sherlock's brother." A pause. "He stole your notes on me."
Ella winced. She'd presumed the Secret Service, or whoever they were, would have been less blatant.
"Requisitioned, officially," she replied, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "I'm so sorry, John, for the breach of confidentiality, but-"
"He had a gun to your head?" He didn't sound angry, even though he had every right to be. But then John's reactions to most events were atypical.
"A metaphorical gun," she said. The question, Ms Thompson, isn't whether I get the information I need about Dr Watson, the man had told her. The question is how much of a career you have left by the time I do.
"He's hard to resist," John replied mildly, and then added. "He thought you were wrong about me."
She forced herself to smile, because she knew he found irony, obliqueness, easier to deal with.
"And you trust the judgement of a man who obtains your psychiatric records like that?"
"He's a very clever man."
"So is Sherlock. Is he always right about people?" Sometimes obliqueness helped her as well. It certainly wouldn't be constructive to say exactly what she thought of Mr Mycroft Holmes.
"No. He's very good, but no." There was a long pause and then he added, "Mycroft said I missed the war."
"And do you?" It wasn't a question she'd thought to ask. But then John wouldn't have given her an honest answer before. She watched him frown, thinking. Probably trying to work out if he should say "no", or "a little bit", deciding which the right answer was. As if there was some right answer that an ordinary person ought to give.
"Yes, I do," he said at last. "Well not all of it. Not the people dying bit, obviously."
"But other aspects of it? I know how important the comradeship of the army is to many service personnel."
"It's not just that...it's that what I did then mattered. I had a purpose."
"And you lost it when you were discharged?"
"Being a blogger's not enough."
It was all I could give you. It was all you'd let me give you. You wouldn't let me near, but you'll listen to these men, believe what they say. Focus, she told herself firmly. This is about John, not you. If something in him had changed, it didn't matter what the catalyst had been. The important thing was to harness these new insights.
"What about helping Sherlock with his cases?" she said. "It sounds like that's giving you a sense of purpose now."
"Yeah," he said. "But it's not just that. Even when there aren't any cases on, it's still good. Sherlock likes having me around. Needs me around. We look after one another."
"Friendship is an important part of most people's lives," Ella replied, "and Sherlock certainly sounds like a remarkable man. It's not surprising he's made such an impact on your life." Here's your opportunity, John, if you want to say something more about Sherlock. Not just what he does but what it means to you.
"Yeah, but he can be so bloody stupid," John replied, smiling. Obviously nearly through the infatuation phase, thought Ella.
"I mean it's not just the fact that he doesn't know Gordon Brown's prime minister," he went on, more soberly. "That's just wilful ignorance, I can live with that. But he doesn't seem to understand what he's getting himself into sometimes, doesn't think straight. Why does someone risk his neck like that? He could have killed himself taking those poison pills, if I hadn't shot the cabbie first-"
Oh God, thought Ella. He must mean the Pink Lady serial killer. She looked down at her notes, waiting for him to say he'd misspoken, that it was a joke, that he hadn't really shot anyone. But John was just sitting there, the silence lengthening between them. And then he said, very quietly:
"I don't regret killing him, you know."
She wanted to scream: You spent three months telling me nothing and now you confess to this? What on earth should she do? She couldn't just ignore what he'd told her, not something as big as that. Oh, but there was one easy get out.
"Does...does Mycroft Holmes know about this?"
"He hasn't discussed it with me, but...he turned up right after it had happened, and...yeah, I'm pretty sure he knows."
There you are, she told her conscience, you don't need to go to the authorities, because they know already. You're in the clear. Except, of course, she wasn't. Not morally. If John Watson - this steady, harmless looking man - was a danger to other people, she couldn't just ignore it. She had to assess the situation; it was her professional duty.
She put her notes down, deliberately, on the rug beside her. A promise of confidentiality that he must know might be a false promise.
"Tell me what happened," she said, her voice the steady one she'd used for so many years with the hysterical, and the depressed, and the psychopathic.
He paused, looking at his hands for the moment - not shaking, she noticed - and then said, in the impersonal voice of someone recounting a medical experiment:
"Sherlock went off with Jefferson Hope, the cabbie, without telling us anything. I was worried about him, followed. I tracked him to an FE college, couldn't find where he was on the site. And when I did, Sherlock was just about to take the poison. Well, probable poison. I was too far away to stop the cabbie or Sherlock, so I used my gun."
"If you'd been able to find Sherlock earlier...what would you have done?"
"Jumped the cabbie, grabbed the pills. He had a gun, but it was obviously a fake, and he wouldn't have been up to fighting."
"You wouldn't have shot him?"
"You never fire a gun unless it's necessary, it's too risky. I wish I could get Sherlock to understand that. If my aim had been off, I might have killed him."
"But you would do the same thing again in a similar situation?"
"If necessary, yes. Though it'd be a hell of a lot easier if I could teach Sherlock not to wander off with serial killers." He smiled at her. "You'd have thought his mother would have told him that."
The first soldier she'd ever had as a client had said to her once: You don't understand. There are times it's necessary to kill people. And she'd replied: I know, but it's so hard to see what it does to the killer.
"Did you feel anything when you shot the man?" she asked.
"Fear that I wasn't going to hit him. Relief that I did. Not much afterwards, really."
"You were numb?"
"No, just unconcerned." He licked his lips and then sat there in silence, thinking. Not worrying about how he felt, she was sure, but how to explain it.
"It was the second body I'd seen that day," he said at last, and there was an edge to his voice now. "The first was the Pink Lady. One of his victims. She'd scratched the floor with her fingernails as she lay dying. Came up to London for an overnight stay. Not going home ever again."
"And that was why you killed Mr Hope?" she asked.
"No, I killed him because he was about to kill Sherlock. The Pink Lady is why I don't regret killing him. He was not a good man."
"There are a lot of...bad men in London," she said. She'd trained herself not to use language like that, but she needed to get through to him.
"Mycroft called it a battlefield," John said, "which just shows he knows sod all about war." It was a declaration of some kind, but she didn't know of what. She'd have to risk being more explicit.
"Do you still have the gun?" she asked.
"Yes. But I'm not about to become a vigilante, if that's what worrying you." He smiled unexpectedly. "Though obviously, you'll have to take my word for that."
There was a core to him that he still wouldn't let her near. Or perhaps this was the core. A man who wasn't scared of making such life and death decisions, who didn't regret them. Perhaps it came with being a soldier...or a doctor.
"If you tell me you're going to act only in self-defence, or defence of someone else, I'll believe you, John."
He nodded, and she added: "And I presume you're also not planning to use the gun on yourself?" She hoped she wasn't giving him ideas, but a doctor would know plenty of ways of killing himself.
"Not now," He said with a rueful smile. "Got a job to do, you see, minding Sherlock."
"A purpose in life. You said." She smiled back. She ought to wrap things up, she thought, get herself out of this, but some instinct was telling her to wait, that there was something more to come. John's hands were fiddling on the chair arms now.
"What are you going to write in your notes?" he asked abruptly. "About this session, I mean."
She stared at him, unable to speak, and she knew her mouth was gaping. Layer on layer of complication there, for John's future and hers. She had to choose what to do, but there was only one choice that she could live with.
"Nothing," she said firmly. "Nothing that you don't want me to say. Just that your friendship with Sherlock is having a positive impact. Helping your social adjustment, making it easier for you to open up more, relate to other people."
He smiled, and then said calmly: "I don't think Mycroft will be coming back to you. He's got other means of keeping tabs on me now."
"Be careful, John! He's a dangerous man."
"I know," he said quietly, "but so am I."
He smiled at her again: a small, battered, inoffensive man. Ready to save people or kill them. To survive, thrive in this new life he'd found himself.
"There'll be a small amount of paperwork to sort out, if this is our last session," she said at last. "Confirmation from you that you've chosen to end the therapy. But you don't have to give any specific reasons."
He didn't move, just sat there, looking at her now as if she was a puzzle he was trying to solve. That was new, she thought: another effect of Sherlock? She waited, and then eventually he said.
"I'm not sure...the thing is...it's going to be more complicated than I realised. With Sherlock, I mean."
"In what way?"
"I've never known anyone like him before. And it's good, it really is good, but it's quite hard as well. He has things in the flat. Like eyeballs."
"So you're having to adjust to living with, living alongside, someone very different?"
"Yeah. It is a bit of an adjustment. And when the adrenaline wears off, and you've got to worry about bills, it's..." He gestured vaguely.
"It's coming down to earth, quite literally. You can't spend all your life running over rooftops." Even when people got what they wanted, it wasn't always easy for them.
"There are still ordinary days," he said. "Which I don't mind, but Sherlock finds hard. Like I said, it's complicated."
Your idol has feet of clay, and you're starting to come to terms with that.
"It'll take you time to adjust to this situation, as well," she said. "But you will manage it, I'm sure."
"I guess so." He paused and then added abruptly. "If I did decide to keep coming, to talk about...things, that would be OK, would it?"
"Sometimes what people want from these sessions can change." How could she say I know what you want to talk about without being explicit? "There are times when your world suddenly alters, when you have to re-evaluate some of your most basic assumptions about yourself. Therapy can help with that sometimes. And I won't be shocked, John, by whatever you might say."
He nodded. "I might come back next week, see how it goes. Thanks for everything." He stood up, and they shook hands. The strong grip of a man who knew how to kill. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he still needed her help, perhaps even wanted it.
***
She had ten minutes after John left before her next client arrived. She spent them carefully tippexing out her notes from the last few sessions and then rewriting them. John was probably right that Mycroft Holmes wouldn't be back; if he was, he doubtless had techniques for reading even erased documents. But at least she'd made it harder for him. She didn't like to think of the complications if, when he spotted the clues that she was starting to piece together about John. What might Mycroft Holmes do, she wondered, when he realised that John was falling in love with his brother? And what was she going to do, when, if, John finally talked to her about that?