trashchildren | For Joan

Ted listens sympathetically. And then when she announces her conspiracy board, he laughs. "That's my girl!" he answers excitedly. "Gotta have the red string."

You gotta take joy in the simple pleasures.

She laughs as well. It feels so good to laugh together with him.

"I'd send you a picture, but that's probably not the best of ideas right now. I'll take one, though, and show it to you when I get back home."

The word "home" comes out instead of "to London."

Ted does catch that. And he doesn't think it's just because she's gotten used to London. She's starting to consider him home. And that makes him surprisingly emotional. He lets it sit there for a moment before he moves on.

"So if you can't find those patterns, what makes you so sure it's this Moriarty lady?"

In that moment of silence Joan realizes what she said, and realizes the same thing Ted does. He's home for her. She's most comfortable with him, happiest with him, belongs with him. They belong together.

It's a bittersweet realization. She's reminded of how much they love each other, but also reminded of how hard it is to be apart. She puts a hand to her heart, feeling those emotions keenly.

The question is a good one. "It would be an incredible coincidence if it wasn't, considering it's her known M.O. and we were investigating her at the time. Coincidences happen, but considering how dangerous she can be, I think it's wise to assume it was her until we can prove it wasn't. And the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence."

Ted nods, considering that. He's been thinking about this whole thing a lot.

"So, Moriarty. Competent lady? Usually gets what she wants?" he asks, trying to get a sense for her.

"Extremely competent. And yes, usually. Although not necessarily right away. She's very good at the long game." She can tell he wants to know what she's like, so she decides to give him detail. "When I first met Sherlock, he was in really bad shape. He had hit rock bottom with his heroin addiction, and even when he was out of rehab and working with me, he was still...broken. It took a while for him to open up to me enough to tell me that what sent him into that destructive spiral was the murder of a woman he loved named Irene."

Tes listens, and his heart aches for Sherlock. He knew he'd have problems with addiction, but not how bad, nor the path that led him there. That must've been awful. He can imagine Sherlock feels bad for Joan, her almost ending up in the same situation.

"Okay... Moriarty's doing, I'm guessing?" he asks softly.

The answer to that is yes, but it's not that simple, so she doesn't answer directly. "Sherlock didn't know that at the time. He was investigating a hitman that went by M. M had a very distinct calling card. Most of the bodies of M's victims never turned up. What was left behind at the crime scenes was blood. All of the victim's blood, in a pool on the floor."

She pauses for a moment, letting that sink in.

"One day," she continues, "Sherlock went to visit Irene. And found a pool of her blood."

Ted shifts a bit, making a face. As far as murder scenes goes, it's not the worst he could think of, but it's still horrifying. And that's as an investigator, not as a loved one. He can't even imagine that part.

"Okay...?" he answers, urging her on, since there's obviously more. Though he has no idea where it's going.

"As you can probably imagine, it destroyed him. Sherlock has never been one for letting people in, letting people close. He fell in love with Irene, and then she was murdered to punish him for getting too close to M. All this happened in London. He couldn't stand to be there anymore, so he fled to New York. I met him a few months later."

She takes a breath.

"At the end of my time working with him as his sober companion, there was a murder in New York. The murderer left behind a pool of blood."

Ted listens, making occasional 'uh-huh' noises. He can imagine it would've destroyed anyone, whether they let people in easily or not. Ted wouldn't be faring well himself.

He actually gives a little gasp at the last revelation. "Jeez, I feel like I'm listening to a murder mystery podcast, but it's about people I know... Go on?"

She smiles a little at the mention of sounding like a podcast. It's an exciting life, and she would be happy to share more of it with him (in toned down terms). But this...this is deeply personal.

"M had apparently followed Sherlock to New York. Sherlock tracked him down." He had actually captured and tortured the man, but Joan's not going to tell him that part. Not right now. "And found out that M hadn't followed him, he had been sent. He didn't even know Sherlock was in New York. What's more, he had no idea that Sherlock and Irene had even been together. He was in prison when Irene was murdered."

Another pause to let that soak in.

"He had been hired by a man named Moriarty. And he was certain that Moriarty had framed him for Irene's murder and sent him to New York for Sherlock to catch him."

Ted listens, trying to wrap his mind around it. He's a visual learner, so honestly he could've used a conspiracy board himself right about now, to keep track of this.

"Okay but... Hold on..." he says, thinking. He also notes that Moriarty is supposedly a man here, and assumes that's a misdirection. "So Moriarty didn't just arrange it, he-- she.. sent Sherlock a nice little packaged criminal to catch...?"

"Pretty much, yeah. And M...his real name was Sebastian Moran...had never met Moriarty. Just received encrypted instructions via text. She would tell people she felt wouldn't respect a woman that she was a man. Or rather, she wouldn't mention gender at all and let them assume. But Moriarty sent the packaged criminal because she was fascinated by Sherlock. She wanted to toy with him, see what he would do. At that point, Sherlock went into full investigation mode to find Moriarty. He worked on it for weeks." She smiles faintly. "You should have seen the conspiracy board for that one. Full-on wall of crazy. At one point he had pinned up a picture of Napoleon, written on it that Moriarty was 'the Napoleon of crime.'"

She remembers Sherlock so intent on that wall, making connections that would then vanish into the ether, thinking he'd found answers when really they were only more questions.

"It went nowhere. Eventually he had to take it all down. And we moved on. That's when I started training to be a detective. A couple months later, we were contacted by Moran, who said Moriarty had sent another hitman to New York. That led us on a wild goose chase, trying to find the killer, then trying to find who hired him, which led us to a man who was going to give Sherlock answers before he was shot by a sniper while he was three feet away from Sherlock. Then Moran committed suicide, because Moriarty told him that either he kill himself or she would kill his sister."

From what Ted's hearing, Moriarty sounds like a full-on supervillain. Which is pretty wild. That there are actually people like that.

He does chuckle a bit at the 'Napoleon of crime' bit.

And then he very much sobers after that. "Holy moly..." he murmurs, which is an understatement. The extortion bit is pretty awful, and Ted is definitely not going to dwell on that part. That's exactly the kind of thing he doesn't want to spend too much time considering.

"Alright, but... You said you'd caught Moriarty once, right?"

"I did," she says. "But there's a couple more pieces you need to know. After Moran died, we were contacted my Moriarty. Or rather, someone who said they were Moriarty. He gave us a case, promising information on what happened to Irene if we solved it. We did, and Sherlock received a text with an address. It was this mansion outside the city that hadn't been lived in in years. We went inside to look around."

"And found Irene."

"Wait, what?" he asks, which is probably exactly the reaction Joan would expect from him. "You're kidding me, right?" he asks rhetorically, because they both know she's definitely not. "Wait, wait, wait, alive or dead?" Because he thinks she's implying she was alive, but he needs to double-check that part.

She did in fact expect that reaction. Her reaction had not been very far off.

"Alive. And traumatized. She told us she had been kidnapped and that her captor had played mind games with her, making her believe seven years had passed, when it was only 18 months. As you can imagine, Sherlock couldn't handle the investigation into what had happened to her. He didn't want to leave her side."

She understands that feeling now, and is grateful anew that Sherlock dove into the investigation of Ted's kidnapping while Joan stayed by Ted's side.

"So I did the investigation. Irene was an artist, and her captors had supplied her with canvases and paints. One of the paints, a certain shade of blue, was rare. I was able to trace it to a particular art store, and they were able to tell me who bought it. Unfortunately, the suspect found out that we were at his house, and ran."

She pauses, takes a breath.

"Meanwhile, Sherlock was getting ready to leave the country with Irene, to go someplace where they would both be safe. While she was getting ready to go, Sherlock noticed that she had recently had a mole removed from her shoulder."

She pauses to let him absorb that for a moment.

"He knew that if she had truly been held captive," she continues softly, "they wouldn't have taken her to a doctor, much less a surgeon."

Again: Ted can't imagine going through this. Or... now he thinks he can imagine maybe a sliver of what Irene went through. And he hadn't even gotten that much of the mind games treatment. Turner had tried, but honestly he hadn't been very good at it. If it hadn't been for the abuse, he doubts it would've made much of an impact on Ted.

He listens intently to the story - he almost has to remind himself that it's not just a story. As she pauses, he frowns. When she continues, he sits up, following the train of thought.

"Wait... So... Wait..." he says, eyes darting around as he tries to connect the dots. Obviously she's saying she was never held captive.

But then that would mean... she was willingly faking it? She faked her own death too?

"Wait, so either Moriarty helped her, or...?"

"She was Moriarty," she says softly.

She gives Ted a moment to wrap his brain around that.

Ted breathes out a soft 'whoa'... He tries to process that, tries to recontextualize everything she said so far around it. He thoughtfully flops back against the chair.

Then immediately lets out an "ow" as his body complains.

It feels good to tell Ted this story. It's really important for his understanding of who Moriarty is, to Sherlock, to Joan, and in general. And that sound of wonder is exactly the reaction she expects.

Then she hears that pained noise and frowns.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just leaned back too fast," he explains, mildly annoyed. It's frustrating, having to be constantly careful about how he moves. It's not something he's particularly good at keeping in mind.

"Hey, have I eve mentioned your life is absolutely bananas?" he says conversationally. Because that's sort of the impression he's left with here. That, and just... getting a deeper understanding of Sherlock, and what him and Joan have been through together.

She laughs softly.

"Not in so many words, no. But you're definitely not wrong." Her tone becomes more serious, perhaps with a touch of worry. "That's not going to change," she says quietly. "Are you okay with that?"

With everything that's happened and everything he's learned...well, she wouldn't blame him if he decided it's all too much for him.

"Yeah, well, my life is pretty bananas too, just in a very different way," he points out. They don't live boring lives, that's for sure.

But it's a serious question, so it deserves a serious answer too. "I mean, it's a lot to adjust to, but I think I'm okay with it, yeah." He thinks it will get easier over time - as long as he isn't kidnapped again, obviously. "Predictability isn't necessarily that high on my list of needs."

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