trashchildren | For Joan

She listens, frowning. Sherlock said he was attacked before he handed the phone over to Ted, and Ted had been clearly freaking out. What he's telling her right now...it sound like he's holding something back.

"What aren't you telling me?" she asks, her tone concerned with a touch of alarm.

Oh, well, this is the trouble with dating a detective, apparently. To be fair, he did say most of it, he was just underplaying how much shoving was involved.

"Well, okay, there may have been a bit of a scuffle, but I really am fine," he answers reassuringly. "He also punched me in the face once, but that's about it."

He doubts he needs to actually go into detail about the panic attack, since she was there for that. He can't go into detail about more of the attack, because it was all a bit of a blur.

"Look, it happened so fast, I can't exactly give you a play-by-play here," he explains, and there may be a hint of frustration. Not with her, just with... all of it. "It was just... an unexpected ending to an already unpleasant conversation, so I got a little freaked out."

She hears the frustration, and she knows this whole thing has been so hard on him. She's regretting not objecting more to him talking to Turner. Because, yeah, they got a name and a basic description, but was it worth it for what happened?

"Hey, it's okay," she says gently, hoping to soothe him. "I'm sorry this happened. Can you tell me about the interview?"

Edited 2021-07-13 03:18 (UTC)

Ted is tempted to just request that she asks Sherlock about it, since he could probably give a better perspective, having watched it all with that keen analytical mind of his and all that. Ted's not entirely sure he wants to talk about it. Except... well, no, he does want to talk about it. He wants to talk about most things. It just makes him sad, and he's still working through it.

"Yeah, uh.." he says, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. The ending had sort of scrambled the whole thing in his head a little bit, he doesn't know that he's fully processed it all yet.

"I mean, he was as angry and mocking as he was last time I met him," he answers. "Uh..." He trails off a little, thinking of how to explain it. "I think I shocked him into telling me, honestly. Or confused him. Antagonized him. Some combination of the three, I guess."

He's clearly having difficulty talking about what happened. Joan wishes she was there, so she could see his face, hold his hand, rub his back, help make it easier for him to open up. If she wanted the details for investigative purposes, she would ask Sherlock. This is for Ted's sake. She thinks it's important for him to talk, to not hold it inside.

"It must have been hard to face him again," she says softly. "How did you feel when you saw him?"

Ted sighs, looking up at the ceiling. "Sad, I guess," he answers thoughtfully. "He's just... so broken. All the bad stuff that happened to him, he just turned it into anger and hate."

Which, even just as a concept, is something so heartbreaking to Ted. There are those who turn their privilege into hate, those who have it easy but who fear not being on top, not being powerful. Like Rupert. Ted has very little sympathy for those kind of people. Then there are those whose powerlessness and hardship turned them bitter. It's no less wrong for people like Turner to hurt people, but Ted wonders if he'd had a loving mother, would he still have ended up like this?

"He never had someone like you in his life," she says softly. "How did you get him to talk to you?"

She knows Ted, and knows that he must have tried to connect with Chapman, because he tries to connect with everyone. She loves him for it, even if in this case it might have left him vulnerable.

"I was just... Being nice. Joking. Showing him his intimidation didn't work on me," Ted answers, finally going into a proper recount.

"Then I brought up his dad, that I knew he was doing it because in his mind, I was ruining his connection to his dad. Shocked him, I guess. Told him about my dad. You know, getting him to think about why he loved Richmond so much, why he wanted to defend it. Then I..." he pauses heavily. "Accused him of hurting Richmond by attacking me. Which made him defensive enough to mention that he wasn't the only one, that there was this Perry fella who agreed with him. Poked him into describing him." He pauses and sighs. "That's about it."

He doesn't sound very proud of his success.

She listens to him describing what happened, and she notices how his voice changes when he goes into how he had pushed Chapman to reveal the name of the man who had pushed him toward Ted.

"It really bothers you, doesn't it?" she says softly. "How you got Chapman to reveal that information?"

He had manipulated him. Joan knows that much of Ted's considerable skill at coaching dances on the edge of manipulation in order to do right by his players and to make their lives better on and off the field. But this was over that edge, and Ted didn't do it to help Chapman.

"Yeah.." Ted answers tiredly. "I felt like I was... toying with him."

He knows, logically, that he was doing it for a good cause. The end purpose is to prevent others from hurting people, to figure out who else might have been involved. But he was still... pushing Turner around, and it didn't feel good.

"I'm sorry that happened. You shouldn't have been put in that situation."

Joan knows that, as a detective, the world she lives in can corrupt people, make them lesser...less kind, less honest, less scrupulous. She's had her own moments, times when she did things, used people, that she isn't proud of. Times when she's stood on the edge of that abyss, one bad choice away from falling. She knows it's not irrevocable, has seen even Sherlock come back from very dark places. But it's hard. And soul sucking. Ted is so special, so kind and caring, and it hurts her heart to think of him being pulled down by this.

"It was my choice, no one put me there," Ted answers. He'd been warned by both of them, and he's still glad they let him try. "I just wish I could have helped him somehow." He sighs again. "Sherlock made me feel better about that part, though."

"He did?" She's mildly surprised by that. Sherlock is a lot more personable and less acerbic than he used to be, but he still tended to be prickly with anybody who wasn't Joan or one of his very close friends. That he managed to make Ted feel better...well, it said some interesting things about both men.

"Yeah. On the cab ride home, he told me about.. how you taught him that people were capable of change," he says, smiling a bit at that, fondness in his voice. Not just for Joan, but for Sherlock too. "Reminded me that I was right of me to try to help Turner."

That fondness in his voice warms Joan's heart, because she loves Sherlock, and she loves Ted, and if the two of them could not only tolerate each other but actually be friends...it's really the best possible situation she could ask for.

"It was," she agrees. She wishes it had gone differently in a number of ways, but it was still good of him to try. Hopefully in the end that sincere attempt to be kind and help Turner will win out over the discomfort at what Ted had to do to get information from him.

"He likes you," she says. "Sherlock, I mean."

"I think he might, yeah," Ted agrees, smiling. His impression of Sherlock is that the man has no qualms about showing his dislike for someone, or at least remain on frosty terms. But Sherlock had taken the effort to actually comfort him. In a rather personal way, too. "I like him, too."

"Wow," she says with a small laugh. "I can't even begin to express how extremely rare that is. Like...I honestly cannot think of a single instance where Sherlock and anybody actually liked each other so quickly. It usually takes a lot of time, if it happens at all." She laughs again. "You are amazing."

Ted chuckles warmly at that. "To be fair, I like most people," he answers, feeling a bit better now they're talking about nicer things. "And he's probably making an extra effort for your sake. Oh, he said to give you his best, by the way. I think he misses you a lot."

That warmth in his voice is so nice to hear again.

Ted is almost certainly right that Sherlock is making an effort to like Ted for her sake, and she finds that interesting. She's had plenty of paramours that Sherlock has had absolutely no interest in even attempting to like. That said, Joan didn't love those men. They shared her bed and scratched an itch. But she loves Ted. Dearly. Deeply. Sherlock must see that, and accept that. Time was, he didn't believe in such a thing as love. How far he's come.

When he mentions that Sherlock misses her, Joan feels her heart ache a little. She hasn't been talking to Ted about a lot of the difficulties she's had, being so far away and so cut off from everyone. She misses Ted most of all, but she also misses Sherlock a lot. It's so hard to be trying to pursue this case when they're so far apart. Video calls can only do so much. And Sherlock is her friend, her partner. She loves him and she feels out of place without him.

But Joan doesn't want Ted to feel bad about the work she's doing, or about the agreement they made to be apart to keep him safe. He's been through so much trauma.

"It's been a long time since we've worked a case apart," she says quietly.

"Yeah, he mentioned that too," he answers sympathetically. "How are you doing with all this? I know it's hard, working alone over there..."

After Sherlock's reminder, he would've asked anyway, to make sure. Even if he hadn't picked up on that quiet bit of sadness there.

It's difficult for her to open up in this instance. She's been honest and vulnerable with him before, but that was either when they were both warm and safe, or when the pain of wanting to protect Ted by leaving him couldn't help but spill over. She's admitted that she misses him, even that the frustration of the stagnant case is hard to handle. But it's gotten worse with every day, missing him, missing Sherlock, and the growing fear that this case will never be solved, and they must choose to either take the risk or never see each other again.

It's a moment before she answers.

"It hasn't been easy," she says. The strain in her voice hints that there's so much left unsaid behind those words.

"You know you can talk to me, right?" he says softly. "Even if I'm going through stuff too, I want you to be able to lean on me as well. So we can both help each other."

Maybe sometimes that will look like one of them helping the other through tough times. But if they're both having a hard time, then they need to be able to both share. And if Ted's worry about Joan weighs on him, then he can share that with Beard. Joan doesn't really have anyone to lean on for her worry about Ted right now.

There's a long silence as Joan wavers between wanting to remain a rock for him, and wanting, so much, to lean on him. To let him support her. To support each other.

When she finally speaks, her voice is very quiet.

"What happens if we don't solve the case?"

Ah. Now he gets what's been weighing on her. Ted, the eternal optimist, hadn't even really considered that possibility. He has to take a moment to consider it.

"Then I guess eventually we reach the point where staying apart hurts more than the risk of being together," he answers. Because he can't imagine the risk outweighing the hurt of saying goodbye to Joan forever.

Even now, today, after having been attacked and driven to a panic attack, again. He just loves Joan so much.

She closes her eyes and takes a breath to steady herself. She still has to deal with the thought popping up periodically that if she really loved Ted she would do the "right thing" and leave him. A part of her believes that she should be alone, after all the times people have been hurt or died because of her.

She's fighting that voice, though, armed with the knowledge that Ted loves her, that Ted chooses her, even in the face of potential danger, or even actual danger.

"It hurts a lot," she says quietly.

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