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Jamie had everything she could ever possibly want and more, and she was bored out of her mind. There were always distractions, of course – things she could do to keep herself busy – but none of them could ever fully satisfy her, because the only thing she really wanted was an equal, and that was the one thing she could never have.
Sherlock had gotten close for a little while – he certainly had the brains, and his observational skills were exceptional – but he was too rigid to be a possible partner. He was still fun to toy with, and even just to observe, but that was all. His morals would never let him be her partner knowingly, and while tricking him had been fun for a while, it just wasn’t what Jamie wanted.
But then, just as Jamie had been about to give up on him for good – long after she first grew tired of him and decided to break him – and throw herself back into her work, she met his new partner, or whatever she was.
At first, she thought that this Joan Watson was to Sherlock more or less what he had been to Jamie, but that wasn’t quite right. There was something different about their relationship, and there definitely was something different about Joan. Meeting her was the first time in a long time that Jamie had been truly interested in another person.
During her time in New York – a trip that had originally been mostly to mess with Sherlock one last time – Jamie found her attention wandering more than once. She still executed her plans flawlessly, just like she always did, but in those moments between her work, she thought almost exclusively about this strange and fascinating woman.
Within just a few weeks, she filled two entire sketchbooks – the thick kind that had more pages than some novels – with pictures of nothing but Joan Watson, all drawn almost exclusively from memory. They were mostly of her face, though there were also several pages dedicated to sketches of her hands from all different angles, as well as countless studies of various details that simply refused to leave Jamie’s mind.
There were also a few full paintings – some of them taller than she was herself – that Jamie only worked on late at night, when even her most loyal followers finally left her side. Any other time, she kept them hidden, just like she did with the sketchbooks, locking it all away in a giant safe so no one could ever see this evidence of her weakness and pretending to work on something else instead.
But even while hiding, Jamie’s thoughts never strayed far from Joan. On more than one occasion, this preoccupation even distracted her from her work. She was pretty sure that even her henchpeople were starting to notice that something was going on, though she was fairly certain that none of them knew exactly what kept monopolizing the attention of their boss.
None, that was, except for one. Back when this all started, she called one of her most discreet disciples – a man so subtle that no one else even knew he worked for her – and tasked him with finding out everything he could about Joan Watson. Everything he gave Jamie went into that safe, as well, though not without her memorizing every detail first.
There was actually a lot of interesting and useful information about Joan out there, for someone willing and able to look. She might have been good at ensuring her privacy, but Jamie’s informant was even better at getting past it. And so, her collection grew until she knew – and had internalized – nearly everything there was to know about Joan Watson. Somehow, it still wasn’t enough to sate her nearly obsessive curiosity.
In order to truly know her, Jamie would have to actually spend time with the woman, and a lot of it. Their brief encounters so far had only served to make her curiosity – her hunger – grow stronger until it became nearly all-consuming.
Jamie didn’t know how to respond to that. It was the first time she found herself in such a state – no interest before this one had ever reached this level of intensity, at least outside of her work, and maybe her daughter – so she had no experiences to draw from, and no one to consult for advice if she didn’t wish to endanger Joan’s safety.
One of her first instincts was to simply take the object of her attention and affection, but that would have most certainly backfired. Joan Watson didn’t strike her as the kind of person who would react well to being kidnapped, and Jamie didn’t want to upset her.
That, particularly, was new for her; she had never given much thought to other people’s mental or physical wellbeing before, at least not beyond the point where it impacted her. Sometimes, she would even harm them simply for her own entertainment, like she had done with Sherlock. Until now, breaking people had always been part of the fun for Jamie.
The only other person who had ever gotten this kind of violence-free consideration from her was Kayden, and that was precisely why Jamie kept her distance from her own daughter, no matter how painful that distance was. She deserved a chance at a safe and normal life, and she could only have that if her mother wasn’t a part of it.
Sometimes, she thought that the same would be the case for her and Joan, but that wasn’t quite right. The woman lived and worked with Sherlock Holmes, so her life was neither safe nor normal regardless of Jamie’s involvement in it. In fact, Jamie’s presence and attention might have actually made her safer, simply because she had made sure that no one in her organisation would bring harm to her, or to any of the people she cared about most.
Still, she knew that this gifted safety alone would never be enough to make Joan want to be around Jamie, and that was a thought that struck her much harder than it should have. She wasn’t used to wanting to be wanted, and even less so to not getting whatever she longed for, so her first instinct was to fight for it like she did everything else. But that wouldn’t have been fair, and likely wouldn’t have worked regardless – Joan already knew who she was, after all, so pretence was off the table – so Jamie kept her distance for the most part.
Every once in a while, Jamie would sneak into the brownstone when she knew that nobody would be there – she knew all about Sherlock’s cameras, and how to avoid them – to look around the place and see how Joan was doing. Sometimes, she even left small gifts and, on one occasion, a letter, just because she could.
That was probably crossing all kinds of boundaries, but that didn’t really matter. Jamie had never been one to do things the normal way, and she wasn’t going to lie about that, at least not to Joan. She deserved to know the full truth long before Jamie ever approached her, even if that meant that she would never stand a chance to have her feelings reciprocated.
Jamie had never truly opened up to anyone – even as a child, her mind had always been full of lies and secrets – but something about Joan made her want to be honest. For the first time in her life, she longed to be understood completely, to be seen for who she truly was. Sometimes, she even let herself wonder what it would be like to be accepted in her entirety, but that felt like too much to ask for. It didn’t matter, though; to be known would be enough, even if that understanding came with rejection.
Until now, everything and everyone had always been a game, a riddle for her to figure out, but she had never been a part of the mystery herself. That had never bothered her before. In fact, it had always been part of the fun, pretending to be somebody else or even staying out of the picture completely while pulling the strings from behind the scenes. She didn’t want that with Joan.
She still kept playing her game, always revealing just enough to keep Joan interested without ever letting her all the way in. She was going to tell her everything, eventually, but it wasn’t time for that, not yet, and likely not for a long time. At least that was what Jamie thought, right up until her plans went just slightly sideways. She didn’t mind being arrested, exactly, it was a minor setback at most, but it did change the timeframe of some of her plans, and temporarily gave her more free time.
Most of that time was still used either planning or, whenever she could find the supplies, painting, but sometimes, usually late at night, once all of the lights had been shut off, she just reminisced and let her mind wander wherever it wanted to go. Usually, it went to Joan, which wasn’t even remotely surprising.
It was during one of those sleepless nights that she decided it was time to let Joan know the truth, or at the very least to prepare for it. The very next morning, as soon as she was allowed to turn her light back on, she demanded a notebook and a pen. They gave her a brittle pencil that kept breaking and a slightly warped legal pad, but that was enough for her to start writing down her entire life story.
Over the next month, Jamie spent nearly every waking moment writing. She kept it all in a code of her own creation, just in case anyone else ever came across it, since nobody else deserved to know any of her secrets. She based the code entirely on things she knew about Joan, and on some of the things she had written in that letter to her all that time ago. She never actually sent her new autobiography off, even once there was nothing left to say that she hadn’t already written on too many sheets of yellow paper.
Instead, those pages – and there were hundreds of them by the end – never left Jamie’s side even as she was moved from a normal high-security prison to a more unofficial facility, and then again when she regained her freedom entirely. After a few months of nearly handing them over personally – because there was no way she would entrust her truth to anybody else; if Joan were to ever receive it, Jamie would deliver it herself – she decided to keep her manuscript in the same safe that held everything else Jamie had regarding Joan, at least for the time being.
One day, Joan would gain access to it all, but Jamie wasn’t ready for everything to change – one way or another, depending on how Joan would react – just yet, so she kept it all to herself, only handing over the occasional drawing or sketch when she couldn’t help herself any longer. The rest of it would stay hidden for the foreseeable future, maybe even until after Jamie’s death.
She thought about confessing everything nearly every day, and longed to finally do so with a strange desperation she still didn’t fully understand, but Joan still hated her, so she might have used any insight Jamie gave her as a weapon. That would have been her right, of course, and Jamie might not even have resisted, but she still had plans she wanted to set in motion before her end. Until then, she would simply have to live in suspense.
At least Jamie could keep herself distracted – and hungrier than ever – by watching Joan from afar, just like she had done before her imprisonment. She was still just as captivating as she had always been, so this surveillance was almost enough for Jamie.