Fic Rec: In Context

[venusinthenight]

Title: In Context
Author: amindamazed
Pairing: Joan Watson & Alfredo Llamosa, mentions of Joan Watson & Lin Wen
Length: 1642 words
Rating: Gen
Warnings: None apply
Verse: Elementary
Author's summary: "So I guess you two don't have much else in common."

A short snippet of Joan and Alfredo conversation.

Reccer's comments: Found/Chosen Family is one of my favourite tropes. Struggling with Blood Family Feels is something I also connect with. Here, we get a bit of both. Joan and Alfredo -- part of a "chosen family" -- end up in conversation about her newly-discovered half-sister -- a found family member. (Excerpt behind the cut.)

Joan wasn’t sure where to start. It was still something of an emotional jumble for her, what to think about her father, and his illness, and how he somehow managed to have a family without them. There was the anger and hurt and the feeling, irrational or not, that she’d done something wrong, that he didn’t love her enough. There was the bittersweet relief that he hadn’t been cold, hungry, alone on the street all that time. Months later, she still sometimes resented Lin for having had him as her father and felt guilty about that, even as she felt drawn to her and wanted to know her better. And then she was constantly irritated by Lin’s own lingering resentment and occasional acting out. She’d told Emily about Lin and had a few stilted conversations with her mom and Oren. No one else knew, but that was largely because she didn’t have anyone else to tell. Of course Sherlock knew, but neither of them was likely to propose a heart-to-heart about sibling surprises.

There was no reason not to tell Alfredo. There was every reason to tell him, in fact, considering the intensely personal information she knew about him from what he’d shared at meetings back when she accompanied Sherlock several times a week. She’d never really considered it before, the deep imbalance in what they knew about each other, she and Alfredo. She wondered if he had. Of course she’d never spoken at those meetings herself, but given that Sherlock had written to Moriarty about her, and his penchant for blurting in general, she just assumed Alfredo had been told. Things.

She cleared her throat. “Uh, there was just the two of us growing up, me and my brother Oren. He’s three years older, lives near Boston. We get along fine though I probably only talk to him a couple of times a year. But about six months ago I met the half-sister we didn’t know we had.”