"I hope he does get over it. Sooner rather than later. He's not clingy, but I worry about his state sometimes. We do respect each other, enormously, but for a really smart man he can fool himself into some things." Sherlock claimed to her, once, that he was not a nice man, and that he made special considerations for her life because he held her in high esteem. In many ways, she did not believe him. She would be aware when he helped her with her coat, when he made her breakfast, when he asked her for permission rather than just doing something that would annoy her. But she also held faith in the fact he did it because he was also good. People like Sherlock, who walked so close to evil sometimes, couldn't truly hold enough faith in themselves to think they could ever be an opposite reflection to such things. She had a feeling Natasha might be cut from similar cloth. Joan had worked with addicts and people who needed to allow themselves to heal, though. She saw goodness in the smallest of actions, and she believed in how they added up.

Still, she didn't say that; that was neither here no there. Natasha's current issues definitely had to do with the fact she was peculiar taste in men - something Joan understood well. "It's starting to sound like we have more in common dating-wise than I thought," she said, dryly, with a bit of a smile. "Maybe with the one guy you know, you could communicate distantly - phone or text, maybe? It might help. Sometimes it's easier to organize than a face-to-face meeting. But the other one - when you say a terrible history, how terrible?" She was careful to keep her tone light on the last question - just in case.