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Chapter Text

Hell Hath No Fury

1

For Silvergirl

Vee Holmes takes off her reading glasses and tosses them onto the kitchen table with a clatter. She frankly doesn’t care if they get bent. It has become difficult to care all that much about anything of late. Too much has happened. Too much has come swimming back up to the surface. And so much of it is, in a word, dreadful.

There is guilt and shame and anger, and beyond that a bottomless well of sorrow. There are so many things which she is actively, deliberately not thinking about, things which she must suppress or else she may implode. She mindlessly pushes back her chair and gets up to plug in the kettle. When in doubt, make tea. And there is a lot of doubt right now.

Desmond hasn’t been much help. He’s doing what he always does, occupying himself out of doors, puttering about the gardens, never mind that it’s January. He’s barely said anything since his one outburst the day they found out, that awful day in Mycroft’s office. Mycroft: the very thought of her eldest child leaves Vee with a tight jaw and her stomach turning in on itself in upset. She has never in all her life been so angry with him. With anyone, possibly. If Rudy were still alive, she’d have had it out with him by now, too, but unfortunately that road is closed.

Ultimately, the blame lies with her. She knows that. With herself and Des, she supposes, but she was always supposed to be the one with a brain. Given how royally they’ve all managed to muck up this family, Vee wonders now if passing on her intelligence actually did anyone any good. Sometimes she doesn’t blame Des for making himself a bit scarce, going out to chop wood and getting out of the fire of one of her heated discussions with the boys. He’s no fool, but he doesn’t have much stomach for fighting and drama, and Mycroft and Sherlock both – in entirely unrelated ways, mind – tend toward the dramatic. She supposes they inherited that from her, too.

She sighs. The kettle comes to a boil and she occupies her mind with the small task of making tea. Perhaps Desmond will come in and have a cup with her, but the last she saw, he was out behind the garden shed, stacking logs. Best she leave him to it. Besides, she’s got a phone call to make, an unpleasant one, and she’d rather be alone for it. The entire topic would just upset Desmond all over again, and she’d rather spare him that.

Once she’s poured herself a cup of strong black tea, a nice blend from Harrod’s that Sherlock produced last Christmas, Vee sits down, picks up her old-fashioned phone, and dials the office number of her eldest son. He likely has twenty different numbers, and his phone is all but a wire going directly into his brain, but that doesn’t matter. They’ve got to talk at last. Properly. Directly. And completely for once. She waits.

An assistant or someone answers after precisely two rings. “Yes?”

No other greeting, just that. She’s probably a spy, Vee decides. “Mycroft Holmes, please,” she says crisply. “This is his mother calling.”

“Just one moment please, Mrs Holmes.” The agent or whatever she is puts her on hold.

Mycroft answers four seconds later. “Mother,” he says, at his most formal. When he’s at the office, he would never lower himself to call her ‘Mummy’, despite his office being in a third basement sublevel. She gave him a plant for said office once, years ago before she’d seen it, not realising there weren’t any windows and that no stray arm of sunlight had any chance of penetrating the gloom within. He’d dutifully gone out and bought a lamp to attempt to keep it alive, but admitted when pressed that it had died within weeks.

“Mycroft.” Vee is brisk. “We need to talk.”

A calculated pause. “About what?”

Determination makes her sound grim. “Eurus.” Vee grips the sturdy plastic receiver of her phone more tightly. “Sherlock.”

There is another pause. “I… thought we’d done with that,” Mycroft says carefully.

“No.” She rejects this out of hand. “I want to discuss all of it. What you and Rudy did. I want the details this time.”

This time the pause is longer as her son recalibrates. “It might be better if you didn’t,” he tries. “I think you would… find it upsetting. It’s in the past now. What’s been done is done. They’re fine. As fine as they were ever going to be.”

Vee thinks of Sherlock and her teeth clench. “They are not ‘fine’, Mycroft! They are far from ‘fine’! And there’s more. I’ve got questions, and you’ve been holding out on me. I want to know the truth, for once, and you are going to give it to me.”

Now he sounds sardonic. “About what? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Vee overrides this. “I am taking the eight-fourteen into Victoria Station tomorrow. You can send one of your cars, with yourself in it. We are going to go somewhere – not that wretched pit you call an office, somewhere with actual light – and you are going to answer every question I put to you, honestly and entirely. Have I made myself quite understood?”

Her son sighs. “I’ve got a meeting with the – ”

“Cancel it. This is more important. This is family.” Vee is adamant. “And this is past due, and you know it.”

Mycroft sounds sulky. “You never wanted to know before.”

“Mycroft. There are things which I have asked, such as the identity of the person who shot my son, and I feel certain now that you have been holding out on me.” Vee waits, but he doesn’t deny it. “As I thought, then,” she says, grim. “Right, then: I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She sets the receiver down before Mycroft can formulate another excuse, and refills her mug. She’s still angry, but at least there will be answers now. She should have asked years ago, but the fire, Redbeard, all of it, were just too much. It was all so traumatic. There are parts of it which she has entirely forbidden herself to even think of. Everything to do with Eurus, those dark and dreadful times following when she was taken away. If she lets her mind cautiously reach back to those memories, all she can think of is Eurus’ strange, set face, and Sherlock, speechless and catatonic in the hospital, his wide, innocent blue eyes staring at nothing.

He’d never truly recovered, and she’d wept at night for the two children she’d lost. She’s not an idiot. She knows very well that Sherlock has, for all his adult life, tended toward depression, even suicide. He never got over it. Some things are too much for a soul as sensitive and vivid as her younger son’s had been. Mycroft told her that John Watson was a danger, that John was bringing that sensitivity up to the surface again, and she hadn’t known whether to rejoice or to weep for him. She still doesn’t.

Footsteps crunch over the frosted grass outside and then Desmond pulls open the door and comes in, stomping to get the wet off his boots. He looks over at her and offers a hopeful smile. “Any tea left there?” he asks.

Vee lifts the teapot, weighing it. “About half a cup. Come and drink it and I’ll make us another pot.” He agrees and sets about divesting himself of his coat and gloves and boots, and she thinks again: tea. When in doubt, make tea.

***

John shifts all of the grocery bags into his left hand and pats at his jacket pocket for the keys, then remembers to try the door. He didn’t lock it behind him, as Sherlock had volunteered to stay home with Rosie. He tries it and finds it still unlocked and he shoulders his way inside with relief. Inside, the familiar, musty smell of the hallway envelopes him: the smell of home. Baker Street has always had a particular scent, beneath the other ones that get layered on top of it: cooking, Sherlock’s experiments, and lately, various construction projects.

He starts up the starts. It’s been about three weeks since the end of all that mess with Sherlock’s sister, three weeks since he’s been back here all the time, first just helping out with the renovations, then eventually moving back in. It already feels as though he never left. This place was always more of a home to him than most of the other places he’s lived. He said as much to Ella on Monday at their appointment. It was their third since he went back to her, trying to sort out the mess which is his life somehow. It made sense; she’s the one who knows the rest of it already. After three long two-hour sessions, some of it has started to shift into place, started making sense. He went in thinking they’d be talking mostly about grieving, but so many other things have come up. It’s more complicated than he originally thought. Ella’s managed to get him to see that much.

This time he did talk about the way he was talking to Mary in his head, glancing with some trepidation at Ella for signs that she thought he needed to check himself into the nearest psych ward, but she’d remained as serenely calm as ever and told him that he’s hardly alone in having done that. That it’s common, in fact.

“It wasn’t even Mary, though,” John had told her, fidgeting. “Not really. Maybe it was some form of her I wished she’d been, but it wasn’t her. I knew all along it was myself I was talking to.”

“Yes,” Ella had agreed, not writing this down, but gazing at him thoughtfully, one knee crossed over the other. “Of course you knew that. But sometimes it’s easier to project it somehow, personify what you’re feeling and thinking.” She’d levelled him with her gaze. “You did the same thing after Sherlock’s death, didn’t you. Spoke to him though you knew he wasn’t there.”

He’d shaken his head, looking down. “I – no. I wanted to. I’d catch myself starting, but with him, it was… worse. It was like I couldn’t even do that. It hurt too m – ” He’d stopped himself, almost horrified that he’d said right out loud, that Sherlock’s death had been far worse than Mary’s. It’s not that he doesn’t know this, but this is one of those things you just don’t admit to anyone.

So John changed the subject, avoiding Ella’s all-too-knowing eyes. He’d told her about ‘Mary’, the one in his head, confronting him about forgetting her as soon as Sherlock needed him, as soon as there was a case. Ella had made thoughtful sounds and turned the subject back to the marriage. They’ve talked about this a lot. He told her about the text affair, how restless he’d been. How reluctant he’d been to go back in the first place, that it was only because of Rosie. It took him a long time to tell her about Mary having shot Sherlock but she knows that now, and said mildly that she thought his reluctance was therefore understandable. He’d retorted that no matter how understandable it was, he’d still proven himself a failure as both a husband and a father, about how he hadn’t been able to cope with caring for Rosie on his own, starting to drink too much, and falling into a depression so black he could barely tell day from night. “I couldn’t even tell her that I loved her then, not even while she was dying,” he’d said bluntly. “I couldn’t muster the lie even then. And then I put it all on Sherlock.” He had, too: he’d projected his own self-hatred onto Sherlock, all the while knowing it was his own guilt over the text affair and not having loved Mary since the moment she shot Sherlock that was tormenting him. Ella, on the other hand, was more bothered by the self-hatred than his lack of grief.

She’s started talking about how his friendship with Sherlock has got tangled with his entire relationship with Mary, how the lines have got crossed, but he’s not ready to talk about some of that yet. Instead, he’d made himself talk about Rosie. On Monday, he’d brought it up, staring at his hands, said that he’d never wanted to have kids. That his opinion hadn’t changed when Rosie was born. “It isn’t that I don’t love her, because I do,” he’d said slowly, wanting to sink into a pit and never be seen again. He felt like an absolute worm, admitting it. “But if I could go back and change it, I would.”

Ella had re-crossed her legs then and told him that this was more common than most parents realise. She’d reached for her laptop and brought up website after website about parents who regretted having become parents, women and men both, to his surprise. She’d gone on and pointed out that, given the circumstances of Rosie’s birth, his complicated relationship with Mary, including her having shot Sherlock, and then the turmoil surrounding her death, it was rather more understandable than usual in his case. “Not everyone is meant to be a parent,” she’d said. “I agree; it has very little to do with how you feel about your daughter now. Had you and Mary discussed having children before you found out she was expecting?”

“No, not once,” John said, scowling. “I still think she did it on purpose. As leverage, to keep me trapped.”

Ella’s brows had lifted a little at that. “That’s a rather old-fashioned opinion,” she’d said, still mild. “Generally speaking, that’s not how pregnancy works – though of course, a doctor would know that. But in this particular case, I do see your point and agree that it’s a reasonable possibility. The question for you is going to be what you do about it now. You feel what you feel and that’s valid. But what now?”

He’d shrugged. “What do you mean, what now?”

Ella had tapped her pen lightly against the notepad on her knee. “There are always options,” she said, a bit vaguely. “Have you made up your mind where you’re going to live yet?”

This is all connected to the Sherlock issue that he doesn’t want to talk about yet and he’d stiffened a little and looked away. “Yeah. I decided to move back to Baker Street. I moved in last week, actually. It’s just easier, with Mrs Hudson handy, and…”

She’d waited a moment, in case he wanted to fill in the blank himself. When he didn’t, she said, “Sherlock? I can see how it could help having another adult around. Of course.”

He’d cleared his throat. “He’s her godfather. Mrs Hudson is one of the other godparents. And Molly’s around, too. She’s the third. Though she works.”

“Don’t you all work, except for Mrs Hudson?” Ella had probed.

He nodded. “I’ve been on a leave of absence from the clinic, but – yeah. I’m, er, still deciding whether I’ll go back, or… well. I might want to keep myself available to do some crime-solving again.”

“With Sherlock.” It wasn’t a question this time. “And what about Rosie? What will you do with her?”

John had shrugged. “Mrs Hudson, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know yet. I’m still figuring it all out.”

He reaches the top of the stairs now, still turning their last conversation over in his head. The flat is quiet, both doors to the corridor shut. John opens the door leading into the sitting room and sees Sherlock asleep on the sofa, limbs sprawled everywhere. He must be tired, John thinks; normally Sherlock is physically fairly contained when he sleeps. He glances around for his daughter but doesn’t see her. Perhaps Sherlock managed to get her down for a nap, then. If so, good; she’s got terribly stubborn about naps lately. He creeps into the kitchen and begins quietly putting the groceries away.

They could have all gone, as Sherlock pointed out, or they could have let Mrs Hudson go to the shops for them, but John had wanted a reason to get out of the flat for a bit. And away from the constant, incessant needs of a one-year-old, too. Sherlock had seen it on his face, maybe, and volunteered to stay behind with Rosie if he wanted. John felt a bit badly; he knew that Sherlock would rather have come, but he’s still trying to work all of that out, and needed space from him, too.

The fact is that he knows what they always could have been, at least as far as he’s concerned. He does. He’s not stupid, or that un-self-aware. He knows what he’s wanted in deeply-buried, seldom-acknowledged private. He knows just as well that the notion is basically unrealistic. There are so many reasons why it could never work. Sherlock is… Sherlock, and even if he’s right in thinking that Sherlock might want something along those lines, it’s still Sherlock. It would never be what he would need it to be. End of discussion, then. Besides, Ella’s right: all the lines have got tangled. Somewhere in there, he knows that he married Mary partly out of defiance over Sherlock’s fake suicide, over having lied to him for two years, letting him grieve without a second thought. That same part of him also knows how stupid that was. He thought he’d made the safe choice, married someone who loved him, someone normal, someone who actually does things like feelings and relationships, but then that backfired rather spectacularly, didn’t it? John opens the fridge and puts the eggs, milk, and meat away, and tries to stop thinking about it all.

He puts the rest of it away in the cupboards and thinks about how normal this feels already. He was here all the time anyway during the construction, passing Rosie off on whoever was free to take her, helping rebuild a place he still thinks of as home. Sherlock finally brought it up one day, almost brusquely. It was late and they were working jointly at putting the books back in the shelves, side by side but not facing each other.

“It would just make sense,” Sherlock had said, his voice studiedly neutral, slotting Parasites of the Large Intestine into the medical section, half of which are actually John’s books that he never took with him when he left. “There would be three adults in the house rather than one. You wouldn’t be on your own with Rosie all the time.”

John had paused, holding Sherlock’s well-thumbed copy of New Scotland Yard: Five Hundred Years of Crimes Solved and trying to decide whether to put it with forensics or history. History, maybe. “True,” he said. “And I’d be closer if you needed me for a crime scene.”

He’d felt Sherlock glance at him. “If you’re still interested in that, yes,” he said with cautious politeness.

John had shrugged. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do about working in general. I don’t know. I have to do something to bring some money in.”

“John… if you’re here, you know you wouldn’t need to pay for anything,” Sherlock had said quietly, carefully not looking at him, searching instead for a place to put a large, coffee table book on travel in Asia.

John could have objected to this, but instead, he’d said, “I suppose I could sell the flat. That would give me something. Only it’s not even in my name. I don’t own it.”

“We can investigate,” Sherlock said. “Mary had her own accounts, I take it?”

He’d nodded. “She was rather secretive about her money, too. I always knew she had more than me, but we never really talked about it. I guess I can see why, now.”

He’d felt Sherlock’s careful glance again. “Why do you suppose that?” Sherlock asked.

John felt his jaw tighten, forehead scowling a little. “Must have paid pretty well, killing for the highest bidder,” he’d said, stowing Cholera Throughout The Ages in medical history. “Anyway, though, if I move back in, it would really mean having a small child around all the time. You don’t know how exhausting that is. And if you’re the one watching her, you can’t just go wandering off or forgetting she’s there. Babies are amazing at finding the one second you’re not paying attention to throw themselves down the stairs or bonk their heads on sharp objects. Or vomit, or overflow their nappies with shit. I’m serious, Sherlock, it’s a lot of work.”

“I have watched her before,” Sherlock had said, examining another book’s title along its spine. “So far she hasn’t died under my surveillance.”

“True, but when it’s all the time, it gets really tiring,” John said. “That’s all I’m saying. I guess she could share my room. She usually sleeps through the nights now. That would be the one advantage to staying in the flat, though that’s about it. It’s way over on the other side of the city. I always liked being central.”

Sherlock had shrugged, too. “Then come back,” he’d said, and in the end, it was pretty much as simple as that. John hadn’t agreed right then, but a day or two later, he’d brought it up again, asking if Sherlock was still sure about it. Sherlock concurred, almost sounding insulted that he’d asked, so John had given in and called a moving company, one that does the packing, too.

They’d asked him what to do with Mary’s things, and he’d told them flatly to get rid of it all. “Donate it somewhere. Throw it away. I don’t care.” It was a quick, painless process, and he left the flat behind without a flicker of a regret for any of the time he spent there. He’d glanced into the bedroom to make sure he hadn’t left anything of his own behind and thought for three nanoseconds about lying in bed with Mary, a solid metre of space between them. He never slept well on the left side of the bed but she’d insisted on switching so that she could be closer to the door to go to Rosie. Nothing else had occurred in that bed since before she’d shot Sherlock, to be honest. Since the days when he still slept on the right side. After Christmas she’d been enormously pregnant and had never expressed any interest and he hadn’t tried to instigate it, either, and then there was Rosie and the rest of it after. And he hadn’t wanted to, either. Not with Mary, at least.

John stows the last of the cans in the cupboard and closes the door. He can hear Sherlock stirring in the sitting room and plugs in the kettle to make tea. Maybe they’ll talk some more, he thinks. There’s such a backlog that it’s been hard to even know where to start. A week ago, Sherlock came home from his family meeting in Mycroft’s subterranean lair wherein his brother informed their parents about Eurus still being alive. John had asked, carefully, and Sherlock had raked his fingers through his curls, leaving them uncharacteristically unkempt and shrugged a bit.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel,” he’d said, looking tired and drawn. “She’s my sister, my own flesh and blood. Of course I’m angry about everything she did, but she’s mentally ill. How is it fair to be angry with her? She needs so much help and her doctors all say she’s past the point of recovery or treatment of any sort.”

“True,” John had said. “She’s a very sick person. But the things she did to you, Sherlock – killing your best friend, all those mind games with Faith Smith, and then everything that happened at Sherrinford. And Musgrave Hall, too.” He hadn’t added the other effects Eurus’ actions had had on Sherlock in terms of making him swear off close connections for good.

Sherlock had shaken his head. “It’s not fair to hold her responsible for her actions, no matter how calm she seemed to be, doing all of that to us. I don’t know. I’m still angry, regardless. She needs something, though. She’s been deemed beyond medical attention, but I can’t just leave her there, alone.”

John had watched him, privately marvelling at Sherlock’s compassion, but not sure what to say. “I don’t think that anyone would blame you if you did,” he said, as gently as he could.

Sherlock had made a noncommittal sound and changed the subject, and they haven’t discussed it since then. Now, he wakes, yawning audibly. “John?” he asks, his voice groggy with sleep.

“In here.” John pokes his head into the sitting room. “I’m just making tea.”

Sherlock makes a contented sound. “Good. Thank you.”

The kettle is boiling but John ignores it for a moment, lingering in the doorway. “Did you get Rosie to go to sleep?”

“Yep.” The p is particularly pronounced in that way that John privately finds rather endearing. “Valium works wonders on infants.”

He’s joking, John knows, but still. “Sherlock.” There’s a warning note in his voice. “That’s not funny.”

Sherlock sits up and runs all ten fingers through his hair, which makes it worse. “Come on,” he says easily. “It’s a bit funny.”

John smiles but shakes his head and goes to switch off the kettle. The fact is that the entire subject of drugs is still a bit sore for him. Analysed, he realises now as he makes the tea that this is still more displaced guilt. He should have seen what Sherlock was doing to himself and why, but he was too caught up in his own miserable cycle of guilt and grief over his shortcomings as a husband, father, human being in general. Now he can justifiably add best friend to that list, too. He sighs.

Depositing himself into one of the kitchen chairs, Sherlock catches this and quirks an eyebrow at him. “What was that for?”

John’s jaw is a little too tight as he concentrates on putting the lid back on the tea canister, the ceramic one on the teapot. “Nothing in particular,” he says, though it isn’t quite true.

Sherlock goes quiet, thinking. After a moment, he says, his voice low, “I’m clean, John. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

John glances at him, then goes for the milk. “It wasn’t, exactly. I was more thinking about me. I really let you down, there. After Mary.” It’s easier to say it with his back to Sherlock. He takes the milk he just bought out of the fridge and turns around to meet Sherlock’s eyes squarely. Sherlock is watching him, an air of wary alertness about him.

He swallows. “You… had other things to think about,” he says, offering John the out. “You were grieving.”

John shakes his head. “Even if that were fully true – and I’m still working on that – it doesn’t excuse the things I said. And did.” He watches Sherlock, sees him swallow, his features otherwise unmoving. “My letter,” he adds, wincing internally. “I didn’t mean a word of that, you know. You’ve never failed me. Mary failed me. Over and over again. You’ve never – you’ve done the opposite. I know that. Just in case you thought I didn’t. I do know that.”

Sherlock swallows again, visibly. “John…” His mouth opens, then he pauses to consider his words, and goes on a moment or two later. “I’d like to think you didn’t mean what you said. And if you needed an outlet for your anger, then I’m glad you had one in me.”

John shakes his head and doesn’t break their eye contact. “No,” he says, rejecting this flatly. “I was horrendously cruel. You never deserved that. Not after everything you’ve done for me. Magnussen. Not turning Mary in after she shot you. Not turning her over to Ajay. You could have, and you tried to help her, and she drugged you again, and you still didn’t hold it against her. Considering all that you’ve been through, I don’t know how you’ve turned out to be such an extraordinarily forgiving person. I’ve been a dick to you countless times. Mary shot you. Your own sister murdered your best friend. And yet you’re still willing to reach out to her, you forgave Mary, and somehow you’re still willing to be my friend. It’s – you’re extraordinary, you know.”

Sherlock clears his throat and John notices that his cheeks have flushed a little. “Thank you,” he says, looking at the table. He clears his throat again. “I – think the tea is ready.”

John exhales, grateful for the drop in the tension and goes back to the table with the milk. “Probably, yeah.” He pushes the sugar bowl over to Sherlock and pours his mug full of tea. “Yeah, that looks nice and strong.” He fills his own cup, trying to choose the right next thing to say, but he can sense that Sherlock isn’t finished yet.

He’s right. Sherlock stirs a ridiculous amount of sugar into his tea, adds milk, then takes a deep breath. “I – it’s not that – ” He stops. “I don’t think that I’m unusually forgiving. It’s just a question of what’s important. What matters the most.”

John glances at him and sits down in the chair kitty-corner from Sherlock. “Your family,” he says.

Sherlock picks up his cup and blows on his tea for a moment, then says, not meeting his eyes, “You.”

He doesn’t add And everything that goes with you, such as Mary and Rosie and all of that baggage. Just the single word. Suddenly there isn’t quite enough oxygen in the kitchen. John attempts to breathe anyway, his heart suddenly racing as the silence spins out following Sherlock’s singular word. “You matter to me, too,” he says with difficulty, and it’s not nearly enough, but if he says anymore he’ll be in truly deep waters. Still, though, he’s got to add something, because his apology wasn’t quite finished, either. “I’ll – I’ll try to do better, Sher – I mean – you deserve better than what I’ve been, lately. The hospital. What happened there. And – the cane. Saying goodbye. That letter. All of it.”

Sherlock absorbs all of this in silence, looking down at his tea. Then, after a little, he looks over at John through his eyelashes, almost as though afraid to look at him too directly, and John is put in mind of the bomb in the Underground, that time. It’s the same look. “All right,” he says, and that’s it: somehow that’s all it needs.

John smiles and finally picks up his tea to take a sip, a hard knot of tension finally dissolving in his chest after having been there for months, or possibly years. The tea is hot and warms him on its way down.

Well: he’s telling himself it’s the tea, anyway.

***

Vee pays the taxi driver and gets out, finding herself on the jostling pavement in front of the V&A Museum. Of course Mycroft chose this place, the idiot boy. Nothing less opulent would have sufficed, of course. He’d called back a trifle distantly to inform her that he’d made a reservation for ten in the morning, which is early as the restaurant café opens. She’d agreed and told him she would take a taxi to meet him. She goes inside and follows the host through the pillared room to a table where her son is already waiting.

She agrees to tea and lets the host hitch her chair in, then waits until he’s taken himself off before fixing her eldest child with her steely gaze. “Thank you for meeting me,” she says. It seems only decent to say it.

Mycroft gives a smile that’s at least fifty-eight percent grimace. “It’s hardly as though you gave me a choice, Mother.”

Vee feels her brows arch. “No,” she says shortly. “I want some explanations. It’s time now. It’s past time. I should have asked years ago, but you wouldn’t have given me the truth, would you?”

Mycroft shrugs minutely, defensively. “Probably not. I was, as I said the other day, trying to be kind.” He meets her eyes. “You were hardly in a condition to handle the truth, back when it all happened,” he says, a bit delicately.

The memory flashes over her mind before she can prevent it, lying in bed for hours, a hot water bottle held to her roiling abdomen, seeing nothing. She barely remembers Desmond carrying her outside during the fire. She’d detached, shut off. Shock, the doctors had said. Shock and grief. She’d forced herself to function, if only for Sherlock’s sake. Mycroft’s, too, but he was older. Capable of looking out for himself. He always has been. It happened during the holidays, so he was home from school. Some children are too young for boarding school at eight, the traditional age, but Mycroft had been keen to go. He was the perfect fit for that sort of education. They’d never been sure about Sherlock, though. He was so sensitive, so transparent, every thought and emotion appearing on his face in almost heartbreaking vulnerability. When Eurus began to refer to Redbeard as “drowned Redbeard”, they’d had to tell him what that probably meant, and he’d literally gone into post-traumatic shock. Vee shudders now, thinking of his white face and wide-open eyes. She’d sat by his bed weeping, for days. Weeks. With difficulty, Vee pushes the memories back. “Maybe so,” she allows. “But it’s different now. I want to know all of it. From the start.”

Mycroft sighs. Neither of them has touched their menu. “Shall we order first?” he suggests. “Might as well get it out of the way.”

Vee gives in. “Have it your way.” She opens her menu, glances at the breakfast options, and closes it again. “I’ll have the eggs benedict.”

“They make them well here,” Mycroft approves. “I’ll have the same.” He reaches for her menu and hands both to the server, who is just approaching with their pot of tea. “We’ll both have the eggs benedict,” he informs the man, who accedes and takes the menus away with him. That done, her son leans forward and folds his fingers together on the table between them. “The day we determined that Eurus drowned Sherlock’s beloved dog, Sherlock changed forever. You saw it happen. We all did. When he finally came out of the shock, he was a different boy. Between that and the burning of Musgrave Hall, there could be no question of Eurus remaining with us. I was fourteen, not old enough to deal with it on my own. Father was worried sick over you and Sherlock both, and too grieved over Eurus to have any coherent idea of what to do, so I turned to Rudy. We talked it over with the police, the social workers, and the psychologists, and jointly chose a home for her to be placed in. When she burnt that down, too, the state refused to have her near any other children. She was placed with adult inmates in psychiatric wards, but she was always able to escape or persuade people to let her go, and the damage was… monstrous. People died. A lot of people.”

Vee shudders again. Eurus had always been strange. From the very start. She wasn’t a normal baby, her strange, dark eyes seeming to take in far too much before she could even walk. She kept trying to convince herself that it was only Eurus’ intelligence, though, that it had already made her two boys socially different from their peers, so why shouldn’t it have done the same with her daughter? Mind, Sherlock had only been an infant himself when Eurus was born. An afterthought: they hadn’t meant to have more than two. Their closeness in age should have made them friends, but Sherlock had always been more involved in his own imaginings than in other people. He created entire worlds and lived in them. They’d thought that Redbeard might help, might draw him out of himself to include them in his elaborate narratives, but it had only served to kindle a love and attachment so deep that its loss had nearly broken him. When he finally came out of the catatonic state, he was changed. Redbeard’s name never once crossed his lips and the doors to his worlds were locked firmly behind him. From that day forward, he was cerebral only, and Mycroft had been the one to tell them to be grateful that he’d recovered so well, and reminded them of the dangers that such deep attachment posed for Sherlock. To her annoyance, Vee still can’t make up her mind whether or not he’s right about this. She turns her mind back to the subject of Eurus. “But to tell us that she was dead, though,” she says. “Mycroft… that was monstrous, too. I see why you did it, but to lose a child… it destroys a person, you know. And in a way, what she did killed Sherlock, too. I lost two children back then, and you were already off at school. In some ways, I think you were born an adult.”

Mycroft pours them both tea and grimaces at this. “I thought you said that Sherlock had always been the adult.”

“When it comes to emotional maturity, yes,” Vee says. “I stand by that. I know that he’s made some idiotic choices, particularly in his twenties, but in the past five or six years I don’t know when I’ve seen him so mature.”

“It’s a two-edged blade, Mother,” Mycroft reminds her. “You recall what I said when he met John Watson. That I didn’t know whether he would make Sherlock better or worse. I still haven’t quite decided on that one, though you know I’ve always leaned to thinking it’s made him worse.”

Vee meets his eyes. “You’re thinking it’s Victor Trevor all over again,” she says, and Mycroft nods. “And yet he can’t just not feel forever, Mycroft. I was so pleased that he’d finally broken out of that. Made a friend.”

Mycroft’s lips purse. “A ‘friend’,” he repeats, as though the word is distasteful. “Here are some of the things which this ‘friend’ has brought about since their first meeting: Sherlock nearly got himself blown up at a swimming pool when said ‘friend’ was taken hostage, then jumped off the roof of a hospital to prevent said ‘friend’ from being shot, then spent two years chasing and dodging terrorists to continue protecting the life of said ‘friend’, only to come back and find him engaged. You want to know who shot Sherlock, Mother? Mary Morstan. That’s who shot your son: John Watson’s wife.”

Vee stares at him in shock, her jaw dropping. “Mary Morstan?” Anger kindles, then swells. “John’s wife?!”

“The same,” Mycroft informs her curtly. “Sherlock then all but threw away his life by shooting Charles Augustus Magnussen, resulting in his very near suicide mission in Serbia. I would have helped as much as possible, but the likelihood of his survival would have been extremely small.”

Vee puts down her tea, unable to swallow it. “Mycroft…” Her voice is unsteady and she clears her throat, attempting to regain control. She can’t look at him. “You know he’s always… flirted with death. Come far too close. The drugs. The hospital jump. I know the two of you had it planned, but there was no way you could have known he would survive.”

“Indeed not.” Mycroft sounds grim. “Lazarus was one of the riskiest of the plans, but Moriarty left him no choice.” He picks up his cup and drains it, then pours himself a refill. “This, however, was not part of an overall suicide plan, I think. The sole reason was, once again, John Watson. To see Sherlock have gone from someone so good at regulating and limiting his own emotional response to being someone who would do literally anything, without regard of the cost to himself, for another person is… troubling. This is precisely what I meant: this attachment runs so deeply that it goes well beyond the realm of his ability to make rational decisions. That’s how Sherlock functions, and that hasn’t changed since Redbeard. It’s all or nothing, and nothing is far safer for him.”

Vee thinks about this, hardly noticing their eggs benedict being served. She picks up her knife and fork and absentmindedly starts cutting into one of the eggs. “This isn’t a childhood fantasy, though, Mycroft. This isn’t an imaginary friend. When Redbeard died, it shut everything down, and Sherlock lost the friend he’d invented for himself. John won’t disappear.”

“He might as well have done,” Mycroft retorts. “John married an assassin, one who later shot Sherlock in the heart, very nearly killing him. I firmly believe she intended to do so, yet he stubbornly insisted on ignoring it for John’s sake. He went to warn her about her past catching up to her and she drugged him and ran off. He is incapable of considering the danger to himself where it concerns John and his notion of what would make John happy. It’s painful to watch.”

Vee studies him, steadying her bite of egg and muffin on her fork. “You think he’s in love with John,” she says, positing the theory.

Mycroft makes a disgusted sound. “It’s patently, glaringly, screamingly obvious, Mother,” he says stiffly. “You know that when Eurus made him choose between us, he would have shot me. With regret, I like to think, but there was never any question. In the end he would have killed himself rather than either one of us, but there was never any question that he would have considered for one second shooting John.”

Vee closes her eyes briefly, thinking of Eurus doing this to them. She also registers Mycroft’s hurt over this. “Sherlock does love you, you know,” she says, addressing one of the only things that she can, here. “Look at the way he defended you to us. He’s never done that before. If he does love John, then I would say it’s been good for him, on the whole. You know that he’s planning to visit Eurus, even after everything that’s happened. When was he ever this compassionate before?”

“He wasn’t,” Mycroft says shortly. “And for his own sake, I preferred it that way.” He starts in on his hash browns, stabbing them viciously. “Furthermore, John doesn’t half deserve him. After his bloody wife died, he blamed Sherlock, which was patently ridiculous, but John Watson has only a passing acquaintance with rationality. He nearly drove Sherlock to suicide in his despair, then beat him half to death in a hospital owned by a man who already wanted Sherlock dead. He should, by all rights, be worshipping the ground Sherlock walks on after everything Sherlock has done for him. Yet here they are: John is back at Baker Street with an infant in tow, and Sherlock has taken on the responsibility of both of them, without any of the benefits I’m given to understand are meant to come with such domestic arrangements.”

Vee removes the peel from her slice of orange. “You mean that John doesn’t love him back,” she states.

“Precisely.” Mycroft devours the rest of his hash browns and starts in on the second egg.

Vee sighs. “Are you so certain that it’s as one-sided as that? I mean, John does keep going back to him. Those months after Sherlock was shot – I never could understand how John could have left his pregnant wife for all that time, though obviously now that makes more sense. I thought he was just that devoted to Sherlock, but it does still hold water, don’t you think?”

“John is extremely convinced of his own heterosexuality,” Mycroft says dryly.

Vee raises her eyebrows. They’ve never spoken of this, not directly. “But Sherlock… you’re sure that he even wants that? To my knowledge, at least, there’s never been anyone else… I mean, he was terribly attached to Victor, but Victor was imaginary, and Sherlock was seven. This is different.”

“It is, and I’m sure,” Mycroft says, averting his gaze. “Positive. The extent of his devotion alone is suggestive of much more than platonic attachment.”

Vee purses her lips. She could point out that there’s never been anyone in Mycroft’s life, either. The term ‘confirmed bachelor’ is what she’s always used to describe Mycroft to her friends. “If John were to return Sherlock’s feelings, though… it would be rather lovely, I think.”

Mycroft cocks an eyebrow at her. “No qualms about… any of that, then?” he inquires, his tone almost bored, but there’s something too manufactured about it to convince her.

She leans forward. “I’ve never cared about any of that,” she says firmly. “Not where any of you were concerned. Straight, gay, bisexual, asexual – it doesn’t matter to me anymore than my brother’s proclivities ever did. I just want you to be happy.”

Her son says nothing to this, his lip twisting a little, and he picks up his tea and sips it as though she hasn’t said anything of particular note. After, he says, blandly, “Good.”

Vee decides to leave the last third of the second egg and the remainder of her potatoes. “I do see what you mean about John, though.” She sighs. “Finding middle ground was never Sherlock’s strength, was it?”

“No,” Mycroft agrees. “He was always all or nothing. In this particular case, I wish it were nothing, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It seems to have been an instant thing for Sherlock. Do you remember his descriptions of Victor? Physically, I mean.”

“Yes,” Vee says, thinking about it. Sandy-blond hair, shorter than Sherlock, strong. And the one who purportedly won their fights on the high seas, too. “I do see what you mean. But this is a real man, Mycroft. He’s flesh and blood.”

“And capable of so much more damage than an imaginary friend who can disappear into thin air,” Mycroft argues. “This is possibly the most dangerous situation for Sherlock yet: John’s horrid wife is dead, and thanks be to God for that small mercy, John is back at Baker Street with his infant child, playing house with Sherlock. When Sherlock returned from his mission, he seemed to accept the reality of John’s engagement relatively quickly, after his initial disappointment, but now – ” He breaks off to shake his head. “Now he could hardly be blamed for hoping. And if John leaves him again, I will – ”

“You will do nothing whatsoever,” Vee says sternly. “I mean that, Mycroft. You cannot interfere with this. It must be left to play out as it will. All we can do is try to be there for Sherlock if John breaks his heart.”

“Again, you mean,” Mycroft says acerbically. He takes his serviette from his lap and puts it on the table, raising a finger to signal for the bill. “Very well, Mother. I will leave it alone.”

Vee lifts the teapot and refills both their cups. “Now,” she says. “Tell me more about Sherrinford. I want to know how Eurus lives.”

Mycroft grimaces again. “Very well,” he says, and gives in with a sigh. The server appears at the table to confirm that they’re ready for the bill, but Mycroft stops him. “We’re going to need another pot of tea,” he says instead.

***

When Lestrade phones, they’re just finishing dinner. Sherlock grilled salmon with toasted almonds, for which John made lemon rice to go underneath. He made the salad, too: spinach with mandarin segments, more toasted almonds (Sherlock had said there were extra), grated Asiago, and a drizzling of raspberry balsamic vinaigrette. Sherlock had opened a bottle of chardonnay to go with it as John had tossed the salad, then opened a jar of puréed beef stew for Rosie. He’d set it down in front of her, a bib securely fastened around her neck, then gave her a spoon and told her to help herself. John had laughed. Rosie can almost feed herself, though most of it usually ends up on the tray or in her hair when they let her try. They’ve been eating and taking turns getting some of the stew actually into her mouth now and then, managing to talk through the interruptions.

Now they’re just finishing the wine, the last of it poured into both their glasses, Rosie banging on the tray of the high chair with her spoon and emitting loud nonsensical noises to herself, when Sherlock’s phone rings.

His brow knits a little as he pulls it out of his pocket, but his expression changes when he sees the caller ID. “Lestrade,” he says, holding the phone to his ear. He listens, eyes meeting John’s across the table. His lips tighten a little. “How long ago?” Then, “Good. Yes. It’s never too soon in the case of a kidnapping. We’ll be right there!”

A bolt of adrenaline goes through John’s chest. He’s on his feet before he knows it. “What is it?” he demands.

Sherlock almost smiles, but it fades before it reaches his lips. “It’s a child, John. Up in East Finchley. Come on. Get Rosie and let’s see if Mrs Hudson can take her for a bit.”

John looks at his daughter in slight shock; he can’t believe he actually forgot about her for a second, there. “Right, yeah,” he says, feeling guilty that Sherlock was the one to think of it. She’s still banging on her tray and she’s a mess from dinner and objects loudly to him pulling her out of the high chair, the nonsense babbling turning into shouts of protest. He hastily dabs at her face and clothes, though her onesie is a disaster and needs to go in the laundry posthaste.

Sherlock is already wearing his coat and shoes, waiting with a surprising amount of patience, not saying anything. John sees that he’s got Rosie’s carrier there, with the bag John stores nappies in for when he’s going out somewhere with Rosie in tow. “I hope Mrs Hudson is in,” Sherlock says.

“So do I.” John comes over and puts Rosie down in the carrier, which makes her fuss all the more. “Shh, you’re all right,” he tells her, hoping it will work. It doesn’t. He grabs at his coat and jams his feet into his shoes at the same time. “Let’s go,” he says to Sherlock, picking his now-wailing daughter up.

Mrs Hudson, bless her soul, is home. John explains as quickly as possible, voice raised over the sound of Rosie’s shrieking. “A kidnapping?” she repeats. “Oh, dear… yes, of course, bring her inside.”

“I’m sorry she’s crying,” John says, feeling wretched.

Mrs Hudson follows him to the chair where he’s set Rosie down. “Oh, my little love,” she says fondly, bending to pick her up. “Now, then, what’s all this, hmm?” She shoos John away. “Go on, then,” she says. “You’ve got a child to find.”

They thank her profusely and get away as quickly as decency will allow, Sherlock actually running onto the pavement to flag down a taxi. He gives the address tersely, adding, “And hurry!”, then leans back against the seat.

“Sorry that took so long,” John says, though at the same time he’s thinking of their conversation about him moving back in, the inconvenience it would cause for Sherlock to have a one-year-old to slow him down all the time.

Sherlock glances at him. “On the contrary, I thought it was astonishingly quick. She’s a baby. Babies take time, that’s all.”

John grimaces. “Too much time.” He nods at Sherlock’s phone, assuming that Lestrade has texted the police report by now. “What do we know so far?”

Sherlock unlocks the screen. “It’s a little boy, five years old. Jimmy Wells. He went missing in a play park after supper when his father stopped watching to take a phone call. Both parents are devastated, naturally.”

John takes this in, listening intently. “Are there any reasons to believe the parents are being targeted? Are they especially wealthy? Work in sensitive positions or something?”

“Excellent questions,” Sherlock says approvingly. “I wish I knew the answers. You’re right; those are the most likely reasons. That, or one or both parents had enemies of some sort.”

Once, John would have told him that normal people don’t really have enemies, but the past five years have taught him otherwise.

At the crime scene, they interview the witnesses jointly, though no one saw anything. “Any vehicles driving by slowly, or the same one coming round again and again?” John asks a woman who is clutching her daughter by the shoulders.

She shakes her head. “No, not that I noticed. Can I please go now?”

John looks at Sherlock, who nods. “Yes. Thank you for your time,” Sherlock says, which is a vast improvement on how he used to be with witnesses.

They move to the next people and Sherlock starts grilling them, two young men with a sixteen-month-old baby in a buggy. John eyes them with some interest, but gets distracted by the sudden feeling of being watched. He lifts a hand to the back of his neck and scratches it, casually glancing around in a general sweep. He didn’t bring his Sig, didn’t think he’d need it, but suddenly he wishes he had its familiar weight in the small of his back. He doesn’t see anything. Perhaps talking about a kidnapped child is just making him feel paranoid. He refocuses on the conversation just in time for Sherlock to send the male couple home. He notices that Sherlock is a little nicer to the two of them than he sometimes is, but keeps the observation to himself. He watches them go, the taller one putting an arm around the shoulders of his partner, the other returning the gesture with an arm about his waist, both of them pushing the buggy with their free hands.

He barely notices that Sherlock has strode away until he hears his, “Come along, John” and snaps back into it, jogging after him to catch up.

***

Jimmy hasn’t been found by four in the morning and Lestrade, grey with fatigue, sends them all home to get some sleep. Sherlock argued this, reminding him that in a kidnapping, every minute counts. Lestrade argued back saying that there was nothing they could do but wait for a call, a demand for ransom, and Sherlock finally gave in with bad grace and they all went home.

Sherlock obviously has no plans to sleep, though. “I’m going to go up and start looking into the parents,” he says, keeping his voice down in the front hallway.

“Right. I’ll just check on Rosie and Mrs H and see what’s what. If they’re both asleep, I’ll leave her there,” John says, and Sherlock nods and goes upstairs.

He feels guilty; he lost track of the time and wonders what Mrs Hudson did with Rosie when night time came. When he tries the door of the flat, however, it’s locked. Well: that answers that, then. He goes upstairs. Sherlock is sitting at the desk, bent over one of his laptops, his face illuminated in blue light from the screen. There are no other lights on, so John goes over and switches on the lamp behind him. “Thank you,” Sherlock says, not looking up.

“You’ll wreck your eyes, reading your screen in the dark,” John responds. He yawns. “Mrs Hudson’s door was locked, so I didn’t knock. Look, do you need anything? Want me to help you with that? Tea? Something to eat?”

“No, not now,” Sherlock says, still focused on the screen. “And thank you, but I’ll be fine. You should get some sleep.”

John hesitates. He was hoping Sherlock would say this. “Are you sure?” he asks. “Coffee, maybe? Help keep you awake?”

Sherlock looks up now and smiles at him. “I’m not sleepy, but if it will make you feel better, sure: coffee would be lovely. Just if you want to.”

Something about his smile does something in the pit of John’s gut. He smiles back. “Makes me feel like I’m contributing,” he says dryly, and goes into the kitchen to put a pot on. He stays in there, cleaning up from the hastily-abandoned table and wiping down Rosie’s high chair, waiting for the coffee to brew. It smells good, but if he drinks any he’ll never sleep. When it’s ready, he pours Sherlock a tall cup, adds two spoonfuls of sugar, and carries it into the sitting room. “There we are,” he says, trying to sound brisk. Inwardly he asks himself why he’s being brisk and realises that he’s still being stupid about that smile.

Sherlock doesn’t smile this time, but looks at him thoughtfully. “Having you with me always helps,” he says, looking up into John’s eyes. “You know that. I was so glad you could come.”

John swallows. “Me too,” he says, his heart thumping stupidly. (What the hell!)

Sherlock nods toward the stairs with his chin. “Go on, then. Get some sleep.”

“You’ll – ”

“I’ll wake you if there’s anything new,” Sherlock promises.

John hesitates, wondering if he should tell Sherlock about his feeling of being watched, but decides not to. It was probably nothing, just his own parental paranoia kicking in at long last. “All right, then. Night.”

Sherlock makes a sound meant to respond to this, but he’s already lost in the world of internet digging, the coffee likely already all but forgotten beside his hand.

***

Four hours later, John goes back downstairs in his dressing gown to shower. Sherlock now has three laptops open at once. His hair is a mess, but he’s still typing away. John passes through the kitchen and notes that the coffee pot is empty. He puts another pot on, then ducks into the loo to shower quickly. He shaves and brushes his teeth, which he forgot when they got home, then goes back into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. He goes to retrieve Sherlock’s cup to refill it, then brings both cups to the desk and sits down across from Sherlock. “Any progress?” he asks.

Sherlock makes a frustrated sound. “No,” he says dispiritedly. “I haven’t heard a word from anyone at the Yard. The parents both seem like normal people, no remarkable jobs, no unusual wealth from what I can see. I haven’t even heard that a ransom has been demanded yet.”

John frowns. “Then what other motivation could there be?” he asks. “A five-year-old boy…”

Sherlock shakes his head and absently picks up the new cup of coffee. “The only other possibilities are far more sinister.”

John watches him. “Such as?”

Sherlock puts the cup down. “Child trafficking,” he says bluntly. “It happens. Or else it could be a pedophile. Or, it could be the work of someone crazy, someone who does things for no particular reason, in which case logic will get us nowhere. In any event, hardly an ideal person to entrust with a small child.”

John thinks of Rosie. “Jesus,” he says.

“Quite.” Sherlock has had the same thought. “Perhaps you should go down and check on Rosie.”

“Yeah. Maybe clothes first, though,” John says. “You know how Mrs Hudson is about you when you’re only in your dressing gown, or a sheet.”

Sherlock’s eyes gleam for a moment, and his eyes skate down over John’s front, his dressing gown only loosely tied. “Yes,” he says, his voice going a bit vague. “Clothes. Probably wise.”

For some reason this brings a touch of heat to John’s face and he gets up hastily, taking his coffee with him. “I’ll – er, be right back, then,” he says, and takes himself upstairs to dress.

Mrs Hudson is up and giving Rosie breakfast on her lap when John knocks awkwardly at the door. Scrambled eggs, from the look of it. “Hi,” he says, smiling at both of them. “I’m so sorry, Mrs Hudson. We lost track of the time, didn’t realise how late it was when we got in.”

Mrs Hudson nods, looking concerned. “Did they find him? The little boy?”

John shakes his head. “No. Not yet. Sherlock’s been up all night. We only got in around four.” He goes over and drops a kiss on his daughter’s head. “Was she all right?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Mrs Hudson says, brushing this off. “I got her settled in no time. I wasn’t sure what to do at bedtime, so I put her in bed with me, so I could keep an eye. Didn’t want her all the way upstairs all on her own. I stayed up as long as I could, but then I just decided to go to bed.”

“I’m sorry,” John says again, feeling badly. “Only – it’s a rather important case. I’ll, er, try to find someone else to watch her for today.”

Mrs Hudson nods. “If you’re really stuck, I can keep her, but I’ve got a few things to do today, and a lunch…”

“I’ll do my best,” John promises. “Shall I take her now?”

“No, let her finish,” Mrs Hudson says. “She’s just been changed and I’ve got some of those little pouches of food in the fridge, so we’re all right for now. You go and make some calls, see what you can come up with.”

“Right, okay,” John says. “You know you can look after her upstairs in ours, too, of course. She’s got her play pen and all of her toys up there, and her high chair, or if she needs a nap, you can put her down in my room. Or sometimes she’ll sleep in the play pen, too. She just needs her bear and her blanket, but she’s been fussy about napping lately. Anyway – I’ll go and try some people, then get back to you.”

“I’ll bring her up once she’s finished,” Mrs Hudson says. “How would that be?”

“You’re a saint,” John says with relief, and escapes back upstairs. He sits down at the kitchen table and calls Molly. She tells him apologetically that she’s got to work, but that she would, otherwise. He tells her it’s no problem and hangs up, thinks, then calls Mrs Whitney.

“Oh, I suppose I could,” Mrs Whitney says. “I haven’t seen her for a little while, might be nice. Can you bring her over? I’d come, only I’ve got a sore ankle…”

Ah. “Er, actually, I’ve moved back to Westminster,” John says with a wince. “I can still bring her, just not right away. When she’s ready, I’ll come in a cab, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, all right. Just give me a call and let me know when you’d like to come,” she says.

“Thanks, Kate,” John says, exhaling his relief. “It’ll probably be in around an hour, with the traffic. I’ll phone before we come.”

She disconnects and Sherlock looks over. “Kate Whitney,” he says.

“Yeah.” John looks at him. “Are you about ready to head out, or what’s the plan? Mrs H is bringing Rosie up once she’s finished her breakfast. Can it wait, or do you want to go without me? Only I’ve got to take Rosie there, to the Whitneys’, so I’m going to be slowed down as it is.”

“That’s fine,” Sherlock assures him. “I can get by without you for a little while; I just like having you there in general.”

John smiles, more to himself than to Sherlock. “I like being there with you.” He thinks again of the feeling of having been watched and thinks again that this time, he’ll bring the Sig. Just in case.

Sherlock opens his mouth, but then his phone rings. He answers it at once. “Lestrade.” He listens, and a look of alarm comes over his face. “Why didn’t you tell me immediately?” he demands. “I’ll be right there!”

He jabs the button to end the call. John is filled with apprehension. “What? What is it?”

Sherlock is already throwing his coat on and stepping into his shoes. “There’s been another one, another kidnapping,” he says tersely. “A three-year-old girl this time, taken from a car at a petrol station while her mother went inside to pay. No known connection to Jimmy Wells.”

“Oh, God,” John says, feeling sick. “You’d better go. Text me the address and I’ll come as soon as I can.”

Sherlock nods. “Hurry,” is all he says, and then he’s gone, down the stairs and out the front door in seconds.

John goes to the window and watches him wave down a taxi, agitation in his every movement. It occurs to him to wonder how he never used to see Sherlock’s compassion in their earlier years. Of course it isn’t just a puzzle to him, though the cleverness appeals to his intellect, of course. He used to think it was only that, but when he thinks about it now, he sees Sherlock’s practicality, his kindness. He remembers his own chastisement during their first big case with Moriarty, Try and remember there’s a woman here who might die and Sherlock’s callous-seeming response: What for? There are hospitals full of people dying, Doctor. Why don’t you go and cry by their bedside and see what good it does them? He hadn’t seen Sherlock’s point then: that what he was doing was trying to save the woman’s life. Sherlock’s social skills have improved immensely over the years, but John thinks now that he could have tried a little harder to see past his surface veneer of impatience and seeming lack of care to read the intent in his actions, rather. When they were talking about Eurus, Sherlock vaguely mentioned Eurus’ impersonation of Faith Smith, said how they’d gone out for chips because he’d deduced that she had a gun in her purse and was suicidal. John still marvels at this, that Sherlock was in the process of killing himself slowly through an overdose (trying to get his attention, John thinks again, guiltily), yet he still took it upon himself to spend time with a woman he thought needed someone. There’s so much that Sherlock says in his actions, so much that people don’t give him credit for.

He shot a man for me, John thinks, watching the taxi drive away. So that I could have Mary. They were going to send him away on a suicide mission. That’s what Mycroft said, at least, loftily, rubbing it in John’s face. He’d known, but couldn’t quite look it in the eye at the time. Sherlock has always been so good at squirming out of death’s reach; surely he would have survived Serbia somehow. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

He turns away from the window, hearing Mrs Hudson’s step on the stairs. Good. The sooner, the better. He doesn’t want Sherlock out there all alone with someone who kidnaps small children on the loose. That’s his job, far more than commanding his squadron or writing prescriptions and stitching up wounds has ever been: he was made to be Sherlock’s right hand man, and the sooner he can get to where he belongs, the better.

***

Mycroft has finally paid the bill. Vee pushes back her chair, but he stops her.

“Wait,” he says heavily. “There’s one more thing. If you’re so determined to know everything, then you should know this, too. I don’t think it’s left any lasting damage, but… they tried to get you to make a decision but you weren’t yourself. You couldn’t seem to grasp what they were asking, and Father didn’t want to discuss it at all, so in the end it was down to Rudy. I was there, but had no legal right to consent. He and I talked it over with the doctors, though, and in the end Rudy agreed.”

Vee watches her son with some alarm. “What are you saying, Mycroft? What did he agree to?”

Mycroft opens his mouth, his eyes averted, having difficulty saying whatever it is, seemingly. “There is a…. medication of sorts, on the market. A drug. Despite it having been around for about thirty-five years now, not much is known about it. Studies have been blocked due to its controversial nature. It was eventually given to intelligence agencies to test as they liked. It’s called TD-12. It blocks or suppresses memories. Erases them altogether in some cases.”

Vee still doesn’t know what he’s getting at, but she feels apprehensive all the same. “Which agencies was it given to?”

He winces a little. “The CIA. The MI6. The KGB.”

Her breath draws in swiftly. “Mycroft – ”

His voice is low. “We didn’t know enough at the time. I’ll be the first to say that. It was brand new at the time and the first studies couldn’t yet say enough about the long-term effects. There is a reason that Sherlock never mentioned Redbeard again, nor Victor Trevor. Nor any of the other characters that he created in all of those fairy tale narratives he invented.”

Vee wants to say something, but her breath seems to have got stuck in her lungs.

Mycroft goes on, still avoiding her eyes. “Sherlock had been catatonic for two months by this point. It was starting to be said that he would never come out of it. One of the doctors suggested trying TD-12 in an effort to suppress Sherlock’s memory of Redbeard’s death. The thought was that we would tell him that Redbeard had been put down, and we did, which made it sad but not traumatic, only it was years before Sherlock ever even mentioned him again. Over time, it became clear that he had either forgotten or blocked a great deal more than we had initially realised, or hoped. I was away at school and only gathered this based on what you told me in letters. I didn’t have the chance to observe Sherlock for myself until the following Christmas, six months later. I think you were just grateful to have Sherlock back in any way, at all. When I realised that he had blocked not only the memory of Eurus having killed Redbeard, but Eurus and Redbeard themselves, entirely, I was horrified. But what could I say? I’ll admit freely that I was relieved to find you behaving like yourself again. I couldn’t determine whether or not you remembered that Rudy and I told you that the doctors wanted to try TD-12 on Sherlock.”

He stops, gauging her face with visible trepidation. Vee feels the oxygen in her lungs turn to fire. “You let them use that – on my son?” The flames rise into her face and her trembling fingers. Trembling with rage, she discovers. “Mycroft – ”

He interrupts her, raising a hand to forestall her wrath. “In all fairness, Mother, it worked. Sherlock came out of what was essentially a waking coma, at last. He became functional again.”

“But at what cost?” Vee demands, gripping the edge of the table so that she does not actually reach out and strike her son. “You – stole his memories and killed his heart in the process!”

“I saved him from a great deal of life’s torments,” Mycroft retorts. “He didn’t care when he was bullied in school. He didn’t come crying home to Mother during the holidays. He learned how to protect himself from emotion, and as far as I can tell, has suffered no other memory damage. I kept an eye on that, checked regularly to see whether any memory of Eurus showed signs of surfacing. It didn’t until she put herself back into his path. I was frankly just as glad, considering what she had done to him. And now it’s irrelevant: he’s remembered Eurus and Redbeard and suffered no other memory damage. He’s fine now, and he may have never lived to see adulthood if we hadn’t tried that!”

Vee thinks of Sherlock’s propensity for drug use and wonders if there is any connection. For a moment or two, she feels so distressingly unable to speak that she doesn’t try. She shakes her head and puts her face in her hands.

Mycroft clears his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “We did the best we knew at the time,” he says, quietly. “It was a terrible time for all of us. For our family.”

“My son. My poor son,” Vee says numbly. She lowers her hands and looks at them blankly. “I trusted you to protect him. He was always so sensitive. But this – ” She takes a deep breath, steadying herself, releases it slowly and breathes again. “Now I don’t know which is worse.”

“I’ve monitored him, Mother,” Mycroft tells her, repeating himself. “Watched over him. Tested for triggers that could lead him back to that awful state he was in, in the hospital. But the fact is that he has recovered. He’s remembered what happened and now he’s strong enough to bear it. It gives him pain but he can tolerate it now; he’s able to live with what happened to him. And evidently nothing was capable of destroying his heart, as you yourself have observed that he’s in love with John Watson.”

Vee shakes her head, not refuting this per se, just unable to take it all in. “But that woman,” she says. “Mary Morstan. You brought her into my house without even telling me what she was. What she had done.”

“No,” Mycroft says bluntly. “I didn’t tell you. And that was done for Sherlock’s sake, too. It was his decision to invite Mary to Christmas dinner, and his secret to keep about what she had done. Do you really blame him for not telling you that it was his precious John’s wife who had done it?”

This has the taste of truth to it. Nonetheless, Vee feels profound bitterness over all of it, but most particularly for Sherlock. Her disturbed youngest child changed his life forever, in every possible way. And Mycroft. She thinks of him suddenly, realising what he’s gone through, too. Having to deal with this when she and Des weren’t capable. He was always an adult before his time, but this must have aged him prematurely, too. She wonders now if he went into the government specifically so that he could keep a better eye on his own younger siblings. She looks across at him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It can’t have been easy to tell me all of this.”

“It wasn’t,” Mycroft says, his tone a bit sharp. “There were reasons why I didn’t, years back. Only now it’s all come to the surface again. I wish it never had. Though I suppose I’m cautiously glad that Sherlock has remembered. The drug, the TD-12, was only supposed to erase the memory of how Redbeard died. It was never intended to alter anything else, or to change him.”

Vee shakes her head. “The experience changed him, not the drug. The grief changed him. Perhaps you don’t know this, but he lost Victor Trevor before he was hospitalised. He came in for lunch one day and told us that he couldn’t find Victor, couldn’t see him anymore. He’d already been crying himself to sleep over Redbeard every night. Perhaps he had begun to suspect that his beloved dog was dead. Perhaps he had begun to suspect who was behind it. That kind of grief is too much for a seven-year-old, and Sherlock was – different. Special. So transparent, so sensitive.”

Mycroft nods. “In a way, that’s never changed,” he says soberly. “It’s why I’ve always worried about him.”

Vee sighs again. She feels dazed by the overwhelming load of information. “I think I should like to go home now,” she says. “Would you mind getting me a taxi?”

“I’ve got a car waiting,” Mycroft tells her. “I’ll take you back to the station. Have you got a ticket already?”

“No, not yet. I didn’t know how long we would be.” Vee gets her coat on absently, barely thinking of it.

“I’ll have someone get you one,” Mycroft decides, and waits until she’s ready to stride off toward the door.

She spends the train journey with her forehead leaning against the window, watching the countryside go by and feeling blank. It’s just so much to take on. She may be M. L. Holmes (Meredith Lavinia, though whenever anyone dares try out Lavinia on her, she puts a stop to that quickly enough), mathematician and physicist on the one hand, but when it comes to her own children she feels both slow and helpless. She should have done better. She knows that at least half of her anger toward Mycroft is really just misdirected anger at herself. She failed her children – all three of them. Spectacularly, at that. And maybe she failed Des, too. God, how lucky she is that he’s stuck by her side through thick and thin – and there was a lot of thin.

He’s there waiting for her at the station when she gets off the train. Mycroft must have phoned him, then, Vee deduces. She gives him a tired smile, the best she can muster, and lets him pull her into his arms for a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek. He says something about a cup of tea when they get home, and she demurs, saying that she’s worn out and needs a nap, that she’s already swimming in tea, and he doesn’t argue. His gentle blue eyes, eyes that Sherlock alone inherited, are full of worry and compassion and tenderness in one and she tells herself again how lucky she is to have him. He’s no fool: Sherlock gets his emotional intelligence from him. They’ve always made the mistake in valuing her intellect over Desmond’s emotional perception, his acuity tempered by gentleness. Perhaps Eurus didn’t. Perhaps that was precisely where she gained the power to play such vividly cruel games with her brothers, particularly Sherlock, punishing him for the childhood slight of preferring his own imagination to his pestering younger sister.

They’re at the house. Vee thinks of Mary Morstan, sitting smugly in her sitting room without an ounce of remorse about her person, drawing attention to the accomplishment of her pregnancy wherever possible. She thinks of Sherlock, ignoring her from the corner of the kitchen and her heart goes out to him all the more. He probably assumed that he could never reveal his feelings for John, and he was likely quite right about that. She also remembers saying, in front of Mycroft and Sherlock both, that she would turn absolutely monstrous should she ever find out who put a bullet in her son’s heart, and now she recalls their pointed non-responsiveness on the subject. Upon reflection, Vee understands why Sherlock didn’t tell her. And she even understands why Mycroft didn’t, out of a rare spot of consideration for Sherlock. But John, she does blame. How could he have gone back to Mary? So what if there was a baby coming? Nothing excuses what she did! Vee scowls and trudges upstairs to take off her breakfast finery, wanting nothing more than to crawl into the comfort of her own bed. Mary Morstan, she thinks, had better count herself lucky to be well and truly dead, or else Vee thinks she might just have a thing or two to say on that subject.

***

The case is on its third day, and a third child has gone missing. All they have in common is living in East Finchley, which isn’t much to go on. None of the parents know one another. The husband in the second couple has been haranguing Sherlock endlessly. His wife, the one who left their child in the car to go in to pay at the petrol station, looks like death warmed over. Just as with Jimmy Wells, no one has come forward to demand a ransom for Katie Abbott, either. And now, just this morning, a third child has been taken, silently disappearing while playing outside with the rest of her daycare class. Worse still, she’s only two. The daughter of recent immigrants, Siya Bhatta’s disappearance was only noticed when one of the daycare workers was distributing a snack of fruit and cheese after the children came inside. Her parents are stricken and all but silent in the room Sherlock has them all gathered in at NSY, holding hands but saying little. Jimmy Wells’ parents seem to be ignoring each other.

John looks them all over, taking mental notes and the occasional real one in his little notebook as Sherlock questions them. He notices how gentle Sherlock is with them, too. He finishes within twenty minutes, per John’s recommendation – these people don’t look like they can handle too much right now – and sends them home with instructions to make contact the instant someone gets in touch about a ransom or anything else. The six parents leave, Richard Abbott glaring daggers at Sherlock on his way out, as though it’s somehow Sherlock’s fault that his daughter was kidnapped.

Lestrade comes in as the Wells parents leave. “Er, they’re ready for us out front,” he says, scratching his head. His eyes go to John. “They want you, too, of course.”

“All right.” John gets off his chair and goes to Sherlock, stowing his notebook in his jacket pocket. He puts a hand on Sherlock’s back, lowering his voice. “You did really well,” he says quietly. “You were very patient with them.”

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth tighten a little, not acknowledging the praise. “They’re going through hell,” he says. “I can only imagine.”

John decides not to comment on this rare display of empathy. “Come on,” he says instead. “The press is waiting.”

Sherlock nods and they follow Lestrade out to the front of the building. When invited to speak, Sherlock lets it be known that there is nothing linking the cases so far. “This may be the work of someone looking for a ransom, though so far that doesn’t look likely. It may be the work of a very damaged individual. Either way, we urge the kidnapper to come forward with his or her demands and to return these children immediately. Whatever your quarrel is, do not take it out on these children. Contact us at New Scotland Yard and we’ll discuss whatever is going on here. Meanwhile, we urge parents in East Finchley – and everywhere else – to keep a very close eye on your children in the next little while. The fact is that we don’t know what we’re dealing with just yet. We will catch the perpetrator and justice will be done. Thank you.”

Lestrade thanks him and echoes his advice to parents and childcare professionals to keep a close watch, and promises an update when possible. They step down.

***

After the press conference, they go back to Baker Street, exhausted and not having eaten since a bagel some twenty hours earlier, swinging by Molly’s to collect Rosie first. John thanks Molly and pays her (she took the day off work, rather reluctantly) and climbs back into the taxi with Rosie’s bulky carrier. Sherlock helps him get Rosie settled between them, then directs the driver to take them home. Once inside, John announces that he’s starving. Sherlock already has the takeaway menu for the Chinese on the corner out on the table in front of him, his phone in hand.

They eat ravenously when the food comes, devouring everything, then lean back in their chairs, drinking the green tea John made to go with dinner and talking about the case. “I don’t see a single pattern, nothing to connect the parents in any way, with the sole exception of the fact that they each have only the one child. I can grasp that; perhaps it’s meant to raise the stakes. But why? Why these people, these children?”

John shakes his head. “I don’t know. And their ages are scattered, too. Jimmy is five, Katie is three, Siya is two. Is there any kind of mathematical or numerological pattern of two-three-five?”

Sherlock makes a negative sound. “Not really, no. Not that I can see.”

John sighs. “I wish we knew what the kidnapper even wanted. I just hope to God it’s not some sick monster who just likes hurting or killing kids or something.”

“Stop. Don’t,” Sherlock says with unusual sharpness. “It’s too – ”

He stops, and suddenly John guiltily wonders if he’s somehow made Sherlock think of his childhood friend again. “Sorry,” he says, quieter. “I didn’t – I’m just worried.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Don’t apologise. I’m just trying not to think the same thing.” He abruptly finishes his tea. “You should sleep.”

“So should you,” John says firmly. “Neither of us got any last night and if this keeps up, tonight may be our only chance.”

Sherlock must be feeling it, because he doesn’t argue for once. “You’re right,” he says instead. “Maybe I will.”

They stack the boxes and throw them away. John gets Rosie out of her high chair and wipes her down while Sherlock cleans up the tray and the table. “Let’s get you to bed,” John tells his daughter. It’s already nine, way past her bedtime. He checks her nappy and decides it’s wet, so he changes it, then gets her settled in her cot before going back down to use the toilet and get ready for bed.

Sherlock has already changed into pyjamas and an old t-shirt and comes in while John is brushing his teeth. “Mind if I join you?” he asks, already reaching for his toothbrush.

“’o ahead,” John says through the foam. He glances at Sherlock through the mirror, at the abdominal muscles clearly visible despite the loose t-shirt, the perfection of his torso in general, and feels a stirring in the pit of his belly. (Stop it.) He spits and rinses his mouth and toothbrush, then moves out of the way so that Sherlock can do the same. “G’night,” he says, yawning and trying not to notice the way Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms cling to his arse.

“Night,” Sherlock says neutrally, and meets his eye in the mirror. “Sleep well.”

“Thanks. You too.” John plods back up the stairs, hoping devoutly that Rosie will just go to sleep. It’s not easy sharing a room with an infant. Perhaps they can convert some space down the road, or… no. He doesn’t let himself think of the other obvious potential solution. It’s probably never going to happen.

Rosie, thanks be, is already asleep, lying on her back. John looks down at her for a moment, then crawls into his bed with relief. He’s asleep within minutes.

***

He wakes what feels like minutes later with a start, Sherlock bending over him. “John. Wake up.”

John’s heart is thudding in his chest. “What is it? What time is it?” He’s completely disoriented.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, about waking him, and he actually looks apologetic. “You were sleeping rather deeply. But there’s been another kidnapping – and something else that may or may not be related.”

John is awake now and gets out of bed. “What is it?” he asks. He goes to the drawer and finds a clean pair of socks and puts them on. He’s only in his underwear and when he looks at Sherlock he sees Sherlock rapidly avert his gaze, almost as though having been caught in the act, guilty.

He clears his throat. “Not only has another child been kidnapped, but a teen has gone missing, too. Her parents reported it tonight, but the connection to this case was only just speculated now, by Lestrade. It’s just after three, by the way.”

John pulls on his jeans and zips them up. “And the child?” he asks.

“A four-year-old this time,” Sherlock tells him. “Robbie Blackwell. The adolescent is sixteen, Tamara Jennings. Apparently she simply failed to come home after school and her parents thought she might have gone out with friends or something, and didn’t report it until after midnight. Robbie Blackwell, on the other hand, was taken from his babysitter’s house about an hour ago. He was sleeping over. The babysitter was a university friend of the mother’s. The Blackwells are at a funeral in Dorset and left Robbie with a friend.”

“Jesus,” John says, pulling a jumper on. “All right: where to first?”

“Rosie,” Sherlock says, in reminder.

John claps a palm to his forehead. “Shit. Of course.” They both look at the cot. “Christ. What am I supposed to do with her now?”

Sherlock winces. “Mrs Hudson?” he tries. “If not…”

They look at each other and John knows. “If not, I’ll just have to stay home,” he says heavily. “I’m not taking her to a crime scene with a kidnapper on the loose, plus with all the parents, it could seem horribly insensitive. But I want to be out there with you, Sherlock. I don’t want you by yourself with some whack job on the loose.”

“Agreed. Having you there would definitely be preferable,” Sherlock says. He nods at Rosie. “Bring her down with you. The nappy bag is still packed. We’ll just… ask very, very nicely.”

“All right.” John feels a bit dubious about Mrs Hudson’s potential response to being woken at three in the morning and asked to babysit, but he gamely carries Rosie down. Sherlock lets him pass on the landing, saying that he’ll just go in and get their coats. John stops anyway to put his shoes on, then heads the rest of the way down to Mrs Hudson’s flat. He knocks, holding his breath.

Sherlock joins him a moment later. “Any response?” he asks, keeping his voice down.

John shakes his head. “Not so far.” He knocks again. “Mrs Hudson?” He looks at Sherlock. “Maybe you should try,” he says dubiously. “She likes you better.”

“Nonsense. She’s just known me longer.” But Sherlock knocks, too. “Mrs Hudson?” he calls.

Finally, a response. They hear her footsteps move around within the flat, then come toward the door. She opens it, pulling a dressing gown closed tightly around herself, blinking sleepily without her glasses on. She does look irritated, John thinks. “Boys?” Her voice is croaky. “What are you doing here at this time of the night?”

Her eyes have already gone to Rosie in her carrier, though. John clears his throat. “I’m – we’re so sorry to wake you,” he says, feeling a bit wretched. “We do know how late it is. It’s just – ”

“Another child has been taken, Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock says urgently. “I need John with me. We have to find these children before it’s too late and it’s an all-hands-on-deck sort of moment. Could you please do us the enormous favour of taking Rosie for the rest of the night?”

“You could even take her back up and have a kip in my bed, if that’s easier,” John offers, before she can respond.

Mrs Hudson makes a slightly exasperated sound. “Really, this is a little much,” she complains. “At my time of life – I’m an old woman, you two!” She looks at them, John biting his lip, and gives in with a sigh. “Just this once,” she says. “And only because it’s missing children, mind. I’m too old for this, though. Next time one of you will just have to stay at home. That’s the way it is when you’ve got children.” She nods at the carrier. “I’m not going upstairs. I’m going to stay right in my own bed. Bring her in, then.”

John glances at Sherlock. “I’ll wait out here,” Sherlock tells him quietly, nodding at Mrs Hudson. He hands John the nappy bag. “Go on, then. Hurry.”

John nods in agreement and awkwardly follows Mrs Hudson into her bedroom, which he’s never seen before. “Just – here beside you?” he asks, and when she accedes, busies himself with getting his daughter settled in the large, unfamiliar bed. “Sorry,” he mutters to her, tucking her bear in with her and bending to drop a kiss on her head. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You be good for Mrs Hudson.”

Rosie fusses a little, but doesn’t start to cry, to his relief.

Mrs Hudson turns on her side to face Rosie, the blankets drawn up to her ears. “I hope we’ll both get some sleep after this,” she says, rather crossly.

“I’m sorry,” John says again, feeling like a worm.

“Go on, then,” Mrs Hudson tells him. “Get Sherlock to lock the door, would you? I don’t want to get up again. He’s got my spare key.”

“Of course. We’ll, er, be as quick as we can, but there’s no way to know how long it could take,” John says. “Just call me if there are any problems.” He backs toward the door. “Good night, you two.”

He gets himself out of the small flat as hastily as he can. Sherlock gives him his coat and bends to lock the door before John can pass on the request to do so. “Let’s go,” he says tersely, straightening up again, and they’re in a taxi to East Finchley seconds later.

***

The Blackwells arrive at the Yard around four, having been contacted by Mrs Blackwell’s babysitter friend, Patti Graham. Angela Blackwell is inconsolable, sobbing wildly. Patti seems dazed and abjectly miserable. Jason Blackwell appears to be trying to console Patti and tell her it wasn’t her fault – true, Sherlock tells John, aside: the window was opened from the outside, the little boy lifted directly out of his bed – and simultaneously glancing toward his weeping wife.

The Jennings are there, too, sitting together on a bench, the wife crying on her husband’s shoulder with his arm around her. Interesting, John thinks, looking at the various couples’ responses and the way it seems to drive them either closer together or further apart. He thinks briefly of Mary, of the way that everything drove them apart and absolutely nothing drew them together. There was no redeeming that relationship. He watches Sherlock go to Angela Blackwell, stooping a little to look into her face. He can’t hear what Sherlock is saying, but it’s low and sounds soothing, and she responds with more tears. He says some more things in a tone that sounds reassuring to John, and when she flings her arms around him, Sherlock reacts with surprise but doesn’t peel her off. Instead, he actually hugs back. Jason Blackwell, who is hugging the babysitter, looks over at Sherlock with an expression of mute gratitude. Sherlock makes consoling noises and pats Angela Blackwell’s back. John watches him, something within him aching fiercely at seeing this. He knows what it feels like to be held by Sherlock, and suddenly he wants to go over there and dislodge the weeping woman and take her place. An awful thought – she needs it far more than he does, but it occurs to John that the next time Ella wants him to talk about Sherlock, he’ll be ready at last. He knows what he wants now, and it’s standing there telling a stranger that this wasn’t her fault in compassion that he never used to show.

Lestrade comes back into the room then and confirms that Sherlock’s analysis of the footprint they found beside Robbie’s bed matches a very common sort of shoe, a man’s trainer, size 9.5. He explains how the window was opened and asks all of the same questions Sherlock and John have already asked about having enemies, important jobs, a lot of money, et cetera, and their answers don’t change. Patti asks again if she should be charged for having let Robbie disappear under her care, and Lestrade tells her the same things that John and Sherlock did, that of course she’s not responsible for this.

It’s six by the time they get back to Baker Street, worried and no closer to an answer than they were before. “You were wonderful,” John says as the taxi drives away. “The way you were with Mrs Blackwell – I was so impressed with you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock turns back and gives him a very small smile. “I used to think that showing it would slow me down,” he says. He unlocks the front door and goes inside. “It’s you who showed me that showing that you do care matters to people. You have only yourself to credit for this.”

“Because you always cared,” John says, understanding and saying it aloud this time. “Of course you did.”

“I’m not a machine,” Sherlock says, not starting up the stairs. “In fact, I care far more than is probably wise. John…” He unbuttons his coat but doesn’t take it off, seeming to weigh his words. “After the Culverton Smith case – on my birthday – you told me to find someone who brings out the best in me. I didn’t have a chance to say it then, so I’m saying it now: I have. I did a long time ago. I have you. You’ve always brought out the best in me, made me see that logic alone is not enough, that caring can be an advantage. That’s all you. It’s always been you, John. There’s no one else like that, not for me.”

John can barely believe he’s hearing these words. “Sherlock…” he breathes, emotion flooding through him. “I don’t know what I was even saying that night, because Mary never – it was the opposite; I always felt like she underestimated me. I was talking out of my arse about someone who never existed, when I should have been saying all that about you instead. Mary – the real Mary – always seemed to reduce me, push me into the background, question my abilities, cut me down.”

“She did,” Sherlock says, his voice grave. “I’m – sorry, John.”

John looks up into Sherlock’s eyes. “But you never have,” he says. “Not once.”

“I’ve always thought that our belief in each other was rather complementary,” Sherlock says, his voice not entirely steady. “You’ve believed in me when no one else has. It never stops taking me by surprise.”

“And you called me a war hero the day after we met,” John says, remembering this. “You’re right, Sherlock. You’re absolutely – you’re that person for me, too, the one who sees the best in me and brings it out. I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.” He moves closer to Sherlock and somehow his hands put themselves on Sherlock’s upper arms. They’re looking at each other in the darkened hall, everything else forgotten for the moment, and suddenly it seems so much less complicated than it did before. John looks up into Sherlock’s eyes for a long moment, then drops his gaze to Sherlock’s lips. He closes the last of the space between them, then very, very gently puts his mouth on Sherlock’s. The kiss is the most hesitant, delicate thing that he’s ever felt, Sherlock’s mouth tightening only just perceptibly, every tiny movement of his lips against John’s magnified enormously. It breaks off after a moment but neither of them moves to put any more distance between them.

Sherlock says his name, low and uncertain, yet very much wanting, so John kisses him again, then again after that, and again after that. It’s growing less hesitant on both sides, their mouths meeting over and over again. In fact, Sherlock is kissing back with strength, his mouth every bit as ravenous for this as John’s. John begins to suck at Sherlock’s full lower lip, and Sherlock gets it and follows suit. He makes a sound when their tongues touch and pulls John closer, folding his arms around John in hunger he can feel throughout his frame.

What an idiot I’ve been, he thinks, getting his arms all the way around Sherlock in turn and kissing him breathless. He had no idea Sherlock felt this much for him, in this way. It’s absolutely incredible. They kiss and kiss and forget entirely about trying to get to bed, revelling in this long-sought, hard-won moment at last.

They finally break apart, searching each other’s faces. “John,” Sherlock says, his voice wonderfully low and sensual, “I can’t tell you how long I’ve – ” Suddenly he stops, his entire frame stiffening.

John’s entire body goes immediately into alert mode. “What? What is it?” he asks. Sherlock is looking at the door to Mrs Hudson’s flat. John looks back over his shoulder and sees it, too: the door is standing open a crack. They very definitely left it locked. “Shit!”

“Do you have your Sig?” Sherlock asks, his voice low and urgent. “I put it in the pocket of your coat.”

John grabs at the pocket. “Yeah, right here,” he says. His heart is in his throat as he follows Sherlock to the door of the flat, Sherlock calling Mrs Hudson’s name.

It’s one of John’s worst nightmares come true: Mrs Hudson is unconscious on the floor beside the bed, a visible bump rising on her forehead.

And Rosie is gone.

***

Chapter Text

2

John cannot process that this is happening. The police have arrived and an ambulance has come to take Mrs Hudson to a hospital, though she fussed throughout and said it was just a bump. Sherlock insisted, though, so she’s gone. John barely heard it, bent over in one of the kitchen chairs while Lestrade’s people swarm over the tiny flat.

Sherlock comes over and crouches down in front of him. “John.”

John shakes his head, unable to look at him. “I should have stayed home,” he says heavily. “They saw me at the press conference and targeted Rosie.”

“This is not your fault,” Sherlock says urgently. “Do you hear me? This is not your fault. We will find Rosie. I swear to you, we will find her.” He’s got Rosie’s bear and pushes it into John’s hands. John takes it, his fingers clumsy.

He feels as though he can’t breathe. “I – ” Suddenly he’s crying, his back heaving as he sobs wildly, completely unable to contain it.

Sherlock is on his knees in front of him and pulls him into his arms, holding him tightly. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says again, his voice low and gentle. “It wasn’t your fault.”

John grips him as though he’s drowning, his tears making a wet mess on Sherlock’s neck. He feels horrible. This is proof that he’s an utter failure as a father, he thinks. This is his punishment for not having wanted her in the first place. He should have thought that this line of work might endanger Rosie. It never even crossed his mind to consider that. He’s dimly aware of Lestrade and them glancing their way as they file out of Mrs Hudson’s bedroom and back outside, pointedly not saying anything. Eventually John pulls himself together. “Did they find any evidence this time?” he asks dully, reaching for a tissue and blowing his nose.

Sherlock sits back on his heels. “A partial fingerprint,” he says. “It’s a strong lead. Do you want to come to the Yard? Do you want to stay here? Do you want me to stay with me if you do?”

“I want to find Rosie,” John says stonily. “I don’t have the luxury of staying home and wallowing. I’ve been a shit father so far but at the very least, I owe it to her to do everything in my power to save her from whoever is snatching these kids.”

“You’re not a shit father,” Sherlock says, his voice still gentle. “Come on, then. Let’s go with Lestrade and them to the Yard.” He gets up and pulls John to his feet. “Bring her bear,” he says. “For when we find her. She’ll want that.”

John takes the bear and looks down at it, his eyes filling again. “Okay,” he says, his voice wobbling horribly.

Sherlock puts his hand on the back of John’s head and presses his lips to John’s forehead and suddenly John is fiercely glad that they got past their own stupidity just before this, so that Sherlock can try to give him this sort of comfort. It doesn’t solve a damned thing, but it does feel good to know that Sherlock is in this with him, that he cares fiercely about not just these other kids, but definitely Rosie, too. “Come on,” Sherlock says, his voice softer than velvet, yet its very strength is all that’s keeping John on his feet. “Every minute counts, remember? Let’s get a cab.”

John nods and, for Rosie’s sake, attempts to pull himself together. He blows his nose again and follows Sherlock outside.

On the pavement, he stops as Sherlock waves down a taxi, suddenly filled with the sensation of being watched again. He looks around, sharply this time, but who can tell? There are windows in the buildings on both sides of the street and people are awake now, getting ready for work. It’s impossible to tell.

A taxi has slowed at the kerb and Sherlock is waiting for him. John shakes himself out of it and gets inside.

***

The phone is ringing. Vee takes off her reading glasses, puts down the Times crossword, and reaches for the receiver. “Hello?”

“Mother.”

“Mycroft.” Vee steels herself subconsciously. It’s been a week since their breakfast and he hasn’t been in touch. “How are you?” she asks, trying for pleasantness.

“I’m fine, thank you. You asked me to keep you apprised of any new developments or information,” Mycroft says. “In fact, I was trying to reach Sherlock first, but he’s not answering his phone. I imagine he’s embroiled in that kidnapping case in East Finchley.”

“Kidnapping? How dreadful,” Vee says, with a shudder. “How many children have gone missing now?”

“Last I heard, there were five: four small children and a teenager. But that’s not why I’m calling,” Mycroft says. “Listen: Sherlock asked me to look into Mary’s finances, I think to the end that John can sell the flat. God knows he needs the money. I’ve been doing a little digging and I came across a rather extraordinary connection.”

Vee braces herself even further, her free hand gripping the edge of the kitchen table. “What is it?”

“There are payments going from one of Culverton Smith’s shell corporations directly into an account I have become certain belonged to Mary Morstan. It seems that she was in his employ as recently as this past year.”

“What?” Vee is shocked. “Mary was working for that horrid little man? Doing what?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m looking,” Mycroft tells her. “This time I’m telling you right away. That’s what you requested.”

“Yes.” That’s for certain. Vee frowns. “What on earth can this be about?”

“I wish I knew. I’ll tell you as soon as I find out. There are similar payments in similar amounts going into several other accounts, so I’ll start there,” Mycroft says. “I was going to ask Sherlock if he wanted to help, but it seems he’s busy.”

“Tell him anyway, as soon as you know,” Vee instructs him.

“I’ll do that.” Mycroft pauses. “I trust you and Father are well?” The question is awkward. He doesn’t often ask.

“Dad’s arthritis is acting up in his left knee, but otherwise we’re fine,” Vee says.

“Do let me know if he wants that referral to the special clinic I mentioned,” Mycroft says diffidently.

Vee remembers Mycroft as the awkward child he was and reminds herself that this veneer is something he developed to protect himself. No wonder he recommended it so thoroughly to his sensitive younger brother. She reminds herself to hear the warmly-meant intent behind the stiffness. “I’ll remind him that you offered,” she says. “Thank you for calling, Mycroft. And for the update. Do tell me when you find out what that dreadful woman was doing for Smith.”

“I will.” Mycroft rings off, and Vee is left holding her receiver. Eventually she puts it back in its cradle, feeling troubled. It’s one thing if Mary had a chequered past, but this hardly sounds like the past. Certainly not the distant past, at any rate.

She pulls the crossword back to her but the letters swim in front of her eyes until she realises that she forgot to put her reading glasses back on. This will never do: she’s got to keep sharp. Some instinct is telling her that she will need every bit of sharpness she can get. She doesn’t know how or when, but she feels it nonetheless.

***

They’re in Lestrade’s office, attempting to brainstorm. Sherlock manages not to insult anyone. “Look,” he says from the outset. “I’m in no mood for anyone’s stupidity right now – ”

“Would you like us to leave, then?” Donovan interrupts, rolling her eyes and indicating herself, Hallsey, Hopkins, and Anderson.

“No, that’s precisely why I need you to stay,” Sherlock contradicts her, to everyone’s surprise. “I need anything you’ve got, absolutely anything, because all we’ve got is a fingerprint with no match in any database we’ve got here. I’ve just alerted my brother and he’s searching international databases that we don’t have access to from here. So think: what do these six children have in common?”

“You’re counting the teenager, then?” Hallsey asks. “I thought we hadn’t agreed that that case was connected to this one.”

Sherlock waves him off. “It happened in East Finchley; therefore I’m not ruling anything out. What else? Go.”

“Well, we know they were all only children, including the teen,” Lestrade says, chewing the plastic stir stick from his coffee.

“We know that none of the parents does anything particularly remarkable, no one’s wealthy. They’re all middle class or below,” Anderson chips in.

Donovan ignores him. “We know that we haven’t received a demand for ransom, so these may not even be kidnappings. At this point, for all we know, they’re just abductions. The perpetrator might have no intention of giving them back for any reason. Sorry,” she adds, with a sideways look at John.

He shakes his head, unable to respond.

He can feel Sherlock’s eyes on him. “Do you have any ideas at all?” Sherlock asks carefully.

John takes a breath, then blows it out. “The only thing I’ve thought of is stupid. Makes no sense, especially if you add in the teenager. But the kids’ ages: they go down starting from five.” He glances up and sees mostly confusion, so he clarifies. “He’s got a five-year-old, a four-year-old, a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and now a one-year-old. My one-year-old. So maybe he’ll be looking for either a newborn or a six-year-old next? I don’t know; I told you it didn’t make any sense.”

Sherlock is looking at him awe. “On the contrary, that’s the best we’ve got so far!” he says. “Balance of probability suggests not a newborn; they’re difficult to pry away from their parents and similarly difficult to care for, so a six-year-old does seem the most likely.” He looks at Lestrade. “Is there anything on in East Finchley, anything at all, that might be targeted toward six-year-olds?”

“I’ll get on it,” Lestrade says, opening his laptop.

Hopkins looks at Donovan. “The teenager,” she says. “If it’s the same perpetrator, is there any chance he took her to look after the kids?”

Donovan purses her lips. “I don’t know. Did Tamara Jennings do any babysitting?” she asks the room at large.

Hallsey opens a file. “She did,” he confirms. “In fact, she advertised it on Craigslist.”

“There you are,” Sherlock tells them. “So: whoever this is will be looking for a six-year-old next. Get looking!”

He gets out his own phone, pulling up a search page and John looks at him. “Do you really think there’s something to that?” he asks dubiously.

“I think it’s highly likely,” Sherlock responds, thumbs typing busily. “It’s the only pattern of any kind there’s been, apart from the neighbourhood connection. I think you’re right that he targeted Rosie because of us. That would explain his deviation from the plan. Scare tactics to get us to stop looking for him.”

“Him?” John repeats.

“It’s statistically more likely. Women rarely kidnap children, except for the dangerously unbalanced.” Sherlock makes a thinking sound. “I suppose we shouldn’t rule that out in this case.”

John is still holding Rosie’s bear. “God, I hope she’s okay,” he says, feeling miserable all over again.

Sherlock leans into him. “We’ll find her,” he vows.

“Sherlock, I think I might have something,” Lestrade calls, already on his feet and coming over with his laptop.

John is standing without having consciously decided to do so, Sherlock in exact sync beside him. “What is it?” they both demand, their voices overlapping.

Lestrade turns his laptop around, showing them. “This school, Tetherdown Primary, is holding a special preparatory class for new six-year-olds coming into Year 2,” he says. “What do you think? It’s bang in the centre of East Finchley and it’s targeted specifically at six-year-old kids.”

“Yes,” John blurts out, before Sherlock can even say anything. “That’s it. I know it.”

He waits for one or both of them to ask how he knows, but after exchanging a quick look with Lestrade, Sherlock simply says, “All right: then we’ll set a trap. When does the class start?”

Lestrade points, reaching over the top of the screen and peering at it upside down. “Today, at ten in the morning. It’s Sunday; there’s no school. If we’re moving on this, I’ve got to get it organised now.”

Sherlock doesn’t ask John if he’s certain. “Do it,” he tells Lestrade, and Lestrade nods, glances at John, then hustles away, barking out orders to the sergeants across the hall.

Once he’s gone, John lets out his breath shakily. “Thank you,” he says. His left fist is gripping Rosie’s bear so hard he might tear it open. He makes himself let go and stretches out his fingers.

Sherlock shakes his head briefly, as if to say that the thanks aren’t necessary. “If this person is this obsessive over numbers like this… I think we may be dealing with someone rather unbalanced after all,” he says. “I don’t like it. The sooner we get these kids out of there, the better.”

“Especially the ones who’ve been gone the longest,” John agrees, trying not to feel selfish about Rosie. “Jimmy Wells has been gone for days already.”

“I know.” Sherlock paces around the office, fidgeting, then stops, focusing on him. “Are you all right?” he asks. “I mean – of course you’re not, but is there anything I can do at all? Coffee? Something to eat? You’ve barely slept.”

John shakes his head. “Just keep doing everything you’re doing,” he says. It’s stark and not very gracious-sounding, and he wishes he could do better. He adds, “Thank you, Sherlock – for all of this. I mean that.”

Sherlock’s lips tighten a little. “How could I not?” he asks rhetorically. Then, “Was that really a no to coffee? I could do with one.”

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s get a coffee.” John looks around for his coat, then realises he’s still wearing it. Yes: caffeine would be a good idea. “Where were you thinking? The coffee here is awful.”

“The Starbucks across the street, I thought,” Sherlock says. “Latte, extra shot of espresso. I want to be good and alert for this.”

John almost smiles at this, but everything hurts too much. He goes to Sherlock and silently puts his arms around his waist, his head down on Sherlock’s shoulder. And Sherlock doesn’t need to ask or confirm what he needs, just puts his arms around John and holds him wordlessly for a long time. He’s really good at this, John thinks with a fierce surge of affection. No: it’s decidedly deeper than affection but he’s not quite ready to get into all of that just yet. (He knows what it is.) For several long moments, he allows himself to just absorb Sherlock’s embrace, the depth of his care. Finally, reluctantly, John makes himself let go. He wishes he could put some of the gratitude and care and regret over how he blamed Sherlock for Mary’s death into words, that he hopes Sherlock doesn’t think he has to compensate for not having been able to prevent it. He hopes Sherlock doesn’t think he’s thinking that, because he isn’t. “Come on,” he says instead, the right words failing to come to him. “Coffee is definitely on me.”

Sherlock still has him by the shoulders, and presses his nose and lips into John’s forehead. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, and for some reason, this almost makes John laugh. It’s true that Sherlock almost always pays for them when they go out, though he stopped once Mary was in the picture. John barely noticed him starting again, and feels guilty over having just taken it for granted, seemingly. The rent is one thing – Mrs Hudson almost certainly doesn’t charge Sherlock very much, but everything else, too?

John silently vows to himself to make all of this up to Sherlock somehow, start returning all of this in kind at last. “Let’s not argue about it,” he says, meaning the coffee. “An extra shot would definitely be a good idea.”

***

John was right, which Sherlock later won’t stop telling the media when they call for his comments. Lestrade set up a perimeter around the small primary school, then waits until all of the parents and children have arrived. Fifteen minutes in they catch a suspicious-looking stranger lurking near the children’s toilets and arrest him when he is unable to provide a believable explanation for his presence there. Lestrade lets John and Sherlock interrogate him right there in one of the classrooms, and as Sherlock suspected, it quickly becomes clear that the man, Rupert Hidgens, is severely mentally ill. Worryingly, he is unable to give them a reason for having taken the children in the first place. He recognises them both and when he taunts John about having taken Rosie, Sherlock nearly has to physically restrain him before John regains control of his temper.

“Where is she?” he demands, looming over the chair that Hidgens is sitting in. “Where’s my daughter? Where are the other kids?”

Hidgens’ eyes slide away. “Need a six-year-old,” he says, more to himself than to John. “Then comes seven, then eight, nine, ten…”

John draws his Sig and points it in the man’s face. “Tell me. Now.”

The sight of the gun frightens Hidgens nearly out of his mind. He starts stammering and hyperventilating and they finally get a location out of him: an address nearby. Sherlock says something to Lestrade that John doesn’t catch. They take Hidgens’ keys and cuff him, muscling him out into one of the cruisers. “The address,” Lestrade demands of Sherlock, and Sherlock gives it and they race to Lestrade’s cruiser with Donovan alongside. Lestrade drives like a maniac and John doesn’t care. They slam to a stop in front of the house and the two officers stand back to let Sherlock and John charge up to the door, hanging back with their weapons drawn.

“Tamara!” Sherlock shouts, pounding on the door. “Are you in there? My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’m here with the police. We’re here to help! We’re coming in now, all right? We’re here to get you!” He doesn’t wait, nodding at John to open the door.

John’s fingers are shaking but he gets the door open, dreading what they might find inside. If Rosie – (No. Stop it.) The very idea is too awful to even consider. He pushes the door open. “Tamara?” he calls. “Jimmy?” No point even calling the other small children, he thinks.

“We’re here,” a girl’s voice calls, sounding frightened.

John glances at Sherlock. It’s coming from one of the bedrooms in the back. “We’re coming,” he calls back, and they move swiftly toward her voice.

All six children are there: Tamara, Jimmy, Robbie, Katie, Siya, and – “Rosie!” John rushes forward to collect his daughter, who is trapped in a playpen with Siya Bhatta, wearing nothing but a very smelly nappy. Both children are crying, as is Robbie Blackwell. John doesn’t care about the nappy. He picks Rosie up and hugs her tightly, tears stinging his eyes. “Oh my God,” he says, not even knowing who he’s talking to, burying his face in her hair. “God, God, God. I thought I had lost you.”

Sherlock is there, too, his arms around them both. He kisses Rosie’s head, then gives John a look so intense it might as well have been a kiss. He turns away, though, duty calling. He questions Tamara first, ascertaining that she’s all right, that neither she nor any of the children have been harmed. She tells him that Hidgens wanted her to look after the kids while he was “collecting”, he’d said.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know the little ones need to be changed, but there wasn’t anything to change them into. The baby, her clothes were full of poop so I had to throw away her pyjamas…”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock assures her. “You’ve done nothing wrong. We’ll let your parents know where you are at once. Are you hungry? Has he fed you at all?”

She nods. “I think we’re all hungry, though he did feed us a couple of times. He didn’t hurt us, just made us play strange counting games whenever he was here. He seemed obsessed with the kids’ ages.”

Sherlock nods, absorbing this. “You’ve done well,” he tells her. “I’m going to go and let the police know. We’ll take you back to the police station and get you something to eat while you’re waiting for your parents.” He ducks out of the room and goes to speak to Lestrade.

It still feels like a nightmare as John goes back to the Yard with Sherlock and the rest, Rosie’s nappy rapidly stinking up the cruiser. John apologises but no one seems to mind. Donovan has tears in her eyes and Sherlock is openly holding John’s knee. They get inside and John finds the nappy bag and changes Rosie in one of the loos, cleaning her up with baby wipes and warm water and trying to still her crying through his own tears. When she’s changed and clean and dressed in the spare onesie he’d stashed in the nappy bag, he holds her tightly and bounces her until she’s stopped crying.

When he gets back to Lestrade’s office with her, Sherlock immediately gets up. “You’ve got it from here,” he tells Lestrade. “No press for us before tomorrow, I think.”

Lestrade nods. “Yeah. Fine. I completely understand. Go home, both of you. You’re exhausted and you’ll want to take Rosie home, I know. How’s Mrs Hudson?”

“Haven’t heard, but I assume she’s fine,” Sherlock says. “I’ll check in on her later. She’s been through worse.”

“She’s probably back at home already,” John adds.

“You want me to drive you?” Lestrade offers.

John shakes his head. “We’ll get a cab. It’s close by. You’ve got plenty to do here.”

They leave him and get home as quickly as they’re able. Mrs Hudson isn’t back yet. John goes straight up to the top storey and lies down on his bed with Rosie next to him, an arm curled around her in fierce protection. Sherlock is there, having followed him up the stairs. “You’ve still got your jacket on,” he says.

“I don’t care.” John kicks off his shoes and lets them drop to the floor.

Sherlock comes to the edge of the bed and looks down at the two of them, so much there in his eyes that it almost hurts to see. He doesn’t say anything, not asking, just standing there, obviously unsure of his welcome.

John pats the bed beside Rosie. “Come on,” he says. “Get down here.”

Sherlock wordlessly steps out of his shoes and comes to lie down on the other side of the child, an inverted comma completing the other half of the circle they’ve made around Rosie, his arm reaching around to hold them both. He’s still wearing his coat and John is in his jacket, and it doesn’t matter. Safe and clean and warm at last, Rosie is already nodding off. John feels himself slipping, too. Sherlock’s arm is warm and for the moment it feels as though they’re all safe.

He knows it’s just an illusion, but for now the illusion will do. They sleep.

***

John wakes later when Rosie stirs, making fretful sounds. Behind her, Sherlock blinks sleepily, then yawns. John yawns, too. “What’s the matter?” he asks his daughter. “Are you wet? Hungry?” The fretful noises crescendo, so he sits up and looks around for her bear, which he discovers half-wedged beneath his hip. “Here you go,” he says, but that doesn’t help. He sighs. He’s still tired, but rolls off the bed, scoops Rosie up and takes her over to the changing table. She is wet, so he changes her and thinks she must be hungry, too. His own stomach rumbles.

“I heard that,” Sherlock says, swinging his long legs down to the floor, then standing up. “What should we have for dinner?”

John shakes his head. “I don’t care. I’m starving. We haven’t eaten since last night. What time is it?”

Sherlock comes over and shows him the screen of his phone. “Just before five. We slept for a long time.”

“I’m still tired,” John says. He fastens the tabs of the new nappy into place and turns his head to look at Sherlock. “Would you order us something? Anything. I don’t care. I could eat a horse.”

“I’ll see if I can find horse on one of the take-away menus,” Sherlock promises. He backs away and goes downstairs.

Belatedly, John wonders if he came over with the intent at some sort of romantic contact but gave up when John didn’t initiate it. Perhaps he’s not sure whether it would be welcome, considering the circumstances. He feels a bit badly. He zips up Rosie’s onesie, and she’s definitely fussing now, resisting being dressed again. “Come on, you,” he says to her. “Let’s go and find you something to eat. A squeeze pack of apricots or something, you’ll like that. And after, maybe something with a bit more substance, yeah?” He picks her up and carries her downstairs, depositing her into the high chair and then going to the fridge for the promised apricots and a bottle of formula. Sherlock is in the sitting room, talking into his phone. John delivers Rosie the goods and goes over to Sherlock just as he ends the call.

Sherlock’s body turns instinctively toward him, like a plant seeking the sunlight. “I ordered Indian,” he says. “Butter chicken and saag paneer and naan, with samosas and basmati.”

“You’re amazing,” John says, and means it profoundly. He puts his arms around Sherlock’s middle and kisses him on the cheek, pressing his own into Sherlock’s after. Sherlock’s arms come around him at once and they stand there for a moment or two, John relishing Sherlock’s proximity, his warmth. His rock-like presence in general.

“It’s just dinner,” Sherlock says, a bit self-consciously, but John shakes his head and squeezes harder.

“No. You. All of it,” he says, not explaining, but maybe Sherlock gets it, because he stops refuting it.

After awhile, Sherlock dislodges him gently. “I should find out Mrs Hudson’s status and whereabouts,” he says.

John turns his head toward the outer corridor, listening. “Was that the door?”

Sherlock stiffens. “Give me your Sig,” he says.

John pulls it out of his jacket pocket and hands it over, following him to the top of the stairs.

“Mrs Hudson?” Sherlock calls down.

“Yes, it’s me,” she calls back.

“Thank God,” John mutters.

“Quite.” Sherlock gives the gun back. “I’ll just go down and check on her, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” John says. “Invite her up for dinner, if you ordered enough.”

“I ordered loads,” Sherlock says, already making for the stairs. “Besides, she eats like a bird.”

John goes back into the kitchen to put on the kettle, open a bottle of Shiraz, and supervise his daughter’s messy first course. He cuts up a banana and puts it on her tray for her to eat or not eat as she likes, too. Sherlock comes back a moment later. John looks up. “How is she?”

“Fine,” Sherlock says in relief. “Not even a concussion, just a bump.”

“Did you invite her for dinner?” John asks.

“Yes. She’s coming, she just wanted to change and wash her hands and such. She’ll be right up.” Sherlock looks around. “Oh, you’ve already put the kettle on. Good. Thanks.”

John nods at the wine. “I also opened that to breathe,” he says. “I thought we could all do with a drink.”

Sherlock agrees. “We’ve definitely earned it,” he says.

Mrs Hudson comes up then. John has a look at the bump on her forehead and they hear all about her traumatic night and the day in the hospital, and answer her flood of questions about the kidnapping, the perpetrator, and Rosie.

“She seems to be fine,” John assures her. “Hopefully she’s too little to even remember it, going forward. Children are very resilient, but yeah, I hope she wasn’t too badly scared.”

Mrs Hudson has assigned herself the small task of feeding Rosie puréed chicken casserole from a jar. She shakes her head. “I’ll never forgive myself. When I came to and realised she was gone – ” Her voice quavers. “I can never go through that again.”

“I’m sorry,” John says again, having already said it earlier. “I should have stayed home.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs Hudson says briskly, to his surprise. “Of course you had to go. It’s what the two of you do. Sherlock needed you, and those other children needed the both of you. Sometimes there are higher priorities, even than your own children. And I don’t just say that because I haven’t got any, myself. This is what heroes do, and that’s just what the two of you are. I just wish it hadn’t been me left with Rosie.”

John feels helpless. “I know,” he says. “I don’t know what to say.”

She pats him on the arm. “Never you mind,” she says. “It’s all got sorted now.”

They finish their dinner and nearly two bottles of wine with it. Mrs Hudson drinks half a glass and says she’s getting a buzz. John and Sherlock drink the rest of it. When they’ve finished, John takes Rosie up to change and put her back to bed, double-checks that the baby monitor is switched on so that they’ll hear it downstairs, then goes back down to where Mrs Hudson and Sherlock are still chatting in the kitchen. When he joins them, Mrs Hudson gets up and says that she’s yearning for her bed. Sherlock tells her to call if she needs anything, and she promises that she will.

Left on their own at last, they clear away the remains of the meal, putting the kitchen into order again. Sherlock stoops to put something in the bin under the sink, and John looks at him, his eyes lingering. Sherlock feels it and straightens up, turning around. “What?” he asks, that same thread of self-consciousness betraying him.

John shakes his head. “Nothing. I was just thinking that this all got interrupted. You and me, I mean.”

Sherlock looks even less sure of himself. “With Rosie… I thought it was hardly the time or place to – worry about that,” he says. His lips press together, giving away still more uncertainty. “I thought you might even associate the beginning of it with the kidnapping.”

“Not at all. Don’t be ridiculous,” John says, frowning. “The two things are wholly unrelated.”

“Well – yes, but – I just thought that perhaps you might have… changed your mind,” Sherlock says. “Re-thought your priorities. Or something along those lines.”

John looks across at him and feels as though the space between them is far too wide and that he’s not sure how to close it. “Well, I haven’t,” he says, a bit sharply. “We’ve already managed to bungle this for so long – so many things have got in the way. Your ‘death’, Mary, Mary shooting you, Mary dying, Eurus and all that, me being a prick, you being impossible to read or understand sometimes, at least to my idiot brain. I’ve finally got there, finally seen that this is exactly what I want.”

Sherlock still looks far too unsure of himself. “What is?” he asks, his shoulders gone stiff.

John swallows. “You,” he says. “This. You and me. That’s what I want. I’m just sorry it’s taken me so long to figure it out. But I’m sure now. I want this. I want you.”

Sherlock takes an involuntary step toward him. “John – ”

He stops, clearly second-guessing himself, so John crosses the room in three steps, puts his hands on Sherlock’s hips and looks up into his eyes. “I want you,” he repeats, his voice softer. “So much, Sherlock. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. But now that it’s started, I wouldn’t give it up for anything, you know. Not one damned thing.”

Sherlock doesn’t move to touch him, return the gesture, but suddenly every particle of air between them feels supercharged. “If you had changed your mind about this… I would have understood,” he says, his voice coming out a bit husky. “I wouldn’t have given you a hard time. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, you know. Even that.”

John can’t speak for a moment, his eyes stuck to Sherlock’s, feeling so much that he thinks he could implode. Then he surges forward and kisses Sherlock. They kiss for a long moment, mouths unyielding and demanding, and Sherlock’s hands find their way to his shoulders and squeeze. John gets his arms around Sherlock properly, and after a bit, Sherlock puts his around John all the way, too. John feels the stiffness seep out of Sherlock’s frame as they re-establish this very new thing between them. It feels good in a bone-deep, soul-satisfying way, their lips and tongues moving jointly, the kiss wonderfully deep. When they break apart, John is breathing heavily. “I know that,” he says, not caring to check himself. “I know how much you’d do for me – what you already have done for me. You’ve nearly died for me at least four times now, and everything Mary did – ”

“Worth it,” Sherlock interrupts. He touches his nose to John’s, eyes half-closed. “I love you,” he says, and the words shudder through John’s frame like an electrical current. “I would do anything for you.”

John thinks his chest may actually explode. “I know that – I know that now,” he corrects himself, having difficulty breathing, speaking. “I know, and – I love you, too. God, Sherlock – so much. I never – I’ve been an idiot and I don’t half deserve you, but now – ”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Sherlock cuts him off with his mouth, his arms still around John, and the kiss is the most passionate John has ever experienced with anyone, ever. They kiss and kiss and kiss, bodies pressed together, arms and hands gripping one another.

After ten or fifteen minutes of this, John pulls back long enough to murmur, “Sofa?”

Sherlock makes a sound of fervent agreement and kisses him again, half-walking, half-stumbling over to the sofa. They get themselves onto it, limbs tangling together and winding around each other, gripping each other tightly. It goes on and on and John thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. It’s as though a dam has opened between them now that they’ve finally given it a chance to do so, and the current of it is washing through them both. Sherlock leans back and pulls John down onto him. John is hard and wonders if Sherlock is, too. He shifts against Sherlock, subtly trying to find out, and when he feels Sherlock’s erection through their trousers, they both groan. John presses himself into Sherlock and Sherlock responds by sliding his hands down to cup John’s arse. John is almost breathless at how incredibly sensual Sherlock can actually be. He wonders who else Sherlock has been with, if anyone, and a streak of jealousy sears through him like flame. Sherlock is his, damn it, or will be once John actually permits himself to claim him. He remembers what Sherlock said, back on his birthday, that he didn’t know how to spend the currency of his life. It was an open invitation to John to take it, claim it, spend it together. He sees that now. And Sherlock wanted this, wanted it badly. He can feel that tangibly, pressed against his body in undeniable evidence.

He pulls back a little and opens his eyes, looking down into Sherlock’s face, stroking his hair back in tenderness he cannot stop himself from needing to express. Their cocks are straining against each other’s plainly, obviously, and Sherlock’s cheeks are flushed with unmistakable arousal. John rubs Sherlock’s eyebrow with his thumb and draws in his breath to speak, to ask, but Sherlock beats him to it.

“No, and yes,” he says, his pulse visible and quick in his throat.

John’s brow furrows a little. “What do you – ”

“No, I haven’t been with anyone else, and yes, I want to.” Sherlock’s tongue comes out to touch his lower lip. “I want you. Please. I’m clean – you know I was tested in the hospital. I want this more than I can possibly tell you. Please, John,” he repeats. He puts the hand that isn’t on John’s arse on his face, thumb pressing into his lip.

John’s chest floods with emotion. “You’re sure?” he asks. His level of arousal is already making it difficult to speak, but this is incredibly important. He strokes Sherlock’s hair again. “It’s not too soon? There’s no rush – we don’t have to do anything like that yet, if you – ”

“I want you,” Sherlock interrupts. “Please, John. I need you. I need – ”

He sounds almost desperate and John wants desperately to spare him that, so he nods. “Yes. Okay. Yes. Definitely.”

Sherlock pulls his face down and kisses him again, every bit as deeply as before. “Please,” he says breathlessly. “Take me to bed.”

John has to swallow, and nods again, hard. “Okay.” He gets himself off Sherlock and pulls Sherlock to his feet. They kiss again, hands pulling at each other’s clothes. Sherlock hauls the jumper over his head and John is busy untucking Sherlock’s shirt from his trousers. They stop to kiss again, hands roaming.

When they break for breath, Sherlock is panting. He looks around, then grabs the baby monitor from the coffee table. “The doors – let’s lock – ”

“Yes.” John agrees, going to the main door of the flat and locking it while Sherlock gets the one leading into the kitchen. They meet again in the corridor and kiss as though they were parted for hours. They kiss like lovers, John thinks. They never were, but they always should have been. Now, at last, this can happen.

They get themselves into the bedroom and close the door. Sherlock puts the monitor he’s been clutching to John’s back on his dresser, then turns to him, licking his lips in nervous anticipation. “I don’t – know what I’m doing,” he says with difficulty. “You’ll have to tell me what to do with – with all of it.”

John shakes his head very slightly. “I don’t know a whole lot more,” he says honestly. “This – with two men – I’ve never, either.”

Sherlock moves closer to him, right in his space, his curls touching John’s forehead. “You know intimacy,” he says, his voice low and warm and sensual. “You speak the language of bodies, of physicalised love. I want all of that; I just don’t know the way there.”

John leans in and presses his lips to Sherlock’s for a long moment, his fingers going to the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt. “We’ll get there together,” he responds, his own voice low and as gentle as he can make it. “I love you.”

Sherlock exhales deeply. “I love you.” He allows John to remove his shirt, then reaches for John’s t-shirt and pulls that off, too.

Their eyes never leaving each other’s, they peel away the layers of clothes from each other’s bodies until they’re bare in front of one another. John looks down and gets an eyeful of Sherlock’s cock, obscenely hard and flushed, bobbing upward, and he has to swallow again. It’s a gorgeous cock, a good seven inches and as perfectly-shaped as the rest of Sherlock is, canting a little to the left. “Wow,” he says, and it’s rather unabashed, but Sherlock could probably use the shot of confidence. Besides, he means it.

Sherlock’s eyes seem to be stuck on his, too, his throat bobbing. “Quite,” he says, and John feels a spot of pride. That’s one thing he can feel sure about, at least.

He pulls Sherlock back into his arms and they both shiver at the intimacy of being nude together this way for the first time. The kiss starts off gently but rapidly turns hungry again, fingers gripping each other’s skin, cocks bumping and pressing together, their thighs pushing together in an ever-rising, driving need to be closer. John transfers his mouth to Sherlock’s neck, to the pulse pounding there against his tongue, and feels Sherlock’s moan as much as he hears it. John isn’t sure whether he’s pushing or Sherlock’s urging him to the bed, but the next thing he knows, Sherlock is shoving back the blankets and pulling him down on top of him. It’s incredible. John used to tell himself that he could never desire a man the way he did women, but this – he hadn’t imagined it could feel like this, even all those times he was secretly ogling Sherlock’s body and trying to deny it to himself at the same time. (Christ, what an idiot he’s been!)

Sherlock pushes the blankets all the way onto the floor and they roll over each other, moaning and moving against each other, relishing every place they’re touching. Sherlock’s hands are gripping his arse and John loves it shamelessly. “John – I want you,” Sherlock pants, voice gone breathless, looking up at him. “I mean – all the way. I want you inside me.”

John’s cock twitches noticeably and he has to bite back a moan at the very thought of this. “Are you – sure?” he asks, very seriously. “That’s a big first step if you’ve never – I mean, I would just want to do it properly. Prepare you slowly and make sure that it’s not only comfortable, but feels good.”

Sherlock bites his lip. “I don’t really want to go slowly right now,” he admits, looking pained by the dilemma.

John smiles down into his eyes. “Neither do I. So let’s save it. We’ve got all the time in the world now.” He slips his hand down and wraps it around both of them. “Have you got lube somewhere?” he murmurs, eyes half-lidded as Sherlock gasps, open-mouthed and trembling at the sensation.

“The – the drawer,” he gets out, and John reaches over for it, just able to reach. He fumbles one-handed with the lid, not letting go of either of them until he’s able to get a palmful of lube to rub over them both. He’s never felt a cock against his own like this, either, and it feels phenomenal. He grips and rubs and tries to find a rhythm of rocking against Sherlock while using his hand to double the friction. He glances down between them, at the heads of both their cocks winking out early release, the delicate skin flushed and dark, both their foreskins rolled back. A shudder of desire runs down John’s spine and curls tightly into his balls. “I love you,” he says again, breathing hard, and is rewarded by Sherlock’s fluttering eyelids opening, his eyes finding John’s and locking onto them.

“I love you, too,” he says, and after that it’s nothing but breath and moans that grow increasingly more frantic as John thrusts and strokes, then lets go in favour of just rutting against Sherlock. He’s teetering on the very edge of his orgasm but wants Sherlock to get there first. He thrusts and thrusts, then feels the minute twitch in Sherlock’s muscles a split second before it happens. Sherlock goes completely rigid, then comes hard, clutching John’s back and arse as liquid release spatters John’s belly and chest, breath expelling in a hoarse shout. John moans again, pressed so hard to Sherlock that their balls are rubbing together, too. There’s another splatter of Sherlock’s release and John makes a louder sound than he meant to and can’t hold it back anymore. His teeth clench and he humps Sherlock’s spurting cock wildly, hips pumping forward, and then he’s sailing, voice shouting as his body sends out jet after jet of come. It smears between them as he keeps thrusting into it, his cock throbbing out thick drops onto Sherlock’s. Finally the wave subsides and he slumps down onto Sherlock, his body going limp as he pants hotly onto Sherlock’s shoulder. He can feel Sherlock’s heartbeat pounding crazily against his own, and feels as though they’re bonding chemically. He’s never felt so close to someone after sex, particularly not the very first time.

He can feel the aftershocks reverberating through Sherlock’s body and gets his arms around under Sherlock’s back to hold him through it, make sure he feels contained and safe, that he’s not falling apart. Sherlock responds by holding winding all of his limbs around John and pressing himself to him, getting as close as he can possibly get. For a long time they just hold each other, touching in as many places as possible, breathing hard and revelling in the aftermath. After a little, Sherlock turns his face into John’s neck, his lips brushing it, his breath warm, still panting. “John… that was…”

He stops, apparently lost for words. John tightens his arms. “Yeah,” he says, almost in a whisper, his throat tight. “For me, too.”

Sherlock says his name again, so John lifts his face, flushed as it is, and Sherlock pulls him down again, kissing him deeply, so passionately that John loses himself in it, giving himself over to it completely.

***

Some time later, he opens his eyes and finds himself still in Sherlock’s arms, and smiles.

“What?” Sherlock asks, looking into his eyes.

They’re on their sides facing each other, arms and legs slotted messily into each other’s, heads on the same pillow. John shakes his head a little. “Nothing. You. This. It’s incredible.”

Sherlock cups the right side of his face and bends forward to press his lips to John’s for a long moment, as though he’s already forgotten what John’s mouth feels like. After, his eyes open, and he looks almost heartbreakingly transparent. “I can hardly believe this is happening,” he says, and John wants to kiss the uncertainty away forever.

“Believe it,” he says, caressing the smooth skin of Sherlock’s back. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

This time. Sherlock doesn’t say it, but they both hear it nonetheless.

Sherlock’s jawline is gorgeous at this angle, John thinks, and wishes he could just let himself have this without hating himself in retrospect. There’s just so much that he’s done to Sherlock that he never should have. He’s apologised for some of it, but there’s always more. Right now he’s thinking of the way he left when he went back to Mary. They’d both known that morning, when they left for Christmas dinner, though neither of them commented on it, on the bag John was holding, though Sherlock’s eyes had scanned over it briefly, taking it in and cataloguing the fact of its existence somewhere inside his head. John hadn’t said a word, nothing to explain that he was going to try to salvage his train wreck of a marriage because of the unborn child he didn’t even want. He never said how hard it was, making himself leave Baker Street (and Sherlock) again. And Sherlock hadn’t questioned it, called him on it, called him out over his very silence, about not telling him. He knew. They both knew. And they both knew that John should have explained himself. Or rather, John thinks now, they both knew that John shouldn’t have gone back. He puts a hand on Sherlock’s jawline and touches his beautiful mouth with his thumb, aching with the need to be better, to deserve this man.

Sherlock puts a hand over John’s, his long fingers gentle and warm. “I never thought this would ever happen. I thought you were still grieving Mary’s death, even if that was… complicated.”

“No.” The word says itself before John can plan it, but he means it completely. “It was complicated because I think I was more grieving the fact that I couldn’t live that whole lie. That I couldn’t just be some suburbanite with a wife and kids and minivan and normal job. Some part of me wanted so much for me to fit myself into that life and it just isn’t who I am, or what I want, and I felt like such a failure. I didn’t want the wife as much as I wanted the notion of having succeeded at playing that role, I think. It sounds terrible to say it. Maybe it is terrible. But that’s the truth, Sherlock. It’s like I was angry because the universe called me on my bluff and I was embarrassed. Honestly, I think I married Mary half out of spite toward you, for you not having told me you were alive, to prove I didn’t need you or something. For you not seeming to want any part of this.”

“Idiot,” Sherlock says, the word so affectionate that it feels like velvet against John’s ears. “I’ve wanted this for a rather long time. If I’d ever thought there was a chance to say it, try for it, I would have, but there wasn’t. Not that I could tell, at least.”

“Except the stag night,” John says. “I almost slipped then. If I had… I doubt I ever would have been able to go through with marrying Mary. Now I wish that I hadn’t, but we still got here in the end, didn’t we?” This comes out sounding a bit too wistful, his guilt showing plainly.

Sherlock nods, his face very sober. “I wish it hadn’t cost us so much to get here, but we did, in the end.”

“That’s my fault,” John says, not even trying to hide the guilt now.

“No. It was just the way things turned out,” Sherlock says, refuting this. He touches John’s lips with his fingers. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“I just wanted to try to explain myself,” John says, searching Sherlock’s face. “I’ve been a prick since the day you came back from your mission.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Besides – ” Sherlock moves his fingers and kisses John again, as though he can’t get enough of it. “I don’t want to dwell on all of that.”

“I know, but I have to,” John says, still feeling guilty. “I put you through hell.”

“With a good deal of help from Mary, whom I forgave, and from my sister, whom I forgave. What each of them did was considerably worse on balance, so what more wouldn’t I forgive from the person I care about most in this universe?” Sherlock asks, drawing back just far enough to look into John’s eyes, posing it like a completely logical question. “I don’t care. I don’t care at all. This is all that matters to me. You and I, here at last.”

For a second John’s mouth falls open at hearing this, so gripped by emotion that he doesn’t entire trust himself to speak. He settles for kissing Sherlock as hard as he knows how, a leg curling around him, his mouth on Sherlock’s throat and clavicle, then kissing down to Sherlock’s chest. He presses the flat of his tongue to Sherlock’s nipples and feels that they’ve stiffened, peaking all the more at the touch of his tongue, Sherlock’s breath exhaling hard. John strokes his hands down Sherlock’s sides and kisses down to his belly, flat and hard against his tongue. He bypasses the erection bumping into his chin and instead breathes warmly onto Sherlock’s balls, then rubs his lips over them. Sherlock moans. “Can I do this?” John asks, looking up at him. “Is this okay?”

Sherlock has turned all the way onto his back, John lying in the open vee of his legs. “Very much so,” he says, his voice not entirely stable. He’s propping himself up on his elbows to watch, his face open and slightly unsure and utterly transparent.

John’s entire being aches so fiercely over seeing Sherlock like this that he has to duck his face. This isn’t payment, he tells himself as he rubs the flat of his tongue over Sherlock’s balls. Sherlock inhales sharply but doesn’t protest, exhaling heavily, and John keeps going, tongue prodding at the interesting texture of the skin, the soft, dark hair covering it wet from his mouth. He can feel Sherlock’s thighs trembling and turns his head to lick at the base of his shaft. No, this isn’t payment. This isn’t about making amends. It’s about wanting to tell Sherlock tangibly how he feels, how much he feels. It’s about needing to do it, needing to express this, and Sherlock is letting him do this. John runs his mouth all over the hard protrusion of Sherlock’s cock, pointing stiffly upward, dark with need, then finally lets himself close his mouth around the head, which is smoother than velvet on his tongue. They both moan, Sherlock out loud, his head falling back, mouth open in ecstasy, and John humming it out through his nose, which makes Sherlock make another desperate sound.

John never thought it would feel this good to have a cock in his mouth, but God knows he’s thought about it. Tried not to let himself think about it, rather. But it’s happened regardless, in the shadowy recesses of his psyche: wondered if Sherlock actually experienced erections, desire, if he gets himself off sometimes, and what in this universe could possibly inspire him to arousal. And yet now, the answer is so simple and so clear: his cock is harder than rock from John’s mouth, John’s body, from John himself. His heart gives a fierce throb, echoed by his cock, already hard again and trying to drill a hole into Sherlock’s mattress. He sucks Sherlock hard, using his tongue wherever it can reach, his right hand curled around Sherlock’s cock and jerking it. His mouth is making the occasional slurping noise but it doesn’t matter: Sherlock is panting and trembling violently, his legs twitching, hands scrabbling at the sheets for purchase, the colour high in his cheeks. His cock is leaking steadily, salty on John’s tongue and he swallows it, wondering if anyone has ever tasted Sherlock before. But they wouldn’t have, would they? This is the first time anyone’s ever put their mouth on Sherlock, made him feel that overwhelming feeling of being worth enough to another person to warrant them doing this.

Sherlock’s voice is getting higher and higher, desperation in every pore of his body, and John loves it shamelessly. He rubs Sherlock’s cock hard and kisses the head of it, sucking with his lips and tongue, then plunges his face down so that Sherlock’s cock is right down his throat. Sherlock loses control and cries out, his body lifting off the mattress, hands grabbing at John’s head. He pumps upward three times, his body jerking, and then he’s coming, breath stopping in his throat. John holds his breath and rubs at Sherlock’s hips and arse, pulling him ever deeper down his throat as the throes of his orgasm gush down John’s throat. He’s proud of himself for not gagging; he’s never done this before but it felt completely natural. When it finally stops, Sherlock drops back onto the sheets, pulling himself from John’s mouth, panting and panting, both arms flung out sideways.

John is so turned on he can barely speak. He also doesn’t want to rush Sherlock or push anything on him, so he turns onto his side and gets a hand around himself at last, jerking furiously.

Sherlock’s limp legs move in protest, then tighten around him. “No, d – let me,” he gets out, still breathing hard. “That’s my – I should be – ”

“Okay.” John’s not about to argue. He shifts back up and settles himself into the crook of Sherlock’s arm. “You don’t have t – ”

“Of course I do.” Sherlock’s mouth is on his, a long-fingered hand curling around John’s cock and stroking it in long, firm, perfect strokes, tight enough to make John’s mouth water, his toes curling. “Should I do it with my mouth?”

“As – as much as I love that thought, I’m nearly there,” John pants, thrusting into Sherlock’s fist. “Could you just – ”

“Yes – ” Sherlock’s voice is low, curling like smoke into John’s ears and the pores of his skin, and twisting like quicksilver in his balls. He lets go for a moment, reaching backward to find the lube and is mercifully quick at getting some into his hand, as John is straining not to whine and hump Sherlock’s hip in his desperation to get off. Sherlock bends swiftly to put his mouth to John’s throat as his hand closes around John again, slick with lube, and it feels even better than it did before.

John is panting and panting, the sensuous feeling of Sherlock’s lips and tongue on his pulse point making him groan helplessly. He’s thrusting and Sherlock has got his rhythm figured out to a tee, stroking him from root to tip, hard and fast and just a bit rough, the way John likes it the best, and how could Sherlock have known that – but he does, so what does it even – he hears himself cry out, and then the telltale shudder grips him and he comes with a gut-deep grunt, three of them, lavishly painting Sherlock’s torso in stripes of his release, and Sherlock exhales onto throat, his breathing rapid and hot. John moves his hand from where it was gripping Sherlock’s tricep to the back of his head, burying his face in Sherlock’s curls. “Jesus,” he pants. “You’re incredible. Completely phenomenal.”

Sherlock raises his head at his, his eyes bright, and John remembers with a swoop of affection how much he adores being complimented – years of never having heard it from anyone else, John remembers with the twist of anger that always comes with that thought. Sherlock kisses him, their tongues tangling together, and John thinks that he can’t think of the last time he kissed someone so much during sex. Or at all. He’s already kissed Sherlock probably more than he kissed Mary in the entire duration of their relationship. Near enough, at any rate, and he’s determined to break whatever brief record that was by morning at the latest if not. The kiss goes on and on, and somehow it’s still not enough. John gets a leg wound around Sherlock and half-rolls himself onto him, arms wrapped around Sherlock’s back. His own come is wet between them, the scent of sex pervading the bedroom, and John loves it all. It feels to him as though Sherlock is a sponge, absolutely starved for this, for physical intimacy, and very likely emotional intimacy, too. Who else in the world cares about him this much? When has he ever been told that he was loved before?

John lifts off just enough to say it again. “I love you.” He says it looking into Sherlock’s eyes, feeling Sherlock’s heart thumping against his own through their chests. “I love you so much.”

Sherlock swallows, as though hearing it for the first time. “Me too,” he says. “I love you. I – this feels like a dream. Only dreams can’t compare to the real thing.”

John feels a smile spreading over his face, his eyes going soft. “I am the luckiest arsehole in the world, you know that?”

“I thought I held that title.” Sherlock doesn’t even sound as though he’s joking. “After all I’ve put you through…”

“After all I’ve put you through,” John corrects him.

Sherlock kisses him again, lightly. “New concept: no more blame,” he says. “Things happened. Past tense. Can we leave it there?”

John nods at once, thumb stroking over Sherlock’s cheekbone. “Yeah,” he says. “I like that idea. A new leaf. Life put us through some serious shit, but now we’re here.”

“Precisely.” Sherlock smiles at him and John feels his heart turn to mush all over again.

“I just want to make sure that I’ve said everything that needs to be said about all of that stuff before we leave it,” he says, a bit doggedly, knowing that Sherlock doesn’t want to discuss it anymore. “I want to make any amends necessary.”

“I’m telling you: there are none necessary,” Sherlock tells him, and if he’s exasperated, he’s hiding it well. “Let’s just – move forward. Please.”

John gives in. “Let the record show that I think you’re letting me off far too lightly, but I’m grateful that you are,” he says. “All right: then the past is behind us.”

“No more recriminations.” Sherlock is adamant, though he undoes some of his own firmness by running his fingers through John’s hair.

John agrees nevertheless. “All right. No more recriminations. But you’re still allowed to mention it if something comes up and it’s a problem, okay?”

Sherlock nods. “Likewise.”

“Agreed.” John kisses him briefly, then does it again, longer. That leads into a third, and then a fourth. He looks down between them, feeling wet. “We’re a mess,” he says, peeling himself off Sherlock with difficulty. “Shower?”

“Shower,” Sherlock agrees. “And then possibly another round?”

His eyes are gleaming and John laughs in surprised delight. “Trust you to want thirds on your first go! I should have known you’d be insatiable!”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” Sherlock scolds playfully as they get themselves out of bed and into the loo. “I’m sure you can go for hours, anyway.”

“It’s been a long time since anyone wanted me to,” John says dryly. His eyes go down to Sherlock’s bared, perfect arse as Sherlock leans into the shower to turn on the water. “Though if I needed inspiration, I’ve got it in spades…”

Sherlock looks back over his shoulder, catches onto what John is looking at, and his smile turns nearly predatory. “Get some towels,” is all he says, though. “And then get in here.”

John reaches for two large bath towels from the top shelf of the rack and puts them on the counter, then hastens to do exactly that.

***

In the shower, they wash themselves and each other. Sherlock is a knee-weakening blend of being ever so slightly shy about doing this for the first time, and just faintly seductive enough for John to realise that his lack of experience has no bearing on his ability to control a situation when he wants to. Which is to say that Sherlock has to be aware of the way his small smiles hit John right in the knees and render him practically incapable of speech. It’s fantastic, he thinks, kissing Sherlock in the warm stream of water. They wash each other’s hair and scrub each other’s backs and get hard all over again as they clean away the come sticking to their skin and hair. Seeing Sherlock touch himself, his long fingers passing perfunctorily over his chest and stomach and balls makes John harder still.

When they’ve finished, John moves to get out and Sherlock steps aside to let him. “I’ll just be a moment longer,” he says. “Go ahead.”

“Okay.” John kisses him again, then gets out, reaching for one of the towels. His cock is harder than anything and he feels a stirring of anticipation at whatever round three may bring. He wrings out his hair and dries himself thoroughly, then hears the water shut off as he hangs up his towel.

Sherlock pushes back the shower curtain and John gives him a towel, his eyes dropping immediately to Sherlock’s hard, deeply-flushed cock. Sherlock takes in his expression and smirks. “See something you like?” he asks, the question coming out in that same mixture of being archly delicate, yet completely knowing.

John can’t answer in articulate words and doesn’t try to. He moves toward Sherlock and takes the towel from his unresisting hands and rubs it over Sherlock’s body, saliva filling his mouth. He dries Sherlock’s back and legs and torso, then drags the towel over his cock and balls before tossing it onto the counter behind him and replacing it with his bare hand, rubbing Sherlock’s rock-hard cock.

Sherlock is breathing hard, his face flushed almost as deeply as his cock is. “I was fingering myself just now,” he informs John breathlessly, and John moans, unable to help himself.

“Were you?” he manages, the breath hot and sticking in his lungs.

Sherlock makes an affirmative sound, reaching for John’s cock and probing at his balls with his fingers. “I was just making sure everything was… clean, and it just went a little further.” He closes the small space between them in favour of pressing John up against the counter, their cocks trapped between their bodies, touching and aching together. “I still want you inside me,” he says, his voice low and sultry. “I don’t care how soon it is – just – I want that. Want you.”

John’s hands are on his ass, their cocks pressing together. “God, yes,” he gasps. “If you’re that sure – ”

“I am.” Sherlock is kissing him again, their mouths open wide, stomachs expanding and contracting as they breathe, pressing together, the pleasure gathering between them.

John lets his hand drift toward the enticing divide between Sherlock’s cheeks and slips his middle finger in, searching. Sherlock’s body is warm and pliant and he’s making noises that are enthusiastic and encouraging and impatient all at once. There’s only a bit of resistance as he slides his finger into Sherlock, and the heat of him is intoxicating. John’s heart rate trebles. “We need – lube – ” he stutters out, completely undone by this, by touching Sherlock this way.

Sherlock’s eyes open, his irises flooded with desire, lips parted. “Yes – ” Somehow they get themselves back into the bedroom and tumble into bed, Sherlock shoving the thin tube into his hands, his legs splayed wide, cock obscenely hard. “How do you want me?” he asks, very directly, and something about his candour makes John’s cock twitch and fill still more.

He’s on his back now, eyes questioning, and John can hardly speak. He’s kneeling between Sherlock’s thighs, goggling at the body on shameless display before him. He feels as though he’d died and gone to heaven, only heaven’s got nothing on this, he thinks. “Just like that,” he says, breathing heavily. “I want to see your face when I’m inside you.”

Sherlock moans. “Oh God, please…”

John bends over him and fits two fingers inside him at once, and it’s tight, but the lube helps. Sherlock gasps and writhes at this, half trying to pull away from the intrusion and half trying to bear down on it to make it go even faster. John attempts to soothe him, calm him. “Just – take it easy,” he says. “There’s no rush.”

“The hell there isn’t,” Sherlock says, and although it’s breathless, he finds and holds John’s gaze. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”

John has to swallow again, exhaling hard. His entire body is quivering at the very thought of this, and so is Sherlock’s. He stretches Sherlock a little more, then his fingers away and fits the head of his cock to the entrance of Sherlock’s body. “Are you ready?” he asks, his voice coming over husky.

Sherlock grasps his upper arms, fingers digging into his triceps. “Extremely,” he gets out, then – “Please, John!”

John groans again and his hips push forward a little without his conscious volition, as though his very body is wired directly to Sherlock’s, to whatever he needs. “It might hurt a little,” he warns.

“I don’t care, just – ” Sherlock is wrecked with desperation, but then gasps as John pushes into him in one long, careful motion, not stopping until he’s fully buried in Sherlock’s body.

He has to stop then, both because if he doesn’t, he may lose it right there, both physically and emotionally. Sherlock’s body is so tight around him that it feels blindingly good already, the heat of his channel gripping John’s cock in a way he’s never felt before, and doing this, being inside Sherlock this way, feels so incredibly right that his chest is aching right along with his cock. Plus, he needs to give Sherlock a minute or two, too. Sherlock’s mouth is open, his eyes closed, fingers still gripping John’s arms. “You okay?” John asks, his voice coming out in a murmur. He shifts his weight to his left arm and strokes Sherlock’s wet hair.

Sherlock inhales shakily and nods. “Yeah. You can – ”

“Let’s just give it a moment,” John says, overriding him gently. He shifts minutely, testing, letting Sherlock’s body adjust to having him there. He can’t think of when anything felt so good before.

Sherlock nods again, accepting this, and for a few moments, they stay that way, breathing together, the tension slowly easing in Sherlock’s body. Then his eyes open and he nods. “Okay,” he says, and John begins to move.

He begins slowly, just rocking into Sherlock maybe an inch or so, buried to the hilt, then gradually increases how far he pulls out before pushing back inside. It feels so good he could cry, and Sherlock is panting, starting to make sounds he can’t help, moaning on every exhalation. When he winds a leg around John’s hip for greater purchase, John knows that the pain must be past, and lets himself go a little harder, then after Sherlock pants out a request for more, harder still.

He thrusts as deeply as he can go into Sherlock, pulling out and slamming back in, Sherlock’s voice urgent and encouraging him. “Please, John – yes, like th – ohhh – God, yes, I – pl – ”

He can hear his own sounds, needy and desperate, his voice scraping. His hips are snapping forward, pounding into Sherlock, whose body is contracting rhythmically around his cock. He’s never felt this good in his life; it’s never ever been this good with anyone else. He reaches between them to find Sherlock’s cock as hard as ever, and almost the instant he touches it, Sherlock cries out loudly and comes, filling his hand with pulses of hot fluid, bucking up off the sheets as his orgasm hits, his legs thrashing and gripping his hips, and John moans and goes harder still, thrusting wildly, his body slapping against Sherlock’s and then he feels himself tip over the edge, flooding Sherlock’s body with release and thrusting into the wetness, still coming, unable to stop, feeling like he’s pumping himself so deeply into Sherlock that he feels like he’s practically trying to crawl into his body.

Finally it eases off and he’s barely aware of Sherlock pulling him down to his chest, his cock still twitching and spattering out still more come, breath gasping out of him, his back heaving, Sherlock’s hands rubbing over his back and arse, touching as much of him as they can reach. “I love you,” Sherlock says breathlessly, some time later, his heart pounding tangibly through their chests.

By now John is finally able to pull himself together enough to say it back. He says it into Sherlock’s shoulder, then raises his head and says it again. “I love you,” he says. “I love you so much.” He looks into Sherlock’s eyes for a moment, then lowers his face to kiss him for a very, very long time.

***

Sometime later, they get up to clean themselves off a second time, brushing their teeth and hanging up the towels properly. John transfers the baby monitor from Sherlock’s dresser to the night stand, the better to hear it if Rosie wakes. Right now there is nothing but the sound of her peaceful, even breathing. He listens for a moment, then lets Sherlock take him by the hand and tug him back down into the bed and into his arms.

They sleep.

***

They’re all in the sitting room when Mycroft shows up without warning the following afternoon. John is sitting on the sofa next to Sherlock, their legs tangled together, and he’s got an arm around Sherlock’s shoulders. He’s reading a novel, one selected from their carefully-organised collection, and Sherlock is perusing case offers on his blog. Rosie is in her playpen, banging plastic blocks together. When they hear the outer door, they both stiffen, but then Sherlock says, listening, “My brother.”

They wait for him to ascend, then appear in the doorframe. He stops and looks at them, his eyebrows rising to where his hairline should be. For once, he’s uncharacteristically speechless.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock says evenly, prompting.

Mycroft averts his eyes, seemingly finding it difficult to look at them. He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks instead at Rosie. “My congratulations on the recovery of your daughter, Doctor Watson,” he says stiffly.

“Thank you,” John says. “That’s – kind of you.”

Mycroft makes a sound which could indicate agreement. “I have something that may interest you,” he says, setting his briefcase down on the coffee table and opening it while still managing to avoid looking at them. He withdraws a thick envelope. “Ms Morstan’s financial records,” he says, holding the envelope out to John. “Complete with account statements that go back as far as seven years. I’ve circled a few transactions that may be of interest to you. As well, I’ve spoken to someone at Barclay’s who says that if you bring your marriage certificate, they will grant you access to this information and the funds. However, if you’ll direct your attention to the item on line twenty-three of the first set of statements…”

He stops, waiting for John to withdraw the contents of the envelope and find it. John rifles through the pages, then goes back to the start. “From Barclay’s?” He studies the page in question. “This – what is this? A draft?”

“Yes, in the amount of two million pounds,” Mycroft says, still standing at profile to them. “It was made out to someone by the name of Lucille Jenkins and was cashed in Switzerland the day after Mary’s death.”

John stares at the papers, then looks up at Mycroft. “Who’s that?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m still looking. The timing merely struck me as… interesting,” Mycroft says. “The deed for your flat is attached. While it’s not in your name, the bank gave me to understand that you will have inherited it. You’ll need to bring Mary’s death certificate, of course, and ensure that no other party was given power of attorney over her estate.”

John frowns. “Who else would there have been?”

Mycroft does look at him now, casting a semi-disgusted look at his brother in the process. “Who else, indeed? I barely knew the woman.”

John hears the barb within, the one suggesting that he didn’t know enough about her before he brought her into all of their lives, either. He shuffles through the papers. “What else am I supposed to be finding of note?”

“Find your way to six months ago,” Mycroft instructs. He pivots and makes for one of the desk chairs, waiting with ill-conceived boredom for John to catch up.

Sherlock points silently and John sees it. “What is this?” he asks. “A payment of some sort?”

“Indeed. In the amount of two thousand pounds even.”

“Who or what is DirectCom Incorporated?” John asks.

Mycroft settles himself in the chair with a flourish, crossing one knee over the other. “A shell corporation belonging to Culverton Smith,” he informs them.

“What?” Sherlock frowns at his brother. “Why would he have been paying Mary?”

Mycroft nods at the papers. “Keep looking, Doctor Watson. You’ll see the same payment amounts from the same corporation several more times. It started six months ago and continued intermittently until the very month that Mary died.”

John looks, the entries clearly marked and labelled. It’s all true. “You’re saying she was working for him?” he says, frowning. “Doing what? Do you have any idea?”

“I do now.” Mycroft is grim, all traces of his usual smug veneer fading. He reaches for another file in his briefcase and opens it. “I found the same deposits going into a number of other accounts on the same dates. The account holders are all nurses.”

He lets that sink in for a moment, then finds Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock gets it before John does. “The TD-12 injections,” he says quietly.

John’s head swivels to look at him so quickly he nearly gives himself whiplash. “What? Seriously?”

Sherlock studies his brother for another moment, then turns his head to look at John. “I’m afraid so,” he says. “He must have hired her to administer it.”

John feels blank. “But – why?” he asks. “Why Mary?”

Mycroft sighs and looks down at his file. “The substance known as TD-12 was given to several intelligence agencies to test and… use at their own discretion. Because of its controversial nature, it became impossible for our government to carry out its own tests before its very existence had become too controversial to pursue such things. However, it was one of Culverton Smith’s own corporations which developed and produced it. No doubt he had his own supply. Perhaps he wanted people with Mary’s particular skill set to be on hand in the case that a subject refused to take it, or upon whom it didn’t work. I don’t think he need to have worried about that; from what little is known, it would seem that it works all too well in some cases.”

His eyes go to Sherlock and linger, and John thinks he looks rather melancholy and doesn’t understand why. Before he can ask, though, Mycroft goes on.

“There’s more, I’m afraid. If you’ll turn back to 2013 and 2014, you’ll see a few other entries, large payments in even sums.” Mycroft waits.

Sherlock puts his laptop aside and helps, looking over John’s shoulder and pointing. “Here,” he says, and looks up at Mycroft. “Who is this? Short form J Morrison?”

John gets it first this time, his gut supplying the answer. “Jim Moriarty.” He looks at Mycroft. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Mycroft doesn’t smile. “Very good, Doctor Watson,” he says coolly. “Yes: your wife was in the employ of James Moriarty, which means by logical extension that she was, in all probability, in contact with – ”

“Eurus,” John says, his stomach tightening into a knot. “She knew Eurus.” He looks at Sherlock, thinking again of everything Eurus has put them through over the years.

Sherlock has a look of concentration on his face. “Yes,” he says slowly. “That fits. When Eurus came here, disguised as Faith Smith, she had a paper belonging to Faith Smith. She’d added her standard hallmark, Miss Me, in linseed oil. I only noticed it later. She told John, posing as his therapist, that she’d got the paper through a ‘mutual friend’. I suppose we can now assume that that was Mary.”

Mycroft nods. “We don’t know how long before Mary’s death Eurus staged her escape. It was decidedly before, however, as we know that she was posing as the woman John met on the bus, too.”

John feels the twist of self-recrimination again, though this time it’s because it was Sherlock’s demented sister, not because of Mary. “Right,” he says tersely. “God, she had a lot of time to set everything up!”

“Indeed,” Mycroft says. He looks tired. “Given my sister’s interesting proclivities and your wife’s criminal ones, it seems clear to me that between Eurus, Mary, and Moriarty, they could have gained access to TD-12. I would therefore like to have the two of you tested for memory damage.”

John is startled. “You think it was used on us at some point?” He thinks of Rosie’s conception all of a sudden, how he doesn’t remember ever having had sex with Mary without a condom. Then something else occurs to him. “Wait – on both of us?”

Sherlock looks at him. “I think there’s potential for concern,” he says quietly. “I blacked out at some point while I was with Eurus when she was posing as Faith Smith. Granted, I was already high, but the reaction that occurred after certainly could have come from having mixed TD-12 with… the other substances I was on. Bill Wiggins is very reliable and he was confused by my state afterward. Plus, my memories of the week that followed are still distressingly blurred.”

John looks at him, wishing this could all just stay in the past. They’re in such a good place now. But it has to be dealt with. He drags his eyes back to Mycroft. “And you think that Mary might have used it on me at some point?”

Instead of answering, Mycroft asks, “Do you have any periods within the last two years where your memories appear to have been compromised? For any reason at all.”

John thinks hard. “Only just after Mary died,” he says, admitting it with reluctance. “I was… drinking too much.”

Sherlock glances at him quickly. “Enough to black out, though?”

“I don’t remember, to be honest,” John admits with a grimace. “Hey. Mycroft. Do you think it was Eurus who kept sending those DVDs, then, after Mary died? Only I got the last one after she was back in Sherrinford. Though I suppose she could have posted it before she went back…”

Sherlock makes a thinking sound. “We don’t know exactly how much time we lost when she drugged us and had us moved,” he agrees. “Somehow I don’t think it was then, however. I find it more likely that she paid someone – or brainwashed someone – to send it at a particular point when she was first out. She was out for a long stretch, I think we can assume. At least six months.”

Mycroft agrees, grimacing. “An incredibly large amount of time to have been on the loose.”

John feels a stirring of anger. “I can’t believe this! I know you did everything you could to contain her, Mycroft, but – after everything she did, killing Sherlock’s friend and that – how could you – ”

“Wait a moment,” Mycroft interrupts, cocking an ear at John as though he didn’t hear him properly. “Killing Sherlock’s ‘friend’?”

Sherlock stares at him. “Yes, Victor Trevor, don’t you remember?” he asks, frowning.

Mycroft stares back at him, looking more confused than John has ever seen him look before. “Sherlock… she killed Redbeard. She drowned him, most likely in the stream that ran through the woods on the back acre of the property.”

“Yes,” Sherlock repeats. “Victor Trevor. My friend. We played pirates together. John found his bones in the well at Musgrave Hall.”

Mycroft looks at John, a horrified expression on his face. “You found bones in that well?”

John becomes aware that they’re all confused. “Yes,” he says. “Didn’t Greg tell you?”

“No!” Mycroft gets up and begins to pace, unusually agitated. “Sherlock – there’s something I have to tell you,” he begins, turning to face them once he’s all the way across the sitting room, in front of the fireplace. “I thought this had all resolved itself, but now – I am definitely going to need you to take these memory tests.”

Sherlock isn’t budging. “Why?” he demands. He leans forward, out of the semi-circle of John’s arm. “What haven’t you told me, Mycroft?”

Mycroft winces. “Sherlock… you’ve got it wrong. Redbeard was a dog. Did Eurus tell you otherwise?”

John looks sharply at Sherlock, whose face is filled with confusion. “Yes,” he says. “But Victor – ”

“Victor was imaginary,” Mycroft states.

Stunned silence fills the sitting room. Then: “What?” Sherlock sounds uncertain, and John reaches for his hand. Sherlock lets him have it, his fingers cold. “What are you talking about, Mycroft?”

Mycroft looks away. “He was imaginary,” he repeats quietly. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. You… your memories of that entire time were damaged. It’s my fault. Mine and Rudy’s, but as he’s dead, there’s only me left to accept this blame.”

John clears his throat. “Mycroft, start making sense, now.”

Mycroft swallows and looks at him, his back stiff and straight but his face bowed. “My brother was one of the most sensitive children I have ever seen,” he begins, his voice low. “He had an entire host of fantasy worlds that he occupied as a child, and precisely one friend who occupied them: Victor Trevor, the boy with two given names and no family name. From what Sherlock told us of Victor, he looked and acted rather like you, John.”

Sherlock inhales sharply at this, but doesn’t speak. Mycroft glances at him and goes on.

“When Eurus killed Sherlock’s beloved dog, as I told you, we eventually deduced that she had drowned him, given that she’d taken to calling him ‘Drowned Redbeard’. Likely as a result of his worry over Redbeard’s disappearance, Sherlock came to our mother one day and told her that he was unable to find Victor. Victor had stopped appearing for him. Unfortunately, it only got worse: when our parents told Sherlock about Redbeard, he went into a post-traumatic state of shock. He was catatonic for over two months. Our parents were destroyed both by what Eurus had done and by what had happened to Sherlock because of it.”

John feels like he can’t breathe, his fingers tightening in Sherlock’s. “So you let them try TD-12 on him,” he says, deducing it quickly enough. “You were trying to help him by eliminating the memory of his trauma. Only you used a drug that hadn’t been properly tested yet and it wiped out his entire memory of Eurus, and left his memories of Redbeard so traumatic that somehow even bloody Magnussen knew about it. He was listing off Sherlock’s pressure points the day he was here, and I didn’t even know what Redbeard was.” He looks at Sherlock. “You’d never so much as mentioned him.”

“No, I tried not to let myself think about him,” Sherlock says with difficulty, looking down at their hands. “But I did remember him as a dog, at least until Eurus said…”

Mycroft shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Sherlock,” he says, and it’s as humble as John has ever heard him. “We didn’t know what else to do for you. It was one of the doctors’ suggestions. Our parents were in no state to make any sort of decision, so Rudy and I made it in the end. I didn’t know it would take so much from you. I’m sorry.” He shifts his weight. “But you see, then, this is why I’ve always maintained that you couldn’t possibly have a memory palace. I suspected that the damage was too great.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “You’ve never believed that I have one, but I do,” he says flatly. “Perhaps that’s precisely why I do: somehow I knew that I had to safeguard my memories. I didn’t know why, just that I needed to do that, and so I did.” He delivers this with defiance. “You were always so quick to write it off as drug-induced hallucinations just because you could never do it yourself, but I could. I’ll do your testing, and you’ll see.”

Mycroft lifts his brows a bit dubiously, but all he says is, “All right, then. As you like.”

“Where do we do this testing?” John wants to know.

Mycroft walks over and bends to reach into his briefcase again, withdrawing a business card. “This is the name of the clinic,” he says, passing it to Sherlock. “I’ve taken the liberty of booking you for a session this Sunday afternoon, if that’s convenient. It’s located quite close to our parents’ and they’ve offered to watch Rosie while you’re there. The testing is scheduled to last approximately three hours, and I’ve also been instructed to extend our parents’ invitation to dinner following.”

John looks at Sherlock, who looks back at him. “It might be a good idea,” John says carefully. “What do you think?”

“I think that we’re only just starting to see the entire game that’s been unleashed against us both for years and years now,” Sherlock says, with a pointed sidelong glare at his brother. “So, yes: I agree. We should find out the extent of what’s been done to us.”

When Mycroft takes himself off with what remains of his stiff-necked dignity, John finds that he’s more upset that he’d like to acknowledge. He goes to Rosie, who needs changing, and takes her upstairs to do that. After, he tries to put her down for a nap, but she won’t have it. After twenty minutes of trying, John gives up in exasperation and brings her back downstairs. “Do you want to come for a walk?” he asks Sherlock. “I was thinking that she might fall asleep in her buggy. Hoping, frankly.”

Sherlock looks up from his laptop and nods. “Yes. All right. I’ll come.” He gets up and comes over, his face still obviously troubled by everything they’ve learned. He pauses in front of John, whose arms are full of Rosie, then spontaneously bends and kisses him. It goes on for a minute or two, and John shifts Rosie onto his left hip so that he can put a hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck, his thumb on Sherlock’s face as they kiss. Sherlock releases him after a little, and smiles at him. “Regent’s Park?” he asks.

John smiles back. “That’s what I was thinking. Be quieter than the city streets.”

“Exactly.” Sherlock moves away to put his coat on, then comes to take Rosie from him so that John can put his own jacket on. “I’ll go down and get her strapped in,” he says, which is fine by John as Rosie is grumpy (sleepy) and fussing.

“Thanks,” he says, going for his jacket and shoes. He joins them downstairs half a second later and they head out into the cold outdoors. Sherlock bends to tighten Rosie’s right shoe (she’s a master at getting them off) and John glances around again, subtly, that same feeling of being watched pervading him. He knows it’s probably just the paranoia given Rosie’s recent kidnapping, but remembers feeling it in the park in East Finchley, too. Perhaps he should say something about it. For their (almost certainly nonexistent) audience’s sake, he puts an arm around Sherlock’s back as they start walking, his other hand steering the buggy, like the male couple they talked to when Jimmy Wells was kidnapped, and Sherlock makes a contented sound and puts his arm around John’s shoulders.

They cross into the park and John takes pleased note of every single person who looks their way and smiles indulgently. “God, what a lot to think about,” he says as they leave the city noise behind them. “First there was last night, and now all of this… just when we’d agreed to leave the past behind us.”

“I know.” Sherlock shakes his head a little. “It’s odd thinking that we can’t trust our own memories, too. I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, which is why I agreed to that testing,” John says, scowling. “What a load of rot Mary tried to sell me, about her past being in the past and all that, when she hadn’t remotely left the industry.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock agrees soberly. “Well: at least you have access to her finances now, save for that two million pound draft.”

“Yeah, and I’d like to know who Lucille Jenkins is,” John says, still frowning.

Sherlock makes a thinking sound. “Quite.”

They walk in silence for a bit. “The whole ‘miss me’ thing…” John says.

“What about it?” A rook calls from a tree nearby and Sherlock looks up at it with interest.

“Was that Eurus all along, then? Was it some sort of thing all three of them used? Eurus, Moriarty, Mary. They all said it at some point or another. And those DVDs Mary sent us. How did she send them, when she was already dead?”

“That’s a question I’ve been asking since I received the first one,” Sherlock says. “Possibly she had made some sort of arrangement with the post office. Possibly she pre-paid someone else to do it, someone who would know that she had died. Possibly my sister had something to do with it. I don’t know.”

They pass the band stand, following the path. After a little while, John ventures, “So… Victor Trevor?”

Sherlock is quiet for a bit. “I suppose Mycroft must have been right. I honestly can’t tell. I remember him very clearly now, but I’d forgotten him. Entirely.”

John thinks of the one thing he actually liked that Mycroft said about all of that. “But apparently he was a bit like me?” he ventures, his arm tightening around Sherlock’s back.

Sherlock smiles. “He was,” he confirms. “Apparently my preferences haven’t changed much since I was seven. He was the fighter, the one who defended our ship from other pirates, or the British. My swashbuckling hero and partner in crime. Very much like you, in other words.” He stops walking and looks at John. “How lucky I am that he turned out to be real after all. How extraordinary.”

John feels a ridiculous smile spread out over his face, and pulls Sherlock down to him by the lapels of his coat. They kiss right there on the footpath next to the lake, Sherlock still holding onto the buggy with one hand, kissing back as deeply as John is giving it, pressed up against him through their coats. It goes on until Rosie starts to fuss at the lack of motion, so they break apart and keep walking, holding each other and chatting. And even though John still feels it, feels like somewhere, somebody is watching them, they’re going to be all right, he thinks. No matter what they’ve been through: everything is going to be all right now.

***

Vee sets out the silver, which Des has just finished polishing. “How much longer do you think they’ll be?” she asks Mycroft, who is typing something on his phone.

He shrugs. “I’m not certain. I was told to expect around three hours.”

“Is there any way to know how conclusive this testing will be?” Vee straightens the last fork, then goes back over to the counter and the salad that she’d started. She gives the spinach leaves a fresh toss, then goes to the fridge for an orange.

“From what I’ve been told, it sounds quite thorough,” Mycroft says. He looks over at the clock hanging above the calendar. “In fact, they should be through any time now, pending unforeseen complications.”

From the sitting room comes a shout of babyish laughter, followed by Desmond’s. Vee smiles. “Those two are hitting it off,” she comments. “She’s a nice child, despite her parentage.”

Mycroft lifts a brow at this. “Doctor Watson has his redeeming qualities,” he says mildly.

Vee fixes him with a look. “You were the one who pointed out the list of things his presence in Sherlock’s life has brought upon Sherlock. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind just because they’re seemingly together now.”

“Well, I thought that was what we were hoping for, odd as that is to say,” Mycroft says dryly. “The aim was for John to not break Sherlock’s heart again. If their… physical proximity was anything to go by, I would say that they have decidedly entered into intimate relations. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Vee won’t back down that easily. “Perhaps, but you did say that John should be worshipping the ground Sherlock walks on.” She peels the orange briskly and slices it into pieces, fresh juice scattering onto the spinach leaves. She rinses her hands and gets out a small pan to grill sliced almonds in.

“I did say that,” Mycroft acknowledges. “And it may be that he does, now. I have not – thankfully – been made privy to the inner workings of their association. However, they looked revoltingly happy to my unpractised eye. They were… touching one another, despite my presence. That aside, it must be said that they work well together. I neglected to say so the last time we discussed this. Their partnership served them well during the trials Eurus put us through.”

Vee glances at him. “Do you think he’s worthy of Sherlock? Tell me frankly.”

Mycroft shrugs again. “Would anyone be, to us?” he asks, almost rhetorically. “He’ll do, in my opinion.” His phone buzzes and he looks down at it. “Ah. They’re finished. I’ll go and pick them up.”

He leaves and Vee busies herself with finishing off the salad and trying not to fret about her younger son. The almonds get tossed briskly and she composes a vinaigrette to go onto it at the last second, so that the spinach won’t get soggy. The lamb is nearly finished roasting, the potatoes soft on the inside and crispy on the outside: perfect.

They’re back five minutes later; she hears the car and then their voices as they walk toward the house. They’re talking heatedly, she realises, turning toward the door as Mycroft pulls it open.

Whatever they’re saying, it desists as they come indoors. “Mummy,” Sherlock says, coming over and kissing her cheek. His hands are gentle on her shoulders and she holds him at arms’ length and surveys him afterward. His brow is slightly creased, but otherwise he looks wonderful. There’s a glow to him that she’s never seen before.

“Hello Sherlock,” she says, with a smile. “How was the memory testing?”

“Fine,” Sherlock says. “We can talk about it at dinner, if you like.” He glances back toward John, and John comes forward. “You’ve met before, of course,” Sherlock says, sounding ever so slightly flustered, almost managing to hide it but not quite. “Mummy: John Watson. John, my mother. Vee.”

John bends forward and kisses her on the cheek, too, which is unexpected, his lips unwittingly landing precisely where Sherlock’s just did. “Mrs Holmes,” he says. “Thank you so much for having us for dinner, and for watching Rosie all afternoon. I hope she wasn’t too much trouble.”

Vee finds herself effaced by his very courtesy, which nearly never happens. Suddenly she can see his charm. “Of course not; she was no trouble at all,” she says, aware of Sherlock’s eyes on her. “We loved having her. Desmond in particular. And you can call me Vee, please. No need to stand on ceremony here.”

John smiles at her, his eyes warm, and she finds herself further disarmed. Oh yes, she thinks. He’s charming, indeed. And handsomer than she thought the last time he was here. Granted, that was over a year ago now. “Thanks,” John says. He glances around the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“John’s quite good in the kitchen,” Sherlock offers, and for some reason this makes John turn rather red and clear his throat, swallowing.

Vee looks back and forth between them, particularly at the mirth kindled in the corners of her son’s lips and thinks she knows what’s going on. “I think everything is underway, but thank you,” she says. She nods toward the sitting room. “Rosie’s in the sitting room with Dad, if you want to say hello.”

“Right, yes,” John says, still flushed. He glances at Sherlock. “I’ll just, er…”

“Go ahead,” Sherlock tells him. “I’ll be right there.”

As though they’re inseparable, Vee thinks. She bends to take the lamb out of the oven to rest, then takes off her oven mitts to search for the carving knife in one of the drawers. “So,” she says, straightening up and laying the knife on the counter. She’s never been one to beat around the bush. Sherlock meets her eye and she’s glad for his sake not to see him waver or flinch. “That seems to be going well. Ought I to congratulate you?”

Sherlock smiles. “It wouldn’t be amiss.”

She eyes him. “How long has it been, then?”

Sherlock puts his hands in his pockets. “Since it started? Six days now. I trust you won’t need a breakdown of the hours and minutes.”

“I trust you could give it to me if I did,” Vee says, but Sherlock’s smile only grows and he doesn’t deny it.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” he says, glancing at her through his eyelashes. “And it’s – I’ve never been happier in my life, Mother.”

This is the most emotional thing Sherlock has said to her since he was seven years old, since before Redbeard and Eurus and Victor Trevor, and Vee’s heart is suddenly in her throat. She swallows. “Then I’m glad for you,” she says, willing her voice to come out steadily. “I only hope he’s half good enough for you, after everything you’ve done for him.”

Sherlock’s mouth sets a little. “He is,” he says, just firmly enough to tell her that any sort of arguing this point is well beyond question. He lifts his chin slightly, not quite defiantly. “He loves me.”

Vee studies him, then smiles. “Well, he’d better!” she says. She reaches out and grasps him by the shoulders, then pulls him into a hug. She isn’t usually this affectionate with her children. (Perhaps that was a mistake. Who can ever know?)

Sherlock makes a startled sound, but returns the gesture after a moment. It’s a little stiff, but he hugs back for a moment, then extricates himself from her embrace. “I’ll just – go and say hello to Rosie,” he says, escaping the kitchen before she can put any more awkward questions to him.

Vee smiles, then sighs, prodding at a carrot with the carving fork. The lamb is ready. She follows Sherlock into the sitting room to call Desmond to come in and carve it. She finds them all there, Mycroft standing apart, observing Sherlock and John on the carpet with Rosie between them, Desmond bent forward on the sofa to watch, smiling indulgently.

***

They tell her about the memory testing, Sherlock retorting rather proudly to Mycroft that his mind palace is in perfect working order, thank you very much, and they both received lists of approximate dates upon which they were given TD-12.

“It was incredibly detailed,” John says, cutting a small potato in two. “It seems that all they do there is test for this kind of thing. The entire place is very specialised.”

Vee sees Sherlock look across to his brother. “I suppose that isn’t a coincidence, brother mine,” he says, the sarcasm thick. “Trying to make amends, are we?”

Mycroft has the grace to look slightly abashed. “Indeed,” he says to the butter. He ducks his head. “It’s been in operation since about five months ago.”

Sherlock pauses. “You diverted funds, called it something else,” he says, deducing the answer. “Stuck it out here in the country where it would go unnoticed.”

Mycroft gives him a tight smile. “Yes. And why not? I’m the one who introduced it to his own family, after all. This is my mess. I’m well aware of the fact.”

Desmond looks at his oldest son, concern on his face, but doesn’t say anything.

John clears his throat. “Well, it’s a great set-up you’ve organised, Mycroft,” he says, and Vee takes note of his graciousness. “The specialists you’ve found are top notch, and that lab is impressively well-equipped.”

This time Mycroft’s smile is small but genuine. “Thank you,” he says, addressing his plate this time.

Vee fixes her eyes on the man who has produced the version of her son she just witnessed in the kitchen before dinner. “They were really able to identify the precise times you were given the TD-12? There definitely were some, then?”

John nods, his face sober. He swallows his mouthful, reaches for his wine (a nice chardonnay Des picked up in town yesterday), sips, then says, “Yes, unfortunately. Three or four times in my case, all within the weeks following Mary’s death.”

Vee glances at Des, who looks her way, sharing a moment of nameless horror. “And you think… Eurus,” she says, the words coming reluctantly.

John makes an apologetic face. “It’s the only logical answer. We know she was out of Sherrinford at the time.”

Sherlock and Mycroft exchange a quick, unreadable look of their own. John notices, though and looks his questions at Sherlock. Sherlock looks at him, gathering his thoughts, or so it seems. “It’s the most logical possibility, but not the only one,” he says. “Though in my case, it seems fairly certain that it was definitely Eurus. In addition, all three of us were drugged twice while in Sherrinford, once when the chaos first broke out, then again when she had us relocated: you and I to Musgrave Hall, Mycroft to Eurus’ cell.”

John nods. “Right. But what do you mean, it’s not the only possibility?”

Mycroft clears his throat and dabs at his mouth with a serviette. “Without proof, there are always possibilities,” he says, a bit pedantically and obviously sidestepping the point, Vee thinks.

A rather dreadful possibility occurs to her, but as no one else has suggested it yet, she decides to keep it to herself.

“Anyway, the good news is that while we each have a few slightly corrupted memories, the overall consensus seems to be that there was no other long-term damage,” Sherlock says, helping himself to more of the salad.

John looks at him for a long moment, obviously aware that Sherlock has shied away from the other question, but decides not to pursue it. Not here, Vee thinks shrewdly. He’ll bring it up again in private. Watching them, it’s very clear to her that they are lovers. Mycroft was right, she thinks. It’s obvious. Every now and then, one or the other will drop his voice so that only the other can hear, leaning together in a way that suggests that there are no physical boundaries between them, that proximity is their natural default now. That they are actively not touching one another out of respect for propriety, that they would otherwise be considerably closer. What a marvel, Vee thinks, watching as John touches her son’s hand and asks him for the mint sauce. Sherlock leaves the fingers of his right hand where John’s are touching his and reaches for the sauce with his left hand instead. She sees the eye contact, John’s smile of thanks, the light in Sherlock’s eyes. It makes her chest ache to see it. If he hurts Sherlock or leaves him again… she quite understands Mycroft’s position now. She’s disarmed by John’s courtesy and charm, but still wary of him, wary of the position he’s in to bring Sherlock’s entire life crashing down around him.

She starts paying attention again when Mycroft raises the subject of the bones John found in the well as Musgrave Hall.

“Turns out they were the remains of a boy named Matthew Grant, who had gone missing about a month prior,” Sherlock is telling Desmond. “Molly estimated the time of death to have been about three months after the fire and our relocation.”

Vee looks across at Desmond. “I don’t remember a local boy going missing,” she says, frowning.

He nods, though. “It was in the papers. You probably don’t remember because we’d already moved. It caught my eye because it was from around Musgrave, that’s all.”

Mycroft looks at Sherlock for a long moment. “So there was no possible connection to Eurus,” he says, as though pressing a point home.

Sherlock’s brow creases slightly and he shakes his head in agreement. Some form of silent communication is going on between the three of them, Vee thinks, watching them. She decides not to ask. Some things are best left unsaid, in the end.

Later, when the dessert plates have been stacked and the coffee has been drunk, Vee tells Sherlock to take Rosie out to see the gardens, and Desmond offers to go with them. Mycroft disappears into the loo and John, as she intended, picks up the stack of plates and follows her into the kitchen with them.

“Where should I put these?” he asks.

Vee points to the counter. “Just there would be fine,” she says. She pauses, and John seems to cotton on to the idea that she’s about to take his measure, or ask him something difficult. His shoulders square in military rigidity, subconsciously bracing himself. She simultaneously sees the inherent appeal of this, too. “Look,” she says, not beating around the bush with him, either. “I’m very happy to see that you and Sherlock seem to have become an item at last.”

John’s mouth purses. “But?” he prompts. When she hesitates, he says, a bit shortly, “Come on, you can say it. I’ve suspected you had something to say to me since we arrived. I’d rather just have it out and be done with it.”

This irks Vee a little. “Last Christmas,” she says, her own voice going a little frosty in contrast to the fire in his, “you brought Mary Morstan here. The woman who shot my son in the heart. You brought her here knowing that, into my very house. Furthermore, you used that occasion – Christmas Day – to reconcile with her, leaving Sherlock behind for the woman who tried to kill him. If I have my reservations regarding your intentions where my son is concerned, you must understand why.”

John bows his head, accepting this. “Fair enough,” he says. “Look… I’ve regretted that decision pretty much since the day I made it. I made it strictly because of Rosie. It had very little to do with Mary. I love Sherlock, all right? I’ve loved him for a very long time, even if it took me ages to get there. And he loves me.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Vee says evenly, not backing down an inch. “He loves you so much that he would do anything for you. Absolutely anything. Since he’s met you, he’s jumped off a building, chased and dodged terrorists all alone for two years, been shot in the heart by the wife of the man he cared for, and was very nearly reduced to taking his own life in the very recent past. I’m aware that it’s not my place to ask, but I’m curious as to know what it is that you give him in return for all of that.”

John lifts his chin and squares his jaw. “I believe in him,” he says bluntly. “I’ve always believed in him, since the day we met, in a way that no one else ever had. As he’s believed in me. That’s what we do for one another. We make each other the best versions of ourselves, or at least we show each other the people we’d like to become, and I think we help each other become those men. When I met Sherlock, I was so impressed with his abilities. I thought that he must be sick of being told how clever or amazing he was, but when I said it, he was stunned. As though he’d never been given a compliment before. Where did that come from, hmm? In this family it seems like everything is a competition of intelligence and Sherlock has certainly grown up believing the narrative that he’s ‘the stupid one’. What he is, is nothing short of phenomenal. I’m not just talking about his intelligence quotient, either. I mean his emotional intelligence, his perceptiveness, his compassion. The things that don’t get measured in paper tests and all of that crap. Sherlock is almost shockingly compassionate, willing to give people second chances even when they’re well past deserving them. I’m aware that I’m one of those people. But he was willing to forgive Mary, too, even after she’d shot him. It was his suggestion that she come for dinner. And now, despite Eurus having literally terrorised us both for the past five years, he’s willing to reach out to her and start visiting, because it’s important to him that she not feel abandoned. Even after all that she’s done. So yes, you may be quite right in thinking that I don’t half deserve him. I know that. But he and I have agreed to leave that behind us, and that’s something I’m willing to do because he’s asked it of me, asked me to stop bringing up all of the reasons why I don’t deserve him. I do know that. I also know that I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve him, all right? I am never going to hurt him or leave him again. I love Sherlock, love him in a way that no one else has ever loved him before, and there is nothing and no one on this planet who is going to change that!”

By the time he finishes all this, he’s got quite loud, his fists balled at his sides, bristling visibly. Vee thinks of his implication that Sherlock’s own family never valued him properly, and knows that he’s right. This is the very thing she has been berating herself over lately. He’s perceptive – tremendously so, in fact. She blinks and recalibrates. “In that case… welcome to our family, John.”

To her surprise, John launches himself at her and hugs her fiercely. “Thank you,” he says as she hugs him back, startled but pleased.

At that moment, Mycroft walks into the kitchen, takes in their embrace with a quick lift of his brows, but there’s clearly something else on his mind. “Where’s Sherlock?” he asks abruptly, his phone in hand.

John lets go and dabs at his left eye, endeavouring to hide this from Mycroft. “Still outside, I think. Why?” he asks, turning now.

Mycroft ignores the question. “Come on.”

John looks at Vee and they both hurry after Mycroft, who is moving rather more quickly than usual. Sherlock, Rosie, and Desmond are in the back garden, Rosie pulling up fistfuls of grass and scattering them around herself. Sherlock looks up at once, his eyes going to John first, then to Mycroft. “What it is?” he asks, tense.

Mycroft presses something on the screen of his phone. “I pulled every string in the book to get this,” he informs them shortly. “But I finally have it: video surveillance from the Bahnhofstrasse branch of Crédit Suisse in Zurich the day after Mary died. Their surveillance only shows the client from the back of the head. I realise that this isn’t conclusive proof. However – ”

He holds the phone out so that John can see the image first, then shows it to Sherlock. John inhales sharply, and Vee looks at Sherlock. His eyes meet hers briefly before going to John’s, and in that instant she learns everything that she needs to know:

Mary Morstan is still alive.

Chapter Text

3

Rosie, thankfully, falls asleep on the train and stays that way for the duration of the trip back to London.

They got themselves out of the house as quickly as was decent, with Mycroft promising to send out an army of intelligence agents to look for Mary, as well as posting them around the house. All John wants to do is get themselves and Rosie back into the seeming safety of Baker Street and to stay there. He’s never been much of a hand holder, but he’s gripping Sherlock’s now, their fingers intertwined.

“Did you suspect?” John asks, once they’re finally on their own. There’s no one sitting near them, the Sunday evening train apparently not that popular. “Is that what you weren’t saying at dinner, about Eurus not having been the only possibility?”

Sherlock’s hesitation is enough. “I did wonder about the DVDs,” he admits. “How could she have known she was about to die? It never added up.”

“I wondered, myself,” John says, with a sigh. “Especially the one I got after all the business with Eurus was over. If it had got lost in the post or something – but she’d been dead for two months by that point.”

“I know,” Sherlock says. “I should have guessed the truth sooner. I didn’t want to see it. I don’t want to believe it now.”

“Me neither.” John looks away from the window to take in Sherlock’s face. “I didn’t and I still don’t. I want her to be safely dead and out of all of this for good.”

Sherlock holds his gaze. “I know,” he says again. “So do I.”

John feels another streak of recrimination. “You know,” he says, “lately I’ve sometimes got the feeling that we were being watched. I should have said so before.”

“Did you?” Sherlock, oddly, smiles at him. “So have I. I didn’t want to say anything because I had no proof and I didn’t want to alarm you.”

“Really?” John searches his eyes, then smiles back, just a little. “That’s – wow. Huh. Did you think it was Mary, though? I mean, I kept telling myself I was just feeling paranoid because of the kidnapping.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I didn’t think it in such concrete terms. But somehow, finding out – let’s just say that it’s less a surprise than it should have been. So Mary is Lucille Jenkins, whoever that is.”

“What a mess.” John thinks about that day at the Aquarium. “So she faked her death, then. Loaded herself up with fake blood packets and the rest of it.”

“So it would seem.” Sherlock rubs his thumb over the knuckle of John’s as if in silent apology for having done almost the same thing. John tightens his fingers a little in wordless reminder that they’ve moved on from that now.

“I guess I don’t have to feel guilty for not having felt worse,” John says. “All of that crap about having loved being Mary Watson and that. It was just another slice of bullshit, meant to make me feel eternally guilty for not having loved her more.”

Sherlock hesitates, then says, almost reluctantly, “It’s difficult to avoid coming to the same conclusion. To drive us to despair, you through guilt and drink, me through being willing to do anything, to the point of my own death, to compensate for not having been able to prevent hers.”

John looks at him for a long moment. “I didn’t help, by blaming you for it,” he says, feeling his gut twist. “I drove you to it as much as she did, by shutting you out. I’m sorry, Sherlock. I know I said it before, but since the past has been dragged up again, it needs saying again. I’m so sorry.”

Sherlock doesn’t tell him not to apologise this time. “It’s all right,” he says, and leans into John with his shoulder. “We’re past it now.”

John looks out the window. He thinks briefly of telling Sherlock about the small confrontation with his mother after dinner, then decides not to. It all ended well, despite his resurfacing misgivings about not deserving Sherlock. “I like your parents,” he says instead.

A small smile touches Sherlock’s lips. “Do you?” he asks. “They like you, too. I can tell.”

John squeezes his fingers again. “Your mother welcomed me to the family, after dinner.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen. “Did she! Well! Then she has accepted you permanently, I’m afraid. You’re just going to have to stay with me forever.”

John smiles at him, his heart trying to swell out of his chest in spite of his worry over Mary. “That was sort of the plan, yeah,” he says, and Sherlock kisses him, there on the train. John kisses back, losing himself in it and not caring a hoot for who might see them. No one’s looking, anyway. After, he says, “That was way too long between kisses. Let’s not go so long again in the future.”

“Agreed,” Sherlock says, his voice low and velvety, leaning his forehead against John’s. “Six hours. That’s disgraceful.”

John laughs. “I love you,” he says spontaneously, and Sherlock kisses him again.

***

Mycroft’s promised perimeter is already set up around the house when the taxi pulls up. Sherlock pays the driver and they get inside as quickly as possible. John lifts Rosie’s heavy sleeping form from her carrier and Sherlock follows him up to the top storey to help get her ready for bed. John glances around the room in a quick sweep for weaknesses. Rosie’s cot is against the wall closest to the door, as his bed is still occupying most of the space in the room. Sherlock has the same thought, going to the window and glancing outside, checking that it’s sealed firmly. Next he goes to the monitor and turns the receptor’s volume up all the way.

John gets Rosie’s nappy changed and redresses her in pyjamas in a practised routine. He thinks of how little she must mean to Mary, if Mary was more interested in faking her own death and running off, leaving them both behind for good, or so it seems.

Sherlock exhales deeply from where he’s leaning against the wall, watching John lay Rosie in the cot. “You realise that Mary must have known about the text affair, if she and Eurus were working together,” he says.

That stops John in his tracks. “Oh God,” he says, a bit stunned by the realisation. “You’re right. She must have known the entire time.” He looks down at Rosie, who is blinking sleepily. He touches her cheek, then pulls her blanket up over her, her bear tucked in beside her. “That’s the last piece of the puzzle. Of course. So she chose her own out, pulled this fake act of ‘heroism’ to punish me over the affair. I’d be willing to bet that Norbury was even in on it. She probably didn’t even fire a bullet. And on top of it, Mary will certainly remember that even in her so-called death, I couldn’t muster the words, couldn’t say that I loved her.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock says. “She knew that the marriage was falling apart and she wanted to punish you for your near-indiscretion, perhaps. She wouldn’t have even needed to see your phone, either: Eurus could have shown her the entire text conversation. Either way, it’s odd that she didn’t do something that would allow her to take Rosie with her.”

John agrees. “It is.” He glances at the window over his shoulder. “Do you really think that we are being watched? And if so – is it her?”

Sherlock comes over to him. “Let’s be realistic,” he says soberly. “I’ve felt it, too. I trust my own deductions, but when it comes to gut instinct, I trust yours almost more than anything. If you even suspect that it’s Mary, you know that it must be.”

John looks down at Rosie. “Let’s not talk about it in front of her,” he says. “Come on.” He takes Sherlock by the hand and leads him out of the room, leaving the door open behind him. They go downstairs and into the loo. It’s only a little after ten, but by wordless agreement they start getting ready for bed. John has the irrational feeling of wanting to cocoon himself in bed with Sherlock and stay there, Rosie only a short flight of stairs away, farthest from the doors, Mrs Hudson just downstairs. He goes into the bedroom and turns up the volume on the baby monitor on their side, too, just to be safe. “It sounds stupid, but I almost want to bring her downstairs with us,” he admits, going back into the loo.

Sherlock turns on the tap and starts shaving away the fine, dark stubble just beginning to show on his cheeks. “Then why don’t you?” he asks, looking at John through the mirror.

John shakes his head and rinses his own razor under the tap. “Because it doesn’t work like that,” he says. “Parenthood. You can’t go through it all keeping your kids under lock and key so that nothing can happen to them. First, that alone is a bad thing to have happen to them. Secondly, nothing can guarantee a child’s safety, and thirdly it’s about the parent or parents, too. We have to learn to let go. I don’t mean – I mean, I think there’s a balance. It’s always about balance, isn’t it? All parents get it wrong. Some more than others. Your parents got it wrong. My parents sure as hell got it wrong. And I’m getting it wrong with Rosie, too. But this, I think – yeah. I’ve just got to live with knowing that I’ll always be worried about her. I can’t give in and have her sleep in our bed with us or stifle our sex life by having her in the same room. It’s not healthy. For anyone.”

“Perhaps not,” Sherlock says, watching him in the mirror as they shave. “I didn’t mean on a full-time basis per se. I just mean, do what you need to do. I’ll understand.”

John smiles at him and rinses his blade again. “I know you will,” he says, and means it from the gut. “Nice touch, by the way, mentioning the kitchen like that, to your mother!”

Sherlock chuckles and wipes off his face with a wet flannel. “You were good in the kitchen. Phenomenal, in fact.” He comes to stand behind John, arms snaking about his middle, and presses his lips to John’s temple. “It was fun watching you turn that particular shed of red. I wasn’t aware that you could blush like that. It was incredibly charming.”

He’s smiling into John’s cheek and John can’t deny it; he recalls very well exactly how hot his face got. The memory of what they’d just done in the kitchen the day before, coiled around each other on the floor like commas (out of Rosie’s sight), his tongue up Sherlock’s arse as Sherlock sucked his cock, is enough to make him hard just in passing thought. It had finished with him pounding into Sherlock from behind, both of them on their hands and knees on the hard floor with only a bit of butter and his own saliva to ease the way, Sherlock slapping the floor with his palm and begging him to go harder – yeah, it was good, John thinks. Breakfast should always happen like that. “I’m getting hard just thinking about it,” he says, lifting his chin to shave through the foam there, the razor scraping against his skin.

“Mmm. I can see it,” Sherlock says, reaching down to cup the growing erection in John’s jeans. They haven’t even changed for bed yet, though Sherlock’s taken off his suit jacket.

“Careful,” John warns, though he’s smiling. “Don’t make me cut myself.”

Sherlock’s lips and tongue are on his earlobe, hot and divinely sensual. “Never,” he purrs, and John shivers, his cock pushing into Sherlock’s hand through his jeans. He hastily finishes his shave, then takes Sherlock’s flannel and wipes it over his skin.

“How am I?” he asks, letting his voice drop as he presses his cheek against Sherlock’s. “Smooth enough to rub against your cock?”

Sherlock makes a deep sound of interest at this. “Come to bed,” he says, a bit breathlessly.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.” It’s only half a protest and they both know it.

“Later,” Sherlock says vaguely, and John lets himself be pulled into the bedroom, slapping at the light switch to shut it off on their way out.

They strip and then Sherlock tugs him down onto himself, their bodies and mouths fitting together so instinctively and naturally that it feels like they’ve been doing this for years already, John thinks, biting at Sherlock’s mouth, his tongue stroking against Sherlock’s, his hips pressing forward so that their cocks slide together, swelling and twitching against each other’s. It’s magic, this, John thinks, Sherlock’s large hands gripping his arse and rubbing it more deeply, more wantonly than anyone else he’s ever been with, and he loves it with absolutely no filters whatsoever. He loves Sherlock that way, full stop: unbounded, unlimited, and unhindered by anything or anyone now, not even himself. He should say it again, he thinks. He just did on the train, but he never gets tired of seeing the way Sherlock reacts to hearing it. He lifts his face. “I love you,” he says, and is rewarded by Sherlock’s eyes becoming intensely emotional, his mouth going small as his lips press together for just a moment.

“I love you,” he says, the accent on the last word very slight.

John smiles at him and lets the smile turn predatory. “Not half as much as you’re about to,” says, and slips down Sherlock’s body before he can respond. He takes Sherlock’s cock into his mouth all at once, as much of it as he can fit, and Sherlock jerks and moans at the same time. His fingers find their way into John’s hair and splay out over his skull, cradling it, and the touch sends trickles of arousal skating down John’s spine and curling into his balls.

“Not – possible,” Sherlock pants, by which John gathers that Sherlock means to say that it wouldn’t be possible to love him any more just because John’s got his cock in his mouth, but it doesn’t matter. John wants him to be able to tangibly feel how loved he is, in ways that he can measure and quantify with every lick and stroke of John’s lips and tongue and hands, in the precise amount of pressure applied to his skin – strong enough to stimulate, never hard enough to hurt – and know it in his very bones as well as his heart and brain.

John turns his face to suck Sherlock’s balls into his mouth, one at a time, keeping a steady stroke going on his cock. He presses the flat of his tongue into Sherlock’s perineum and works at it, and Sherlock’s legs move restlessly against the sheets, suddenly agitated, and he’s moaning. John licks at the leaking head of Sherlock’s cock, then asks, “What is it? What do you need?”

“You – in me – ” Sherlock is growing incoherent. “Your fingers – ”

John makes a sound of decided agreement and holds out his hand for the lube he already knows Sherlock will have made sure was at the ready. He’s right: the tube is pushed into his hand at once, Sherlock’s long fingers closing John’s hand around it for a second, squeezing, and John’s entire being warms at this small thing. He gets his fingers slicked up and fits two of them at once into Sherlock, letting him gasp and then adjust, his body opening gradually, hot around John’s fingers. John kisses the head of Sherlock’s cock with a lot of tongue and murmurs, “Do you want me to finish you like this?” He goes on licking down the length of Sherlock’s incredibly hard cock, listening for an answer. The alternative, of course, would be Sherlock wanting to wait until John is inside him, but John’s offer is entirely sincere.

Sherlock’s cock twitches at the mere suggestion, but he seems to be stuck in indecision. “I – don’t – I – ”

John lifts his mouth off, looking up at him intently. He takes Sherlock’s hand and links their fingers together. “You can say yes,” he says gently. “Besides, your refractory period is astonishingly quick. We can still do that after, if you want to. Why don’t you just – enjoy this? Let me make you feel good. I really want to.”

Sherlock holds his eye for a second, then ducks his chin in a quick jerk, acceding.

John loses no time after that. He dedicates himself enthusiastically to the task of sucking Sherlock right down his throat while giving him the fingering of a lifetime. Sherlock’s entire body begins to shake, his voice rising and rising, legs spasming and squeezing around John’s back and shoulders to push himself upward into John’s mouth. John rubs his middle finger a little against the spongy protrusion of Sherlock’s prostate and takes his cock all the way down his throat and Sherlock’s breath suspends as he comes, fingers clenching in the hand still locked to John’s, the other unwittingly gripping John’s hair as his hips pump upward in the throes of his climax, spurting down John’s throat so that he doesn’t even taste it. He can feel Sherlock’s orgasm so vividly that it could almost be his own, his pulse throbbing in his cock where it’s leaking its hunger for Sherlock against the sheets.

When the spasm passes, Sherlock flops heavily back down onto the bed, pulling himself with care from John’s lips and reaching down to touch the corner of John’s mouth where it’s wet. John takes Sherlock’s hand and presses a kiss into his palm, then crawls back up Sherlock’s body to settle half-on, half-beside him, kissing his hot face as he comes down from the high. Eventually Sherlock recovers enough to pull John’s mouth to his, kissing him deeply and very thoroughly. “You’re – phenomenal,” he says after, still breathing hard. “That was – thank you.”

John shakes his head, looking at Sherlock with something rather like wonder. “Thank you for letting me,” he says, rubbing at Sherlock’s chest. “I loved doing it.”

Sherlock glances down and his brows lift. “So it would seem,” he says. He wraps a large, warm hand around John’s painfully hard cock and gives it a squeeze. “What shall we do with this, then? What do you want?”

“Anything,” John tells him, meaning it. “Anything you want.”

“I’m asking what you want,” Sherlock tells him firmly. “I want you to choose. Do you want to fuck me?”

The fawn-like delicacy of the question, of the precision of the k on his fuck is, ridiculously, enough to make John’s cock throb noticeably in Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock doesn’t use profanity often, but it’s oddly eloquent whenever he does and John privately loves it. “Only if you want to,” he says, searching Sherlock’s eyes. “We don’t have to do that. We could even try it the other way, if you want. I meant it when I said it the other day.”

Sherlock makes a small sound of negation. “I’m not – I don’t mean to complicate matters; I’m merely asking if I should take care of this now, or whether you want to wait until I’ve rallied so that you can – do that. Not that you have to wait, of course, but I know you’ll insist.”

John smiles at him. “Of course I will.” Sherlock’s hand is still on him and he realises he’s got to make a decision. Quick as Sherlock’s body is, it will still take him a good fifteen minutes to get fully hard again. Fifteen minutes: he considers. “Well – if you want to,” he begins, and Sherlock makes a low, very contented sound, almost like the purring of some large feline species, and begins to stroke him.

He bends forward and puts his mouth to John’s chest, laving his tongue over John’s peaked nipples, ducking in to suck at the sensitive places he’s already committed to memory on John’s neck. He’s over John, his larger form covering him more fully than any woman John’s ever been with, and he perversely loves it, which he never expected. His mouth is magic, John thinks, tipping his head back to pant open-mouthed as Sherlock works his way down his chest and belly, and knowing where he’s going makes the suspense heighten his arousal still more. At this rate, he’s going to come the instant Sherlock’s tongue touches his cock, and he’d rather it lasted a little longer than that, so he breathes and attempts to calm himself a little. It’s rather impossible, though: Sherlock is just so good at this, wholly inexperienced – though he’s gaining it quickly, at least twice per day so far – but so good at reading John’s every minute response, either physical or vocal.

He can hear himself panting, his fingers buried in Sherlock’s curls, not pushing, just gripping the softness of his hair, needing to touch him in some way. Sherlock is sprawled between his thighs and John loves the feel of having him there, seeing him there. Sherlock breathes on his cock, his breath hot, then starts kissing it from the base, soft kisses with his lips only, each one making John’s sensitive flesh twitch and harden still further. He kisses his way up the length of John’s cock, kisses the fluid welling up from his slit, then rubs his lips into it, and John groans. He’s sweating desire out his every pore, his cock seeking Sherlock’s mouth like a heat-seeking missile. Sherlock gets a hand around the base of him and holds him firmly, then finally opens his mouth and puts his lips and tongue around the head of John all at once. John groans again, louder, letting go of Sherlock’s hair to cover his face with his hand. It feels so good that it’s almost sharply painful. It’s a good thing Sherlock is holding him that tightly or else he’d have blown his entire load right then and there – which Sherlock has indubitably figured out. Sherlock keeps going, alternating between licking gently but firmly, his tongue curling around John like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, and short bouts of hard sucking, his mouth and tongue strong. John is making a sound that could definitely be classified as whimpering, his voice high and needy and strained.

Just when he’s beginning to think that he can’t possibly hold out any longer, about to start actively begging to be allowed to come, Sherlock lifts his face. His eyes are dark with arousal of his own and he sits up on his knees, giving John an eyeful of his full-blown erection. (Has it already been fifteen minutes? It doesn’t matter.) Sherlock’s face looks as wrecked with arousal as John is sure his own must be and he’s scrambling forward. “Let’s – can we try it like – ”

John gets it immediately; Sherlock is straddling him and already reaching back for his cock. He’s past the point of coherent words but nods frantically, making a desperate sound of affirmation, and Sherlock doesn’t wait a second longer. He positions himself, a hand on John’s cock, then sinks down onto him in one fluid motion, eased by the lubricant still inside him from John’s fingers, before, and the wetness of John’s cock. It feels so good that John shouts out despite himself and for a second he’s afraid he’s actually coming already, but a moment or two later he realises that he’s rallying, still harder than steel inside Sherlock’s body. They’ve never done it like this before, with Sherlock riding him, and it’s incredibly hot. He bends his knees to give Sherlock a bit of support and Sherlock finds his hands and links their fingers together. His eyes are heavy-lidded with undisguised, wanton desire, his full lower lip open as he pants, letting himself adjust to having John within him.

“You’re so hard,” he breathes, and John moans, unable to respond vocally. Anything Sherlock says right now will only stimulate him even more. Sherlock’s cock is obscenely hard, too, flushed dark against the pale skin of his stomach, pointing upward like a flagstaff. He starts moving carefully, lifting a little and then rocking down onto John. John hears the sound he makes and his hips judder upward of their own volition, needing fiercely, and Sherlock breathes out a sound of encouragement. It’s all breath and moaning after that, Sherlock eventually leaning back to brace himself on John’s thighs, their bodies slapping together, and at that angle, Sherlock is even more ridiculously attractive than he was before. It’s like fucking a living statue of one of the Greek gods, John thinks ridiculously, as he slams into Sherlock from below, gripping him by the hips now, only a considerably better-endowed god than most. Sherlock’s cock is hard as a rod, almost scarlet now, and it bobs as John fucks him from below, Sherlock’s gorgeous lower lip bitten and red. The pleasure is all over John, engulfing him like the ocean. He’s gulping for air and pounding into the hot tightness of Sherlock’s body over and over and over again, unable to stop at this point.

Sherlock takes himself in hand and strokes all of four times, hard and so fast it’s as though his fist is spasming and then his head falls back and he comes, the spurt arcing up between them and landing on John’s chest, and its liquid heat – and Sherlock’s body clenching around him in his climax pushes him hard over the edge. He’s suspended, sailing through the air, his body streaming light, flooding Sherlock’s body with wet heat, his skin prickling all over. He isn’t breathing, his mouth open, eyes closed as the glory of it grips him like a storm thundering through his frame.

When he comes to himself, Sherlock is draped heavily over him like a boneless cat, both their chests heaving. He’s got one hand the curls at the back of Sherlock’s neck and the other is cradling Sherlock’s arse cheek. Their spent cocks are touching and Sherlock’s mouth is in his neck, panting. “Oh my God,” John gets out. “I think I passed out for a second there.”

“I’m far too dazed to even know,” Sherlock manages, his lips on John’s skin. “I think that was our best yet.”

“Agreed!” John’s response is unrestrainedly hearty. “God, Sherlock – the blow job alone, but then after – holy shit!”

Sherlock raises his face and smiles down at him. “I love you,” he says, saying it first this time, and puts his mouth on John’s before John can respond. They kiss and kiss, spent but still needing this. Always, John thinks, half-unconscious already as their tongues and lips stroke each other’s, so close to each other that they’re very nearly one sole body now. One sole being. Eventually, Sherlock tugs the blankets up and over them and doesn’t even get off him as they fall asleep.

The last sound John registers is the regular, even sound of Rosie’s breathing on the baby monitor, the volume still turned up high.

***

John wakes smiling, Sherlock’s hair in his face. He’s asleep, still draped over John like a blanket and snoring lightly, to John’s amusement. He’s never heard Sherlock snore before. He listens. Rosie is still sleeping, her breathing unchanged. He turns his head to look at the clock on the night stand but Sherlock’s head is blocking his view.

The movement causes Sherlock to stir, lifting his face and smacking his mouth sleepily. He looks down at John and smiles, then drops his head to kiss him once before rolling off him at last and stretching luxuriously. John does the same, then turns on his side to simultaneously pull Sherlock back into his arms, face-to-face, while also glancing over him to see the time. It’s still early, a few minutes before eight. He settles back onto the pillows and puts his hand on the side of Sherlock’s face. “Morning,” Sherlock says, before he can.

“Morning,” John responds, smiling at him. “Sleep well?”

“Mmm. Deeply,” Sherlock says. He yawns. “So what time is it?”

Of course he didn’t miss that, John thinks. “About eight. I’d say we fell asleep around eleven, so we’re well-rested.”

“We earned it.” Sherlock yawns again and shifts even closer to John, as though hungry for every bit of proximity he can get. “Rosie’s still asleep. That’s nice.”

“It really is.” John combs his fingers through Sherlock’s curls. “Don’t ever cut your hair short. I love it.”

Sherlock’s eyes are closed. “But you’d still love me if I did, I presume.”

“Probably.” John puts his lips to Sherlock’s forehead. “Yeah. I think so.”

“You’d better.” Sherlock’s arm is curled around John’s back, holding him close, one leg wrapped around John’s, too.

“I’d no idea how affectionate you’d turn out to be, you know,” John murmurs, his own eyes closing. “It’s marvellous. I love it.”

Sherlock makes a contented sound. “Good.”

John lets himself drift, wondering if perhaps they are going to go back to sleep, after all. It’s Monday morning but he still hasn’t gone back to the clinic. They’ve got nothing on except, of course, for the fact that Mary is apparently on the loose somewhere.

Suddenly Sherlock stiffens a little. “What was that?” he asks, opening his eyes.

John opens his, too. He didn’t hear anything. “What was what?”

“Rosie. On the monitor. That little sound she made.” Sherlock attempts to mimic it, rather accurately. “That.”

“It’s just a sound she makes,” John reassures him. “It’s completely normal.”

“Yes, but I thought she made the same sound four minutes ago,” Sherlock says. His voice is tight.

John frowns a little. “It’s a perfectly normal sound,” he begins, trying to convince Sherlock, but Sherlock interrupts him.

“No: I mean the exact same sound,” he says. “I’m almost positive.”

John is still frowning. “Well – maybe she just does it more often than I thought?” he tries.

Sherlock shakes his head minutely. “We have to listen.” He twists around to look at the clock, watching it, then sits up, swinging his feet down to the floor. John, concerned now, moves to the edge of the bed to sit beside him in tense silence as they both listen. John is just starting to wonder if there isn’t rather a lot of static coming over the speaker in spite of the fact that they turned the volume all the way up on both monitors when the sound comes again. Sherlock lifts a hand and looks at him, pointing at the monitor. “That’s it,” he says. “I’m not positive but I’m certain that’s the exact same sound.”

John’s heart turns to ice and drops into his stomach. “What are you saying?”

Sherlock looks at him but doesn’t answer. They get up and move hastily to grab at dressing gowns from the hooks on the back of the bedroom door, tying them shut even as they move into the corridor and up the stairs.

John calls Rosie’s name, but of course she doesn’t answer. He’s running up the stairs now and when he gets to the bedroom he stops short and lets out a cry of horror.

The window is open precisely one centimetre, not enough to be visible to the surveillance team guarding from the street below, but immediately obvious to him. The cot is empty. On the wall above it is a black and white Polaroid photograph of him and Sherlock from last night, their fingers linked as Sherlock rode him, their naked forms shown in clear-cut detail. And on the wall above the cot spray-painted in neon orange with an arrow pointing downward, are the words:

MISS HER??

***

Sherlock and Mycroft are shouting at each other in the sitting room, Sherlock shouting accusations and Mycroft glaring and throwing rebuttals back at Sherlock. The photograph has been taken down and filed away in an evidence bag and John has little doubt that it will be widely circulated before long. It doesn’t matter. Mycroft is using it as an argument in favour of their negligence and at the moment, John feels prepared to accept this blame entirely. Except that it’s not his fault. He knows that.

He’s ignoring the cup of tea Mrs Hudson made for him before slipping away, giving him a wide berth. John had a brief moment of wondering if the universe was punishing him for his happiness, but has actually managed to remember and apply a piece of Ella’s advice for once, remembering her telling him that it doesn’t work that way and that life has little to do with merit and who deserves what.

The breathing they were listening to was a recording, a four-minute loop played over and over again. No one has managed to say yet when Mary entered the bedroom through the window, recorded her daughter sleeping for four minutes, then replaced her with a laptop playing it on a continuous loop next to the monitor, accounting for the extra static. She must have been there already when they went to bed, John thinks numbly, or have arrived only a little bit after. Her photograph of them is a clear accusation on two counts, of him being with Sherlock, and maybe also of him being with Sherlock when possibly he should have been watching Rosie, though he still stands by what he told Sherlock about not keeping your children glued to you at all times. The bottom line is, however, that she has Rosie. What sort of monster kidnaps her own child? On top of that, thanks to her duping them with the recording, has a solid nine-hour lead on them. She could be anywhere by now.

Sherlock comes back to him then, his face tense. “They’re looking everywhere,” he says, as though John couldn’t hear everything that was just discussed in the sitting room. Though of course, he may have gleaned that John is too shocked and upset to have taken any of it on board. “They’ve got alerts on at every airport, train station, bus station, car rental, you name it. Mycroft has also demanded to be alerted of any women flying alone with a one-year-old within the past ten hours, as well as women flying with someone else and a one-year-old. They have Rosie’s picture, one I took of her the other day. We’ll find her, John.”

John shakes his head, numb. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I let my own daughter get kidnapped twice in the space of two weeks.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sherlock says urgently. “Listen to me, John: even if we had stayed up in her room all night, that could have meant neither of us seeing the light of day again. If she’d discovered us there, in her path, asleep and probably nude – my brother thinks we certainly would have been shot.”

John feels nauseated. “That monster has my child,” he says aloud, his head in his hands, elbows resting on the table. “And now I’m certain that it was she who was drugging me after her so-called death. Fucking with my mind, erasing my memories… you know, I was seeing her sometimes, and now I wonder if I wasn’t actually seeing her, if she wasn’t coming around and then drugging me so that later I would think I was hallucinating.”

Sherlock pulls out the chair at the end of the table and sits down kitty-corner to him. “You’re probably right, I’m afraid. That was my initial thought yesterday, but we didn’t know that Mary was definitely still living.”

“Someone who does stuff like that – who was angry before because I was texting someone, and now has conclusive proof that I’m absolutely with someone else now, has my child. I have no leverage here, nothing but fear for Rosie’s safety. I mean, think about it, Sherlock: she obviously doesn’t care about Rosie that much or she never would have run off and left her behind like that. The way she did after you warned her about Ajay.”

He looks at Sherlock and Sherlock nods, wincing. “I’m aware,” he says. “I’m – painfully aware that she could be using Rosie as little more than a means to hurt you.”

John clenches his jaw. “I want her dead!” he shouts suddenly, pounding his fist against the table, which makes his untouched teacup jump in its saucer.

One of the agents standing near Mycroft in the sitting room looks at them. Sherlock, his back to them, ignores this and reaches out to put his hand on John’s wrist. “I know,” he says, his voice going dangerously quiet. “I think that this may be… necessary.”

John raises his eyes to Sherlock’s, full of rage. “I want to be the one to do it,” he says, his voice low and tense. “When we find her, once Rosie’s safe, I want her dead. If I can’t take the shot for some reason, then you have to. No prison time. No deportation. Just – gone.”

Sherlock doesn’t waver. “Yes,” he says, and it’s a vow. “If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do, John. You have my word.”

John holds his gaze for a long time, then drops his chin in a quick, terse nod. “She didn’t even take Rosie’s bear,” he says dully, the fire fading back into a persistent ache of angst.

Sherlock’s jaw tightens. “I know,” he says. “We’ll find her, John. We’ll get her back.”

***

Vee is angry and restless, pacing from one part of the house or garden to another, cleaning obsessively, reorganising, tackling projects she hasn’t touched for years: anything to keep her hands occupied, because her mind won’t stop spinning. The Morstan woman is alive after all. The monster who shot her son is free as a bird. Mycroft, she knows, is doing everything in his not-inconsiderable power to have the woman found, but she’s sick with both worry and fury that it won’t be in time to stop her from whatever she has planned. He called two hours ago to tell her that Rosie was taken, that Mary must have been lurking somewhere nearby even before his perimeter was put in place, likely moving across the rooftops. His people had set motion sensors around the two doors (the front door on Baker Street and Mrs Hudson’s kitchen door, leading into the alley) but not the windows. There’s nothing to stop this woman from just doing whatever she wants with and to Vee’s family.

She’s been filled in about the unholy trio of Eurus, Moriarty, and Mary, and doesn’t know which of them she considers the most dangerous. Eurus was the brains, of course, and her damaged spirit has motivated her in genuinely terrifying ways to mastermind the worst things she could think of to punish her brothers for what they either did or did not do for her. She’s mentally ill, Vee reminds herself with pain, thrusting a spade into the semi-frozen earth of the garden. She can’t be blamed, no matter how much Vee wants to. But now Eurus has been made to subside, withdrawn into a silence from which the Sherrinford doctors have speculated she will never return. Her days of causing trouble are over, thanks be. Jim Moriarty is dead. He made Sherlock throw himself from a nine-storey building and all but banished him from England for two years, enduring God only knows what in that time – Sherlock’s never spoken willingly of it and Mycroft has warned her against asking, though he also admitted that he doesn’t know the full story, himself – only to come back and find the third member of this little knot of terrorists planted right there in his own life, engaged to be married to his beloved John. She’s already put a bullet in his heart, got him to shoot the man who was blackmailing her, resulting in his very-near suicide mission to Serbia, then falsified her own death, causing no end of pain and misery to both Sherlock and John, and now this: she’s taken the child. A person like that should never be anywhere near children; that much is certain.

Desmond could hardly believe it when she told him that Mary was the one who shot Sherlock, a few days after Mycroft told her the full story. “She seemed so charming,” he’d said, looking troubled.

“Oh, I know she charmed you,” Vee had retorted. “You’ve always had a soft spot for a pretty face.”

He’d shaken his head, not minding her venting. “It wasn’t that she was pretty. She wasn’t bad, mind… I just mean that: she was charming. I never would have thought it of her.”

Vee had relented then, feeling a bit badly for taking out her wrath on him. She’d patted his arm. “I never thought it, either, my love.” And she hadn’t. Mary must have charmed her, too, loath as she is to admit it to herself.

She bends down to dump out the bucket of compost and works it into the earth. Desmond will scold her (gently) for doing too much, but he’s agitated about the news, himself, and has buried himself in the library at the back of the house. It’s much smaller than the one they had at Musgrave Hall. Later, when they could bear it, they’d gone back and recovered as many of the books as they could, the ones that had survived the fire. As she puts her sturdy shoe to the spade, Vee thinks fiercely that if only there was something she could do about Mary, something concrete. She’s old and hardly able to dash off into the action, but she feels so useless nonetheless. Suddenly it hits her and she stops her digging: she’s not a soldier, for God’s sake: she’s a thinker! For all that she’s castigated herself over having put too much value on pure rationality with the boys, now would be a good time to put her brain to real use.

She leaves the spade where it is, walks over to the back fence closing off their property, and looks out over the hills. What does she know about Mary Morstan? Where would a woman like her go now? She’s clever: that much has to be given for starters. She’ll know that Mycroft would have had all points of egress posted and back-checked after her flight. Perhaps she’s lying low, then, hiding out somewhere and waiting until they give up and the security slackens off. Yes. That makes sense. Why come back for the child now? Vee thinks hard. The woman faked her own death three months ago, leaving her husband and one-year-old child behind. Vee has no idea when John started loving Sherlock, but the strength of love he displayed just yesterday couldn’t have started overnight. There was always something there, then. Did Mary know, or suspect? If so, perhaps these are not actions made out of cold, logical thought: perhaps this is vengeance. Mary shot Sherlock. Vee still does not know why, but Sherlock was the best man at Mary’s wedding one month prior. Why would she have shot him? Was it over John? It seems that the games run deeper than she ever realised. Either way, it seems certain that Mary is not above operating out of selfish personal desire; she has seemingly always prioritised herself first. Then why return for the child? There are too many unknown factors, unknown to Vee, at any rate. Nevertheless, Mary has returned and seized her child. To punish John? To punish John and Sherlock both? Did she find out that their relationship had started? Is that what triggered this action now, after three months? Think, Vee orders herself, staring unseeingly across the half-frozen fields.

She has the child. Rosie. What next? She cannot flee the country yet, and England is too small: Mycroft’s influence is too pervasive, Sherlock is too perceptive, and John’s fury will be without limit. She’ll have to leave. Where will she go? No one place, Vee decides. She’ll have to keep on the move. But she’s got a one-year-old infant with her. Babies aren’t quiet. Babies don’t fit with stealth and secrecy. She will cry and miss John. Vee frowns, wondering if Mary will drug the child to keep her quiet.

Suddenly the words in her head fit together in a new way: Mary. The baby. Missing John. Drugs.

Vee leans on the fence, swaying. Good God, she thinks. TD-12. Mary will try to ensure that Rosie forgets John altogether.

She’ll be coming here, then.

Somehow she pushes herself off the fence and makes for the house, walking at first, then breaking into a run.

***

Sherlock’s mother was right.

As the helicopters circle the little clinic, Sherlock points at the infrared scan that’s just come up on the screen. “There!” he says. “Two heat signatures, one very small.”

John’s heart is in his throat. “That’s her! That’s Rosie!” He ignores Mycroft snapping out orders over his headset, piloting the helicopter himself. John is actually mildly impressed by this, but isn’t about to say so. He’s sick with worry that Vee’s theory about Mary giving Rosie TD-12 in order to forget him is correct, that it may be too late. That she won’t even know who he is anymore.

As though he can hear John’s thoughts directly, Sherlock looks at him, his face betraying how worried he is, too, but his voice is firm. “Hang on, John. We’re nearly there.”

John can’t manage speech at the moment, so he nods once to show he heard, his jaw set. The helicopter lands bumpily on the grass directly in front of the clinic.

“Mary Watson, come out with your hands up!” Mycroft shouts over the megaphone. “You’re surrounded! Leave the child and exit the clinic with your hands above your head!”

Sherlock opens the door and John follows him out, joining the black-clad agents kneeling with their weapons drawn all around the small building. It’s a single storey, perhaps eight rooms in total with a modest lab in the centre. John’s got his Sig in hand and sees that Sherlock has his Browning drawn, too. John watches the door.

It opens after a moment or two, slowly, and then Mary walks out. She’s got Rosie in front of her like a shield, holding her with her left arm. In her right hand is a hypothermic needle, held to Rosie’s shoulder. Her eyes find John’s and she raises her eyebrows in pointed defiance. “Don’t you dare shoot, or I’ll inject her!” Mary calls to the assembled agents.

They don’t move. “Stand down!” John barks at them, moving forward. “Mary, for God’s sake! Don’t!”

Rosie hears his voice and tries to turn her head to see him, but Mary takes her by the head and holds it in place, her grip like steel. “No no, darling, just look at me. There’s nothing to see over there.” Her eyes are on John’s the entire time. “That’s close enough,” she says, her voice hard and colder than ice.

John is still twenty metres away. He inhales carefully. “Give her to me,” he says, his voice measured. He’s still got his gun in hand but lowers it. “Give me my daughter.”

“She’s not yours,” Mary informs him coolly. “She’s David’s and mine. You have no right to her.”

John gives her a disbelieving look. “What?”

Mary nods toward his jacket pocket. “I’ve sent you the file with the results. I’ve known since she was six months old. She’s not your daughter, and you are never going to see her again.”

John gestures to the ring of agents surrounding the clinic, the three helicopters. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve been caught, Mary,” he says, wondering if she’s entirely sane. “The game is over.”

“No, it isn’t.” Mary gives him a smile full of sharp edges. “It’s only just beginning. You cheated on me. If you think I’m the sort who just takes that sort of thing lying down, you’ve got another thing coming. Have you forgotten how Rosie was just kidnapped two weeks ago? Who do think was really behind that, hmm? Is there something wrong with your memory, maybe?”

John feels the anger kindling in the pit of his stomach. “There is nothing wrong with my memory, in spite of what you’ve done to me,” he spits. “Nice, that – showing up and trying to make me think I was hallucinating seeing you, talking to you. You were trying to make me think I was completely losing it, and driving Sherlock toward his own destruction. I don’t even care whether or not Rosie is biologically mine. She’s my daughter. I’m not letting a psychopath like you anywhere near her!”

“John,” Mary says, in that tone of voice that suggests that she thinks he’s a complete dimwit, “you didn’t answer the question, or let me finish. Who do you think inspired the lunatic from East Finchley? Rupert Hidgens? There are dozens more out there, only the difference is that if they know I’m dead, they won’t just take Rosie – they’ll kill her.”

From just over John’s shoulder, Sherlock speaks for the first time. “You would really do that?” He’s cold, colder than John’s ever heard him. “You’d have your own infant daughter assassinated?”

Mary narrows her eyes at Sherlock and for the first time, John sees plainly how much she really hates him. “I would rather see her dead than with the two of you!” she hisses. “I can promise you that: as long as she’s with you, she will never be safe! Remember Jim and the snipers, Sherlock? Same principle, and you can thank your sister for that. You’ll never know how many are out there or whether you’ve caught them all. You couldn’t possibly. So here’s how this is going to work: you’re going to call off the chase and I’m going to walk out of here with my daughter. She’ll be perfectly happy, don’t worry. If you could be made to forget your sister’s entire existence, Rosie can certainly be made to forget the man who thought she was her father.” She looks at Sherlock, then John. “Agreed?”

John shakes his head. “Absolutely not,” he says flatly. “Drop the needle. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Like hell I’m not.” Mary raises the needle again. “Of course, it’s more effective when you hit a vein directly, but it absorbs through vascular injection just fine.” She looks at Sherlock. “Of course, it should have killed you, given what you were on, but I should have known it would only make you more manic.” She looks at Rosie. “But we’re about to forget all of that, aren’t we?” she coos, and Rosie makes an uneasy sound.

Sherlock has moved closer to him. “If you’re going to take that shot, take it now,” he says urgently. “She’s going to do it, John!”

“Mary, please!” John is frantic. “Don’t do this!”

Mary positions the needle, then looks at John as if daring him. “You never loved me in the first place,” she says, eyes narrowed. “It was only ever Sherlock. Admit it.”

Arguing the finer points of it hardly matters now. Mary’s thumb is positioned over the plunger. John gives in. “Yes,” he says simply. “It was.” There are only nanoseconds to spare before she damages Rosie forever. He lifts the Sig as if on automatic pilot. It’s an uncomfortably close shot, with Rosie blocking most of Mary’s vital organs, but there is a shot. He closes his right eye, and is thankful that his hands are completely steady. He has no qualms about this, not a single one. He pulls the trigger and shoots Mary in the forehead.

Sherlock is faster than light, or so it seems. Mary has only just hit the ground when Sherlock dives at her, catching Rosie before the impact comes. He says her name in relief, on his knees next to Mary.

John runs to them, dropping the smoking Sig, and is on his knees with his arms around them both in heartbeats. “Rosie. Oh my God, Rosie,” he says. He’s crying and doesn’t care, couldn’t stop it if there was a gun to his head. Sherlock puts her into his arms and John holds her to himself, rocking her. She’s still in her pyjamas and it’s cold outside, her skin cool to the touch. He tries to warm her, simultaneously looking frantically at the arm Mary was aiming for, checking for injection marks, but he doesn’t see any.

Sherlock takes off his scarf and winds it around Rosie, leaving her arms free, and John is so grateful that he leans forward and kisses Sherlock there in front of Mycroft and all the agents, both of them holding Rosie between them. After, Sherlock blinks away his own tears of relief and says, “You should get her into the helicopter, get her warm. I can deal with…” He nods toward Mary’s still form. “Unless you – need to – I don’t know. Do something. Say something.”

John looks over at Mary’s body. “Is she dead?” he asks bluntly.

“Yes.” Mycroft appears over Sherlock’s shoulder, his silhouette oddly like that of an avenging angel, John thinks bizarrely. He wonders in passing if Mycroft would appreciate the comparison. “Excellent shot, Doctor Watson.”

“It’s John, damn it,” John says, but lets Sherlock pull him up by the hand not clutching his d – but she’s not his daughter, is she? It doesn’t matter. Rosie. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “Yeah. I’ll take her back into the helicopter. Do whatever you want with Mary. Just make sure she’s really dead this time.”

He walks away, tears still blurring his vision, his gut churning. An agent opens the door of the helicopter for him and he climbs into its relative warmth. Inside, he takes off his jacket and puts it around Rosie, who is fretting and beginning to cry.

“You’re okay,” he tells her, the way he would when she’s hungry or crabby, though his throat is tight this time. “Thank God you’re okay, but you’re okay.” He searches her face. “You still know me, don’t you?” he asks softly, and Rosie bats at his face and makes a sound that might be agreement. He holds her to his chest, then digs out his phone to see if Mary really sent him something.

She did. It’s an email with an attachment from a clinic he’s heard of in London, and the results show that David Tidwell is indeed the father. It’s a 97.72% match, at any rate. John thinks of Mary’s nerve in setting all of this up to punish him for having texted Eurus for a couple of weeks when she already knew that he wasn’t even the father of what he’s always considered to be his own child. So: Rosie isn’t even his. That hurts, more than he’d ever thought it might.

The door opens again and Sherlock climbs in, shutting it behind him. “Mycroft is on his way,” he says. “They’re going to take us home. We’ll be flown to the same base, then we’ll be driven from there. Are you all right?”

John looks down at Rosie, who is beginning to settle down in his arms. He feels his eyes glassing over again at the very question, at the warmth of concern in Sherlock’s voice. “No,” he says, still looking down at Rosie.

Sherlock hesitates, then moves closer and puts his arms around both of them, his lips in John’s hair. He doesn’t ask for specifics or give John platitudes, just holds him. John closes his eyes and thinks that it’s the only thing he could possibly want right now.

***

The flat is quiet. They’ve eaten dinner, trying to ignore the way the entire house is surrounded by agents. Mycroft himself has set up camp in Mrs Hudson’s flat. Mrs Hudson has taken herself to stay with her sister until things are safer. John feels badly, but he and Sherlock agreed that they would rather fortify Baker Street than go to a safe house somewhere. They’ve banished the agents from their flat itself, but they’ve sealed off the third floor and moved Rosie’s cot and changing table into the master bedroom for now.

She’s in bed, exhausted after what was probably a sleepless twelve or so hours with Mary. John and Sherlock are sitting on the sofa, drinking whiskey, Sherlock’s arm around him. “I feel like we’re trapped in a nightmare,” John says after awhile, just to break the melancholy quiet.

Sherlock makes a sound of agreement, his voice low in his throat. “Yes. Plus, it all happened so quickly… the entire confrontation lasted less than ten minutes.”

John scowls and takes another long sip. “I wasn’t about to let her drug Rosie, for fuck’s sake.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Sherlock turns his head to put his lips to John’s temple. “I was impressed by your resolve. Are you… having any conflicted feelings about the way it all happened?”

John turns his face toward Sherlock, but not all the way. Somehow this is easier to talk about without making direct eye contact. “You mean, am I sorry that I shot my former wife in the head?”

“Something like that, yes.” Sherlock doesn’t rush him.

“No.” John says it flatly. “Not in the slightest. She would have literally rather had Rosie dead than happy and healthy with us. She didn’t even love Rosie. That’s not love. That’s just – a sick desire to possess someone.”

“Agreed,” Sherlock says, pulling away a little to look at him. “Rather the way she was with you, in fact.” When John turns to look at him now, slightly astonished by this, Sherlock clarifies. “She didn’t care whether or not you were happy. She didn’t care about letting you make your own, informed choice about her. She would have killed me and never told you that it was she who had done it, regardless of its effect on you.”

“True.” John scowls again and passes his glass to Sherlock for a refill. “Would you?”

“Of course.” Sherlock retracts his arm momentarily to refill both their glasses. “I feel like we both deserve to get comfortably drunk tonight, considering. Plus we’ll never be safer than we are now. We’re literally surrounded on all sides, with all the windows temporarily boarded up, there are agents below us, out in the corridor, and on the roof. Rosie is in the bedroom. And besides, you did just kill your wife today.”

“She wasn’t a very good wife, though,” John says, quipping from their first crime scene, and Sherlock snorts a laugh through his nose.

“We shouldn’t laugh at that,” he says seriously. “Nothing that’s happened is funny in any way.”

“No,” John agrees. “But sometimes the levity keeps us sane, I think.” He sighs. “God, Sherlock, what she’s done to us! The three of them have had our life hijacked for years now. It’s one thing to know that our own memories were tampered with, but what she might have done to Rosie? It makes me feel sick.”

“I know,” Sherlock says soberly. He lifts his glass to John’s and clinks them together. “So just for tonight, let’s try to forget it just for a little while. On purpose, on our own terms, this time. Not permanently. I just mean – let’s distract ourselves the best we can. Tomorrow will be the day to deal with this fully. Tonight we can let go a little.”

His arm is around John’s shoulders again, his body warm all along John’s left side where they’re touching. He turns his face and looks into Sherlock’s. “How were you planning to distract me?” he asks, letting his eyes drop to Sherlock’s mouth. He could say aloud that Sherlock is entirely right, that tomorrow they’ll have to figure out what the hell to do about Mary’s statement that she left dozens of kidnappers and/or assassins behind to target Rosie. Not tonight, though. And he doesn’t need to say it, anyway. Sherlock already knows.

Sherlock looks into his eyes and smiles. “Well, an idea had occurred,” he says, almost demurely. “But I also thought that perhaps you might not be in the mood…”

John feels a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth despite himself, in spite of everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. Out of the corner of his eye he can see that they’ve already drunk almost half the bottle of whiskey. The sitting room windows are boarded up, too. “With the agents out in the corridor?” he asks, his eyebrows rising. “That’s a bit kinky…”

Sherlock’s smile widens. “I rather thought so… besides, I’ve read that some people consider physical intimacy among the most basic forms of comfort, so…”

John leans in and kisses him on the mouth, and realises the instant their lips touch that he was craving this, that he will never stop craving it for as long as he lives. Sherlock tastes like whiskey, only the flavour is softer and sweeter in his mouth, warmer than it was in the glass, and he knows that he must taste the same way. They kiss and kiss, the urgency returning and deepening almost immediately. “Just – here, on the sofa?” John gets out between kisses, already breathy.

Sherlock makes a low, almost purred sound of agreement. “Rosie’s in the bedroom,” he reminds John. “So I thought…” He doesn’t say what he was thinking; instead he puts his mouth on John’s throat and sucks at his pulse point, making John’s entire form tingle. It feels almost scandalous doing this with people all around them, but it also just doesn’t matter. Sherlock is completely right that this is the most basic form of comfort, and after today, they both need it, John thinks. God knows he does. And it’s so important to establish that they’re okay, that going through this hasn’t changed anything on that front, too.

He unbuttons Sherlock’s shirt, needing to touch him again, and Sherlock exhales hard when John slips his hand inside and rubs his chest, his thumb pressing into Sherlock’s nipple. They go through the ritual of undressing each other slowly, kissing throughout, the hunger to be touching skin-to-skin again pervading the entire thing, so that it’s a relief when, after they’ve kicked off their trousers and socks, John is finally able to stretch out over Sherlock on the worn leather sofa cushions, their cocks touching, stomachs expanding and contracting together. Sherlock’s hands are stroking over his back and arse and neck and hair, any part of John that he can touch, and John responds by kissing Sherlock’s neck until he’s breathless and writhing beneath him. There’s a bottle of standard-ish hand lotion on the coffee table that Mrs Hudson gave Sherlock once. John leans over and reaches for it, slicking it over them, then puts his hand back on Sherlock’s upper arm and starts to rock against him, their cocks hard and wanting. “Just – like this?” he asks, stroking Sherlock’s hair back. “Is this – enough?”

“This is good,” Sherlock assures him, both hands on John’s arse now, pulling him harder against himself. “I just want to be touching you as much as possible.”

It’s so unfiltered that John’s heart throbs in his chest. “I know,” he says, trying to pulls all of his own walls down in turn. “I feel the same way. I just want this.”

Sherlock reaches up for him and kisses him until they can’t anymore, breathing onto each other’s lips, their mouths open as they pant, John thrusting against Sherlock in a steady crescendo of need, their eyes on each other and nothing else.

John can feel himself leaking, can feel every twitch of Sherlock’s cock, their balls touching. Sherlock has one leg curled around John’s pumping hips, his foot rubbing along John’s calf, and that feels good, too.

Sherlock starts making desperate-sounding noises, trying to keep himself quiet for the sake of the agents posted directly outside the flat door just two metres away, biting his lower lip. He gets a hand between them and grasps both of their cocks together, hips lifting off the sofa cushions and then his spine stiffens and he comes in a hot spray between them, his breath coming in gasps of release through his nose. It’s completely arousing and John hears his own breath gust out in a red haze of need. Sherlock comes again, then lets his muscles relax for two or three seconds. Then he puts both hands on John’s arse and digs in with his fingers, knowing that John sometimes needs it a bit rough. John moans, just above a whisper, and Sherlock goes from the deep massage to slapping his arse just hard enough to make the skin sting, and John goes wild, thrusting into the warm wetness between them, and then his breath suspends itself and the climax hits. He spurts and spurts uncontrollably, hips going still on the long ones, his cock still jetting out his release between thrusts. It takes a long time to stop, but when it finally does, he lets himself slump down onto Sherlock, panting.

After a little, they pull themselves up and go for a long shower, cleaning themselves and each other and getting ready for bed. The night is still young, so they watch the news in their pyjamas under the blanket from the back of John’s chair, legs intertwined on the sofa. They drink a little more of the whiskey, then finally take themselves to bed. Tomorrow, John already knows, is going to be a complicated, difficult day. They might as well enjoy this while they can. He lies in bed listening to Sherlock breathing beside him, and Rosie breathing audibly from her cot. It takes him a long time to fall asleep nonetheless, his mind turning over and over again, relentlessly, for hours.

***

Mycroft has just descended the stairs again, having duly delivered the latest hourly report. John checks that the door is closed behind him, then looks across the table at Sherlock. “We need to talk,” he says quietly. He’s been waiting all day for the right moment and now he feels – well, not ready for it, but as ready as he’s going to get. Rosie is down for her nap and it’s quiet. He feels trapped inside, already feeling restless with cabin fever, the omnipresence of Mycroft’s host of agents pervading the entire house.

Sherlock drains his cup of tea, then meets his eye. “All right,” he says evenly. “Is this whatever you haven’t been saying all day?”

John almost smiles but doesn’t. “You could tell, huh.” It isn’t a question.

Sherlock just smiles very slightly, but there are lines between his eyes that give his worry away.

He’s waiting, John realises. He clears his throat. “I’m dying to get out of the house, but I suppose we’ll just have to stay here. Look: I just think we need to discuss this situation. We can’t just live this way for the rest of our lives.”

Sherlock points in silent question to the agents out in the hall. “You mean – ?”

“Yes, precisely,” John says. “How long are we supposed to endure this? You know as well as I do that there’s no way to know whether or not Mary was telling the truth – though I suspect she was. We’ll never know how many kidnapper assassins are out there, or how long they’ll stay on the job, or who’s even going to pay them if Mary is dead. We’ll never know the whole extent of it.”

Sherlock steeples his fingers together on the table. “I agree,” he says, looking troubled. “I also agree that we cannot live this way indefinitely.”

John hesitates. “Look – I don’t want to say any of this,” he says, unhappy. “But we need to discuss it. Even without the kidnappers, this was always going to come up. You and me – what we do, it’s dangerous, for one thing. It makes enemies. It makes them because we’re right, because they can’t just be allowed to run around doing whatever they’re doing – killing people, creating terror, destabilizing the government, et cetera. Someone has to stop them. I’m in complete agreement over that. But to do this with a baby around – and I know that she won’t always be a baby, but even when she’s three or five or eight or twelve or even eighteen or twenty-one and in university. This is always going to be an issue. People will always target her. The way they started targeting me when I came into your life.”

Sherlock bows his head over his hands, but he nods. “I know,” he says, just audibly. “So what are you saying?”

John takes a deep breath. “I’m saying that I don’t know if we can do both. Have this life and raise a child together. I lay awake thinking about it almost all night. It isn’t even about her not being mine, though I’ve also asked myself why Mary didn’t choose a way out that would allow her to take Rosie with her from the start, if she wanted Rosie. I think it was never about that, though. She could have just packed her bags, taken Rosie, and gone. She could have divorced me and tried for full custody of Rosie. There are certainly grounds to consider me an unfit father and women tend to win these things, anyway. With us having chosen to bury her record, it’s not as though we could have unburied it to try to prove she was even less fit than I am.”

Sherlock lifts his head and looks across at him, very soberly. “What are you suggesting?”

“That it went deeper than that,” John says, meeting his gaze steadily. “It was about trying to ruin both our lives. She drugged me, tried to make me think I was completely off my nut. She faked her death in such a way as to make me forever feel guilty over whatever that texting thing with Eurus was, while at the same time literally telling you to go and get yourself killed. She didn’t even know me well enough to know whether or not it would work on me – and it didn’t, because I was busy being the lowest, worst version of myself in a way I’d rather not ever see myself do again. I was drinking, eaten with guilt over not having loved her, not having wanted Rosie. I mean, I barely even saw Rosie for a month or two. And now that we’re together, look at this: we’ve got a baby that isn’t, genetically speaking, either one of ours. We love her – of course. That goes without saying. But why, one might ask, should we give up everything we love doing in order to raise Mary and David’s child?”

Sherlock’s shoulders are tense. “So – apologies for repeating myself, but again, what are you saying, John?”

John frowns a little. “I thought my point was getting fairly clear,” he says carefully. “What I mean to say is that, with or without this threat hanging over our heads, I don’t think that this lifestyle works with raising a child.”

Sherlock doesn’t move. “So the options available are for you to leave this lifestyle and keep Rosie, which would either mean leaving me or staying but not working with me anymore, or – ”

“Or finding somewhere safe for Rosie to live,” John supplies, very quietly. He reaches across the table for Sherlock’s hand. “Forget the ‘option’ about leaving you. I’m not leaving you. Ever. That’s off the table.”

Sherlock’s shoulders relax very slightly, but his face is still troubled. “Other people with dangerous jobs have children,” he says.

John shakes his head. “Not the same job that they do at the same time,” he says, keeping his voice gentle. He’s suspected since he started thinking about it that Sherlock would object at least as much as he does, and it seems that he’s right. His heart feels like concrete. “It’s not a question of being on call for shift work, late-night duty, odd rotations, or one parent being a cop or soldier or something. We’re both doing it, and we do it at the same time. When we’re on call, we both go – or else I have to constantly be making the sacrifice both to myself and to you of not being there with you, because I have to stay with her. Yes, we could look into a nanny situation, but I don’t want someone living here with us, do you?”

Sherlock looks more troubled than ever. “No,” he says, reluctant but honest. “Not particularly.”

John swallows, his throat growing tight. “I love her,” he says starkly. “I never wanted her until recently, when everything else started settling down a bit. But it occurred to me last night that keeping her with us might be the selfish thing to do. And this is the bit where I say ‘and she’s not even mine’. She’s mine in the sense that I’ve taken care of her and loved her, but that doesn’t mean, maybe, that I’m duty-bound to be her father. There might be someone better out there to be that for her. Hell, most people alive would be better parents to her than I could ever be.”

Sherlock swallows, his long throat moving. His fingers are tight in John’s. “It’s logical,” he says, his voice as tight as his fingers. “You’re really using your mind for this. It’s admirable. But – it hurts. I love her, too.”

“But you see what I’m saying?” John asks, blinking. His eyes are wet.

Sherlock nods, dropping his face to hide his eyes. “I think you’re right that we have to make a choice between the work and keeping her. And now, with this constant threat – even leaving the work might not be enough.”

“There’s another option,” John says. “We could all move. We could go into hiding, move from country to country and hope that we’ve eventually lost their trail. But you would leave your family behind, I’d leave Harry to possibly drink herself death, you wouldn’t be able to visit Eurus like you’re planning, and it would be hell for Rosie.”

Sherlock thinks about this, then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You’re right: that would still be the selfish option.”

“I think it’s the only way,” John says heavily. His eyes both overflow at the same time, tears slipping down his cheeks like twin rivers. He rubs Sherlock’s thumb with his own. “I hate this. I hate that Mary’s done this to us, and to Rosie. But if we go into hiding, maybe that would mean ruining three lives, and letting Mary win after all.”

“I don’t want that,” Sherlock says, though it sounds like a miserable admission.

“Neither do I.” John reaches for his other hand now, too, and Sherlock lets him have it, their fingers interlaced across the table. “That’s what I finally decided last night, though of course I wanted to talk to you about it first. I want this: I want this life, with you. I want it here in London in the flat we just rebuilt. I want to solve crimes and go chasing after villains for as long as we’re able to. And while I love this kid very much, there just isn’t a place for her in all of that. Mrs Hudson is too old to have a baby dumped on her in the middle of the night. Besides, we put her in danger when we did that, and I won’t do that to her again. It’s a shit choice to have to make, but if we accept that we have to make it, for Rosie’s sake, then this is what I want.

Sherlock blinks and swallows again, his eyes visibly wet. “Then what do we do?” he asks, and like that, it’s decided.

John feels relieved that he doesn’t have to argue for it, that Sherlock doesn’t think he’s a monster for even suggesting it. “I think we find a nice couple who live somewhere very far away from us, and Rosie gets a new name and a fresh start,” he says, the words tearing at his heart.

“John – ” Sherlock gets up and comes around the table and John is on his feet and in Sherlock’s arms in a heartbeat, the floodgates opening. He gets his arms around Sherlock’s back and cries into his shoulder, his back heaving. Sherlock is crying, too, he can feel it, but he’s quieter about it. They stand there that way for a long time, Sherlock’s cheek pressed into his hair. “I hate this,” Sherlock says after awhile, his voice thick, his sinuses congested.

“So do I.” John’s eyes are closed, his head down on Sherlock’s shoulder. He thinks of Rosie’s first kidnapping, of coming home and lying down on his bed with her, Sherlock lying on her other side. The horror of Mary’s spray-painted message in his old bedroom, of the empty cot. “I can’t take coming home or going into her room and finding her gone again,” he says, feeling hollow. “These two times, we got her back. What if we hadn’t? What if one of the truly deranged got hold of her? Someone who eats babies or harvests their organs or something? What if it was revenge for a crime we stopped, a person we caught? That would always be on us. It’s one thing when it’s one of us, but to bring a child into it?”

“I know,” Sherlock says into his hair. “But understanding doesn’t make it any easier.”

“And I’m not asking you to give up the work, either,” John says, hugging him tighter. “It wouldn’t be fair to you. And it wouldn’t solve the problem in any case. Rosie already is a target. The best thing we can possibly do for her is to let her go.”

Sherlock puts one hand on the back of John’s head and begins to stroke his hair. “I hate that you’re right,” he says. “But you are. I know you are.”

Eventually they break apart and John goes in search of some tissue to blow his nose. Sherlock wipes his eyes and goes to refill the kettle to make a fresh pot of tea. John looks at him and hates that he got Sherlock involved in the life of a child to the extent that he started loving her, only to lose her now. (Is he just displacing his own sorrow and anger? he wonders. Maybe. It doesn’t matter.) “I’m going to go and see if she’s awake yet,” he says, and Sherlock nods.

Rosie has just begun to wake and fret when John comes in. “Hello,” he says softly to the child he’s thought was his daughter for the past fifteen months. He picks her up and kisses the soft top of her head. “Oh, my love,” he murmurs, his eyes glazing over again. He squeezes at her diaper and decides she needs a change. He does this quickly and gently; Rosie hates being changed, then reaches into her cot for her bear and gives it to her as they go out into the sitting room. He sits down on the sofa with her.

Sherlock comes in from the kitchen with two mugs of tea and sets them down on the coffee table, then silently turns to them and puts his arms around them both. It’s shattering for both of them, John thinks, holding Sherlock with his free arm and hating Mary with all of his strength for having done this to them.

***

Kyle and Sarah Johnson are two of the nicest people John’s ever met, he has to admit.

They were vetted thoroughly and at length by Mycroft himself, their faces cross-referenced with no fewer than eighty-four databases around the world. They answered, by hand, a test that the three of them conceived and sent them, asking everything from worst childhood memories to personal phobias to tastes in food to vacation history. The test was over five hundred questions long, and their answers were scrutinised by not only themselves, but by a team of experts. Mycroft flew to Montréal to meet with them first, interviewing them and filling them in on Rosie’s short life history to date. He left nothing out from Mary’s initial flight to all of the time spent with friends, John’s drinking, the move to Baker Street, and the two kidnappings. He also apprised them of the standing threat on Rosie’s life and explained the protective measures that would be taken with the adoption process. They agreed without hesitation. Mycroft then flew back to London and gave his personal stamp of approval.

“They asked if you’d like to be the one to rename her,” he told John.

He’d looked at Sherlock and Sherlock nodded; they’d talked about this. He’d cleared his throat. “If they could call her Katherine… I’d like that,” he says. “It was my grandmother’s name. The rest of it – middle name, last name – anything they want.”

They fly to Montréal the next day. It’s sudden but as long as Rosie is with them, she’s in danger. Besides, Sherlock had suggested that it might be easier in the long run to get it over with as quickly as possible. No point drawing it out. John had agonised, but agreed. There was little to pack; the Johnsons will provide everything Rosie needs. He packed her bear, though.

They meet in the Johnsons’ sunny kitchen in an area called Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It’s a large, two-storey house that stretches back forever on a quiet, tree-lined street. Nearby there are commercial streets with little cafés, nice-looking restaurants, and boutique shops. John likes it instantly, comparing it favourably to the noise of Baker Street and Marylebone.

The Johnsons are kind and mercifully tactful, Sarah Johnson’s eyes particularly compassionate. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be,” she says at one point, her eyes lingering on John’s face.

He gives tight smile that hurts, his hands locked together on his knee. “I – yeah,” he says shortly. “It’s – but it’s the best thing, for her. That’s all I care about, in the end.”

Sherlock gives him a quick look, then carefully steers the conversation in another direction. They chat about the local school system and Montréal’s bilingual nature. “She hasn’t started talking yet, obviously, but it’s English she’s heard all her life so far,” Sherlock tells them.

Kyle nods. “Well, we’re Anglophones,” he says. “She’ll go to school in French the way all kids do here, but we’ll definitely speak English to her here at home. It’s a nice thing for kids to grow up with two languages. They absorb it so easily when they’re young, and it opens doors for them later.”

John listens to all of this and feels hopeful despite his heavy heart. At the end of the visit, Sarah asks him if he’d like to be kept up to date, sent pictures, letters about her progress and the like. The question catches him unawares. Mycroft did mention it as a possibility, but John had assumed the Johnsons wouldn’t want this. “I don’t know,” he says now, his voice coming out jerky. “It – might be better – not to. I – look, can I think about it and let you know?”

“Of course,” Sarah tells him, her eyes so understanding that it’s painful. “And even if you say no, you can always change your mind later, if you want to. It’s a standing invitation.”

John nods. His throat is too tight to speak, but he manages to meet Sarah’s eyes first, then Kyle’s.

Sherlock’s hand is on his knee. “Perhaps we should go, if you’re ready,” he says quietly to John, and John nods.

Rosie has been sitting in Sarah’s lap this whole time. When he stands, Sarah gets up and offers Rosie over, so he takes her back one last time and kisses her on the head. “Goodbye Rosie,” he says, his voice choked and cracking. “You be good, now.”

He feels Sherlock there before he sees him, Sherlock’s arm coming around him as he bends to kiss Rosie, too. “She will be,” he says.

John gives him a mute look, passing Rosie into his arms. It’s too much to ask him to hand her over now that it’s going to be forever, and Sherlock understands at once. He takes Rosie gently out of John’s arms and gives her to Sarah.

“Katherine Johnson,” he says, a bit experimentally. “You’ll do well here, I think.” He looks at the Johnsons. “Thank you,” he says. “My brother will be in touch on occasion. You may contact him at any time, if you need anything at all. Please don’t hesitate.”

They thank him in turn. John has already turned away, tears streaming down his face. Sherlock puts an arm around him and they get themselves away as quickly as possible. They walk quickly, John blinded by his tears, and get into the rental car. Sherlock turns it on and, driving carefully, on the wrong side of the road, drives them away from the house. He finds a deserted side street two minutes away and switches the engine off before pulling John over and letting him sob in his arms for the next fifteen minutes.

When the worst is over, John attempts to pull himself together. Sherlock has tissues, of course, and they both wipe their eyes and blow their noses. John doesn’t have to tell Sherlock that this is one of the worst days of his life, that he feels like he just handed a part of himself over to strangers, five-hundred-question examination or no, biological relationship or no. Sherlock already knows. Just as he knows that this was John’s idea all along, because it was the right choice. This is the only thing getting John through this at all: it was the right thing to do.

After awhile, Sherlock drives them back to their hotel downtown. He distracts John by talking about their dinner reservation in the Old Port, an exclusive place that normally takes a four-month reservation, and John is fractionally distracted. Their hotel also has a rooftop hot tub enclosed in glass, so when John feels up to it, they change and go up to explore it. The hot water feels wonderful to John’s grief-bruised body. They have the hot tub to themselves and he looks across it to where Sherlock is sitting, watching him carefully and not saying much. There’s an underlying tension there and John wants to fix it, assure him that this is the choice he wanted to make.

“I chose you,” he says, breaking the small silence that’s formed between them. “And I don’t regret it, no matter how exquisitely that hurt. Just so you know. I don’t. I love you.”

Sherlock pushes himself off the wall of the tub and swims over to him in two swift strokes, John pulling him into his arms. “Are you quite sure about that?” he asks, his voice unsteady. “Not the last part. I know that. But – ”

“It was the right choice,” John says firmly. “She’s so young that she’ll forget me soon enough. It’s me who won’t forget her, but that’s my problem. It was the right thing for her. Knowing that helps, if only a little bit. I chose this. I chose us. And I chose to keep her safe, even if it meant giving her away.”

“You amaze me,” Sherlock says, his voice low, putting a hand on John’s face. “I hope I make myself worthy of that choice.”

“I thought that was my line,” John says, searching his eyes, but Sherlock shakes his head.

“We’ll just – do our best, won’t we?” he asks, putting his arms around John’s neck and shoulders, his forehead on John’s. Steam rises from the water around them.

John makes a sound to show his agreement, and kisses Sherlock for a long time. It hurts now – hurts horribly – but at the end of the day, he still has this. “Come on,” he says after a longish while. “I’m starting to get pruny. When is our reservation? I want to shower and that. Let’s make this a proper little honeymoon, shall we? I think we deserve it.”

Sherlock smiles at him, looking oddly young with his wet hair slicked back. “Definitely.”

***

The crocuses and snowdrops are blooming.

Vee pushes herself to her knees with difficulty, then stoops to pick up the bucket of mulch she’s spread in the vegetable patch and takes it to the little shed in the corner of the garden. The sun is beginning to sink toward the horizon, so it must be coming on five or so. Hard to believe it’s already been three weeks since the demise of Mary Morstan, not three kilometres from her own house. She closes the shed doors and locks them, just in case someone has a mind to make off with Desmond’s new lawnmower, then goes inside to make herself a cup of tea before supper.

She feels indescribably weary as she moves about the kitchen. It’s all been so much to take in: first finding out about Eurus, about what she’d done, then learning the whole truth about the woman who’d called herself Mary Morstan, the two kidnappings… no wonder she still feels worn out by it all, she thinks.

The kettle boils and she switches it off, pouring hot water over the tea leaves with a practised hand. Desmond is off with his bird-watching club, so the house is quiet. Mycroft came by to explain how it had all worked, with Mary’s death. Deeper digging had finally turned up a link between Mary and the woman who they had thought shot her, Vivian Norbury. A visit to Norbury in prison confirmed it, and she gave Mycroft the details of the plan. Two of the night security guards had been replaced with employees of Mary’s. They’d set the whole thing up, then lured Sherlock there to do it in a controlled space. No windows, one door, no visitors about by that hour. Norbury hadn’t even fired a bullet, though Sherlock thought he had seen one. False blood packets and a lifelike wound had been created on Mary’s chest, placed in such a way between her breasts as to have made a deeper manual examination difficult. She’d left behind no will to stipulate the terms of how her remains were to be processed, so John had had her cremated. Obviously none of that had happened; the guards had come in and carried Mary’s body away, and everything else had happened over phone calls, until John was told to come and collect the ashes. Whose ashes are still sitting on the mantelpiece in the flat for all the prospective buyers to see is anyone’s guess.

Vee supposes that in her arrogance, Mary never imagined that anyone would look for her in Zurich the very day after her supposed death. Dreadful woman. She pours her tea, then decides that, as Des isn’t home yet, anyway, perhaps she’ll have a nap before supper. Just a short one. She carries the tea up to their bedroom and gets into bed, pulling the covers up high. It’s still chilly in the garden and combined with her unsettled thoughts, she feels cold. The warmth of the blankets slowly seeps through her, and she sleeps.

She’s dreaming. She’s back at Musgrave Hall, out in the back garden near the water. Mycroft is there, reading a book. He’s home for the holidays, working ahead. Along the water’s edge, Sherlock is running as fast as his rubber wellies will permit him, crunching through the pebbles in the shallows, shouting out to Victor to keep up. He’s waving his little wooden sword and saying something about pirates, his childish voice high and excited. Sherlock: her precious middle child, as he was at seven, before the trauma.

To her astonishment, a second boy appears, short and stocky, sandy-haired, following Sherlock toward their imagined pirate attack. He leaps into the fray ahead of Sherlock, charging their foes, and she watches them slashing at the air, shouting to each other. Then Victor turns back and looks at her, seeing her there, and now he’s not Victor, but John Watson. He smiles at her. Vee marvels. He’s real, then. She smiles back at him and nods once, and he turns back to Sherlock, who has also transformed into his adult self, and now he looks at her and smiles, too, as transparently happy as he once was as a child.

Vee wakes suddenly, hearing the door downstairs as Desmond comes in. The dream lingers with her, though. She can still see their smiles. There are tears in her eyes, she realises. She sits up and looks at the time. She slept for half hour. Long enough. She hesitates, though, reluctant to leave the dream behind. It feels like forgiveness, somehow. Sherlock really is all right now, despite everything he’s been through.

She picks up her lukewarm tea and goes downstairs to start on supper. Somehow, things are going to be all right now. It’s hardly scientific, but this once, she’s going to trust her instincts.

***

Ella’s eyes are as steady and patient as they ever were, and right now John is grateful for the lack of overt pity or even an excess of compassion in them. It’s just right, he thinks. Any more and he would be a mess.

“It feels better this time, believe it or not,” he tells her. His hands are quiet in his lap for once, not drumming on anything or fidgeting or blocking his mouth, something which she’s commented on before.

Her eyebrows lift. “Well, why wouldn’t it?” she inquires mildly. “It makes perfect sense. This grief is cleaner. More direct.”

He nods. “Yeah. That’s it. This is the real thing. Sometimes I tell myself not to grieve, because she’s still alive, right? She’s being well looked after, with people who will love her and give her a good life. A better life than I ever could have. Or – a better life than I was willing to, maybe. Maybe that’s a more honest answer. But I know you’ll tell me that it’s still a loss and that I’m allowed to grieve it.”

Ella smiles. “You’re doing my job for me,” she comments lightly. “Those are very good observations, John. All of them. Yes, of course you’re allowed to grieve. You can be glad for Rosie that she’s in what you consider a better situation. I’m inclined to agree. I’m also inclined to agree that you made a good choice.”

“The right choice?” John asks, raising his own brows at her.

Ella looks down at her notebook. “In this case, perhaps there weren’t right choices and wrong choices. Just good choices, better choices, poorer choices, possibly. I rather think that most of parenthood operates on that function. What you’ve done here is perhaps the most parental thing you’ve ever done.”

Somehow, this makes John’s throat tighten. He attempts to swallow past it. “Oh yeah?” he gets out. “How’s that?”

Now her eyes are compassionate, gazing at him. “You looked at a dangerous situation, assessed her needs and safety and what you were capable of doing for her, and willing to do for her. In this case, sacrificing the work you and Sherlock share wouldn’t have kept her safe, anyway. You know that. It’s fine to acknowledge that you weren’t willing to give that up, and that in and of itself is a good choice, I think. A person shouldn’t give up a lifestyle and livelihood that fulfills him. That’s not healthy. Don’t misunderstand me, John: I think that you would have continued to make a fine father for Rosie. But acknowledging that another situation might work better is a very mature choice. It sounds as though you thought everything through and considered every possibility, then chose what was right for her. That’s what being a parent is all about. You put her needs first.”

John’s eyes are wet again. “You don’t think it was a cop-out?” he asks, dreading the answer but needing to ask anyway. “That I just – gave her away for personal convenience?”

“Did you?” Ella asks, her tone even.

John struggles with this. Of course she turned it around on him. She always does when he tries to make her condemn his decisions. “No,” he says at last. “I don’t think I did.”

Ella smiles very slightly. “And it has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, John,” she says gently. “You were her father. Plain and simple. And now you need to grieve. But it will be cleaner this time. Your grief is for the right reasons this time. Be grateful that she’s safe and secure, and grieve for your loss. Sherlock will help you. Having his love will help, so lean on that. Let yourself need him. I’m not talking about dependency; I’m talking about not doing that thing you do, holing up and rebuilding your walls so that no one can get in. He loves you and you love him and that’s wonderful. He wants desperately to be wanted by you, to be needed by you. To be useful to you in some way. So let him in. Let him grieve with you, and let him comfort you. You don’t have to carry this one all alone.”

John’s eyes overflow again, but he nods. “You’re right,” he says, looking down at his hands. “You’re absolutely right.” He clears his throat. “You know it’s not easy for me, this sort of thing. Letting people in. Admitting when I’m not strong enough to bear something on my own.”

“All you need to do is try,” Ella tells him. “You’re allowed to be vulnerable, and you’re allowed to be sad. He’s not going to mock you for it or make you feel small. He’s grieving himself, even if she wasn’t his child. For a very short time, she was.”

John nods again. “She was,” he agrees. He reaches for a tissue on the side table and blows his nose. With anyone else, he might apologise for crying like this, but he knows better than to try that on Ella. He glances at the clock. “Time’s up,” he says, with a bit of regret. He used to count the minutes down sometimes.

Ella doesn’t look at the clock, but she smiles. “Same time next week?” she asks.

John nods. “Yeah. Thanks.” He reaches over and shakes her hand. Ella’s is warm and dry.

“Take care,” she tells him, meaning it, and he goes.

Sherlock is waiting for him in the waiting area, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his coat. John looks at him and thinks that his face looks a bit drawn. Ella is right; he’s grieving, too. They had a good time in Montréal, despite the reason they were there – a very good time, in fact, and he thinks that Ella is right to think that the strength of their love will carry them through this. Besides, he can already feel the sharp corners of the grief wearing smooth. He can see a day ahead when it will be bearable, though that thought pains him at the moment, too. He smiles at Sherlock, then stops at the receptionist’s desk, taking out his wallet.

She shakes her head at him, though, with a covert glance in Sherlock’s direction. “Your friend already covered it,” she tells him, keeping her voice as discreetly low as possible.

John looks over, too. Sherlock is feigning reading a magazine now, but John sees straight through it. “Oh?” he says lightly. “All right, then. Thank you.”

“See you next week,” she tells him with a smile. It’s a smile that says that she’d be open for a drink sometime, if John ever wanted. Or he thinks it does. Maybe it doesn’t.

He decides he’d better clarify and turns back to face her. “It’s partner, actually,” he says, loud enough for Sherlock to hear.

Her eyebrows lift. He’s forgotten her name. “Sorry?”

John indicates Sherlock with his head. “He’s not my friend, he’s my partner,” he repeats.

She understands then. “Ah,” she says. “I see.”

John smiles at her, then walks over to where Sherlock is sitting. “Ready to go?” he asks, and Sherlock gets to his feet, putting down the magazine he was leafing through.

He makes a sound of assent, then says, loudly enough for the receptionist to hear him clearly, “They have the worst magazines here, John. I don’t know who chooses them, but they’re rubbish.”

John takes him by the hand and tugs him outside, attempting to stifle his laughter. Once they’re on the pavement, he pulls Sherlock to himself by the lapels of his coat and kisses him, hard. “I love you,” he says after, looking dreamily up at Sherlock, still smiling. He wants to tell Sherlock that no smile is ever going to distract him from their love, that no one and nothing else will ever tear him away from Sherlock, that there is nothing he would put ahead of them. Maybe he should do that, try to put all of that into words somehow. Erase the doubt underscoring Sherlock’s scathing comments about the magazine selection forever. “Come on,” he says, eyes flicking down to Sherlock’s lips, then back up to his eyes. “Let’s go out for dinner. Since you paid for my therapy, I can afford it.”

“Just wait until the sale of the condo goes through,” Sherlock says, making no move to pull away. His arms are around John’s back. “Then I’ll have to beg you to let me pay sometimes.”

John grins. “Possibly,” he says. “I foresee a lot of begging, actually. On both our parts.” He kisses Sherlock again. “Come on, my love,” he says, letting his tone turn serious now. “Let’s go out. I need to try to put it into words again, how much I love you and how much I always will. Let’s go out and spoil ourselves a bit, yeah?”

Sherlock kisses him in lieu of answering, then again, then again, as though he can’t get enough of it, and that’s just fine, because John can’t, either. “All right,” he says between kisses. “That sounds like a plan.”

John smiles at him again. They could talk about the session and everything Ella had to say, and they probably will. Later. Right now, it’s their time. They’ve waited so long to have it, and paid so very dearly for it, that it would be a shame to waste it now. Not that the grief is a waste of time, but there are times for everything. And right now, it’s time for this. God knows he’s ready for it, and so is Sherlock.

He puts his hand into Sherlock’s and together, they walk away.

*