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"Going to be a bit of a late one," he says. He sounds a little flustered, but it's the kind of flustered that is partially exasperated and partially excited. In your mind's eye, you can see him. He's there, holding the phone, watching Sherlock standing off in a corner, both mesmerized and frustrated with the man at the same time, but feeling so alive in his presence.
He loves Sherlock, and you know this. It's partially the love of a man for his best friend, and partially the love of an addict for his supplier, and partially the love of a man for his other half. He does not love you like this, but that is all right. You could battle Sherlock Holmes for the love of John Watson, but it is a battle you will not win. And you long ago learned not to fight battles you won't win.
You remember meeting Sherlock Holmes. You knew, you just knew who it was. It was the moment a light flicked on in John's eyes, a light you had never seen before. You didn't have to ask, then. Part of John that he'd forgotten he had was alive again, and he was angry.
You had seen him angry before. He had broken a man's jaw in three places because he called you an old cow. (That was the night you realized you loved John, but it was for a completely different reason.) You never saw John hold in anger like he did with Sherlock. He was so incredibly furious in a way that was unbelievably passionate and just a tiny bit sexy. You actually sort of wish that he'd been in the mood to make love that night, because you think it would've been really amazing, all that passion running through his veins.
That is what Sherlock makes him feel. And yes, you sometimes wish you could bring that passion out in him, but it's all right if you can't. It's John who makes you feel things, makes you want things and love things. You'd take all the mad friends and late nights in the world to have just a week with the emotions John makes you feel. He gives you a contact high and that, that is worth it.
"Should I try to wait up?" you ask. You split dinner into thirds. One for you, for now, and two for later, when John gets home and you share a meal while he tells you about his adventures. Means you get a bit extra, but you've got the baby, after all. (The baby is, at this point, no more than a thumb-sized glob of cells, but any excuse to cut back on one's diet is an excellent excuse indeed.)
"Probably not," John admits. All right, you'd better set the coffee ready to go with dinner, as well. Wouldn't be polite to fall asleep while you're listening.
"So he was telling the truth, then?" you ask. "About the drugs being for a case?"
"I don't know," he admits. "Maybe."
"Did he tell you about the case?" you ask. He hasn't volunteered yet. You think this has something to do with Mycroft Holmes, as it often does when he doesn't volunteer his cases. You haven't met Mycroft yet. Part of you wants to, he sounds fascinating and dangerous.
Perhaps too dangerous. He might recognize you. Maybe another year. Maybe have John talk you up a bit, so he can like you before he meets you. When someone likes you, it's easy to overlook the obvious.
"Something about a blackmailer working in London," he says. "Pissed all over our fireplace. Apparently he licks his victim's faces or something, too. Disgusting man."
Two things stand out. Number one, he's back to referring to the flat with Sherlock as 'theirs'. He does this often, of course, whenever they're on a case. It threw you the first time, but you're getting to be old hat at this, and you know when you should genuinely be jealous, and when he doesn't mean to slip into himself before he knew you. He isn't you, of course. You never slip into the life you were.
Secondly, he's talking about Charles Augustus Magnussen. Your hand goes up to your cheek, and the memory of him licking your face, telling you that your perfume doesn't taste like it smells, comes flooding back. CAM, you call him. You make your checks out to CAM, and CAM appears on your schedule, and CAM sends you telegrams at your wedding. CAM is a slow-spreading mould on the tilework of your life, extending into all the cracks and leaving you---
"Mary?" John's voice says over the phone. "Mary, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," you say, automatically. "Sorry, just dropped something."
"Oh, I was just saying we're going to his office. Going to see what information we can find."
Dinner remains in the dish on the table, and you head upstairs as John speaks. You head to the closet, where you pull out a small bundle of keys. Of the many keys and USBs attached to the bundle, there is only one working Yale key, and a USB. It is labeled AGRA, written in CAM's indelicate handwriting. His proof that he knows who you were. The Yale key goes to a storage unit. The storage unit where you keep your gun.
*~
There is nothing more beautiful than seeing CAM on his knees. Begging for his life. You knocked out his security detail and PA easily enough, and dragged him up to his bedroom within only a few minutes. After all, you don't want Janine to get blood all over her nice dress.
It's---sickening, how easily the old you comes up. How the muscle memory put the gun back together and the callouses remained as you climbed up hundreds of feet of rope. It's like you were never gone.
"What do you want?" he begs. You want him to die. You want him to leave you alone. There is no thrill in his fear, just a cold understanding that this is what must happen. Because it must happen. CAM lives, and that means that Mary Watson could die at any moment, and you can't---you can't have that. You may have the callouses and the trigger finger and the cold calculating ability to stand here in front of him, but you never, ever want to become that person again. That person you were.
John will be here soon. You have to stop it. You have to stop CAM.
But you haven't killed in five years. You want to think you can do it again, but---but---
It's done, now let my other daughter go.
The memory is strong, and your body breaks out in a cold sweat, like it was the night you left your former life behind. CAM needs to die. If CAM doesn't die, then you will die. Because that's who you are, now, you're Mary Watson. You want to be Mary Watson, and Mama Watson, and you want John with his lovely adventures and his kind heart, and so you have to pull the trigger.
CAM is begging. And suddenly there's a voice.
Sherlock. He smells your perfume. Normally, you would shower before an assassination, but there was no time. You even still have mascara on. Unprofessional, is what you would've said five years ago. But you didn't want to be professional. You didn't want to be her, not again.
You have only been her once in the last five years. It was the night that John broke that man's jaw in the pub. You were cleaning his knuckles and setting the bone in his middle finger.
You can't do that again, you said.
He was a bastard. John's voice was tight with anger, but also surprisingly calm. It was like he had taken a hit of a very powerful drug. And he deserved it.
You looked up at him, and she came back. Power in your voice. Anger. You only barely sustained your well-crafted British accent.
You can't do that again, you repeated. Because next time, he might have a knife, and he could kill you. And I will not lose you, do you understand?
The hazy look in John's eye left in that moment, and he looked at you with eyebrows up, surprise on his face. He didn't reply, just stared at you.
If you want to fight, fight for something important, but don't fight because someone gets a mouth on them, you added. You wanted him to fight, because he's good when he fights, but not if it meant something stupid, something where he could die. And you realized that she came out, because you would torture or kill anyone who would want to take John Watson away from you.
John's eyebrows remained up, and he nodded, a slow, cautious nod. I'm sorry, Mary. You hadn't expected the apology, but that was fine.
He sucked in his breath through his teeth, and you looked down. Your fingernail had been pushing into the broken space of his fingerbone. You would torture or kill anyone who would take John Watson away from you, including John Watson. You jerked your hand back, but he reached out with his uninjured hand, taking yours.
In that moment, he saw you. You as you were, before you left. He saw you, and he still took your hand. He told you, not for the first time, that he loved you. You repeated it, and for the first time, you weren’t lying. He was everything to you. He still is.
"That's not Lady Smallwood."
You take a breath, and you spin around, gun out. You want to face John when he stops loving you, rather than having him hear about it from CAM. But John isn't there, he isn’t behind Sherlock. Maybe he went home?
"Is John with you?" It's Mary Watson speaking. Timid, somewhat. Sherlock's response is not fast enough, because she steps in. "Is John here?"
If he is not, then the answer is obvious. Shoot CAM, shoot Sherlock. Yes, it will be sad for John to lose Sherlock again. Yes, it will be difficult rebuilding him. And yes, you will miss Sherlock. You will miss the passionate man he makes your husband, and you will miss the bouts of insanity that he creates in your otherwise beautifully normal life. You might even miss him.
Worth it. You will become her, you will kill Sherlock Holmes.
"He's downstairs," Sherlock stammers.
You nod. Well, there's that idea gone. If you killed them both, John would be implicated in their murders. And you won't lose John. Losing John would mean losing yourself.
Sherlock takes a step towards you. He's talking to you calmly. He's trying to convince you to put down your gun.
She speaks again. "If you take one more step, I swear I will kill you."
He smiles, and you rather like that smile. It's the one where he thinks he's got it all figured out. He thinks he knows you, and you could only wish he did.
"No, Mrs. Watson," he says. "You won't."
Except he isn't addressing Mrs. Watson, he's addressing who you used to be. And she would never take indolence. He steps, and you lower your weapon to his chest. If you shoot him, if you kill him and CAM, you will lose John.
You can only kill one of them. CAM will blackmail you. Sherlock will out you.
You fire. Lung. Liver. He will die of blood loss in only a few minutes. If he lives, you can negotiate his silence. He may be afraid of you. He may not remember what happened. But the likelihood he will survive is slim.
"I'm sorry, Sherlock," you say. "I truly am."
You have apologized to someone you've killed before. Once. Only once, while she begged for the life of her other daughter. You haven't killed since. Until now.
CAM cannot die. You strike him across the jaw. You grab your mobile and dial 999. It is you, Mary Watson, who is dialing, because she has done her job for the night and has been satiated after five years with no killing.
You will kill Sherlock to keep John. But if you don't have to kill Sherlock, you won't.
*~
She stands in front of Billy. Her voice is cold when she mocks him, because of course he's working for Sherlock now. It all makes sense, in a twisted sort of way. And then you slip the Bluetooth in your ear, the mobile in your pocket, and you listen.
Over the phone, Sherlock calls you a façade. He is wrong, of course. You are more than the veneer of Mary Watson, you are Mary Watson. You want to tell him this, you want to tell him that you are fighting the cancer that you were.
He has a flair for the dramatic, he always has. He flips on a projector, a picture of you at your wedding. It makes you hesitate, because that, that right there, that is the person you're meant to be. Blonde hair, big eye makeup, wide smile, on the arm of a man you love. That is who you are supposed to be. You're not supposed to be her, and Sherlock can't understand that.
Sherlock doesn't regret. It's not who he is. Blackmail of the kind that CAM is using against you is nothing to him. He would---and did---give up John in a heartbeat if he had to. You, however, can't.
It's a selfish love. You love John because he helps you feel more like you than you have in your whole life. He cleanses you, he makes who you want to be real. He is the catalyst for your transformation into the woman being projected on the empty house.
"Come inside," he says. "It's a little cramped."
Sherlock tells you what he knows about you. That Mary Morstan was stillborn, that you stole her identity, that it was a common enough practice for the kind of people like you.
He sits there, smug in the dark, with that morphine dripping into his arm, and you could put a bullet in him just for not standing to face you. He's going to make this difficult to the last, isn’t he? He's going to make you shoot a man who is already down.
You want to rile him. You speak again with her voice.
"You were very slow."
John has told you that this is the sort of statement that would anger Sherlock. This is the sort of insult that gets to him, that gets down to his primal sweet spot. Sherlock always has to be the cleverest in the room.
Instead, Sherlock takes it back to you. Asks you just how good a shot you are. Insulting you. You are an amazing shot, you always have been. No, no. Mary can win at darts. She is the good shot and---who the hell are you kidding? You can't win this. You can't duel against yourself. He's doing this to you, he's doing this to you on purpose.
You pull out the gun. "How badly do you want to find out?"
But he's safe, of course he's safe. He's the one who called you here, according to him. And by having your face on the wall, it would make anyone finding his body immediately suspicious. But you don't care about Scotland Yard. You know that John would be suspicious. Your husband is clever. He will work it out. And then you will lose him.
"Come on," Sherlock goads you. "The doctor's wife must be a little bit bored."
You're not, you want to snap. You're not bored. You're not John, who twitches and longs to fight and have adventure. You mean it when you say that you've had enough for a lifetime. You want to be Mary Watson. You want to be blonde and British and pay your television fees and sleep in on Sundays. You do not want to know how to hold this gun.
But this, this is negotiation. You compromise in negotiation. It is very like following a target. You compromised with Sherlock Holmes as John Watson was the target of your affections. Now, you compromise by dueling in showing off.
Simple enough. Two words you often said when you were her. The two words you said before your last job, though nothing could've been farther from the truth.
Negotiation.
The coin goes up in the air. It comes back down with a bullet hole neatly through it. You don't even bother to look at the coin. You already know.
Sherlock's voice is behind you. Cleverer than you thought, he was protecting himself in case you decided to walk in firing. Clearly also unaware that that is not how you operate. It's not even how you operated when you were her.
No---no, you don't operate. You live. Because that's what you do when you're---god, you want to be Mary Watson. You kick the coin over with just enough force to hit Sherlock's foot, and you want to be Mary Watson. He bends over with a calculated amount of pain and you want to be Mary Watson. He calls your shot back in CAM's flat 'surgery' and you still want to be Mary Watson.
You would give up your perfect shot and all of the calm you feel standing in this empty house if you could be Mary Watson. You would smother the woman you used to be, if Sherlock would please, just please let the other you live.
You are not the last woman you killed on your last job, however. You will not beg for mercy, you will not beg for the life of Mary Watson. You will explain to him calmly that there is nothing you would not do to protect what you have built, to protect what you have with John.
He apologizes and flips on the light behind you. His voice sounds like your voice, back when you were her, and you don't need to look behind yourself to know that John is there.
You apologized once, too. You remember the woman, the woman who smothered her baby because you told her to. Coerced her to. The same woman who begged for the life of her other daughter. It's done, she said. Now let my other daughter go. And you, for the first time in your career, in your life, apologized. Because she was supposed to smother her own baby as punishment, that is what the client wanted. The client also wanted the whole family dead, too.
The woman didn't have to look upstairs to know from your face that the daughter she thought she was protecting was already dead. She still ran upstairs, though.
It was your last job. It was the worst job. You haven't killed since. Until now.
You know John is there, but you still turn. You still turn, and you still hope against hopes that Sherlock hasn't assassinated everything you've tried to protect.
And he's there. He's there with his hair askew and his collar turned up, and his face is twisted and hateful and something wonderful has died here, because of this, and it's your fault and it's Sherlock's fault and it's mostly your fault.
A light has gone out of John's eyes. It's a sweetness, a kindness, something that Mary Watson brought to him.
"Sort it out, and make it quick," Sherlock tells you.
You have to talk to him. You have to tell him, now, that this is worth it. That you are worth keeping. You have to plan an attack, plan the right words to say.
You will not bring up the baby. Because this is not about the baby. This is about him and you and while you hold that trump card inside of you, and you know he will listen if you pulled it out, you will not. Because this is not about the baby. And part of you, a very deep and secret part, you want him to make it about you, as well. The baby will come whether he is there with you or not.
You don't want him to choose the baby, because he does not have to forgive the baby. You want him to choose you. You want him to forgive you.
So you negotiate.
She remains silent.