AN: Hi guys, me again. You know the drill, I own nothing.

"It's Sherlock, John! It's Sherlock!" Mrs Hudson said urgently, rushing over and holding his ringing phone out to him.

But John was too busy staring at the bottle of perfume, set deliberately next to his returned chair. Clair-de-la-lune. The cogs set in motion, jigsaw pieces coming together in his brain, producing an answer he couldn't believe, wouldn't believe, didn't want to believe. He mentally stuck his fingers in her ears, trying to block out the dreadful suspicion.

"John? You have to answer it!"

Mrs Hudson's voice and the insistent buzzing of his phone broke into John's thoughts, a welcome distraction, and he practically snatched it out of her hand.
"Sherlock! Where are you?"

"23 Leinster Gardens. Hurry, we don't have much time" Sherlock's urgent voice came through the speakers.

That was easier than expected, John thought briefly, before the second part sank in to his addled mind and he jumped out of his chair "Oh my... Okay, I'm on my way, have you phoned the ambulance? You should never have left the hospital-"

"What? No, John, I'm fine, this isn't about me, this is about the person that shot me. They're going to be here soon and I need you here when they come."

John pulled on his coat in a rush, fumbling a little in his haste. As he tried to process the situation.

"You mean she's coming to finish the job?"

"'She'?" Sherlock pointed out what he'd said, but his tone of voice spoke volumes. It wasn't a 'that is incorrect' tone, rather a 'good deduction, John, and how did you arrive at that conclusion?'.

John glanced back at the bottle on the table on his way out the door.

"Clair-de-la-lune." He choked out.

There was a pause on the line, before Sherlock said in his gentlest tone, "I'm sorry, this isn't going to be easy for you, but it's important you-"

"I'll see you in a few." John cut him off, hanging up quickly as he struggled to reign in his emotions. Nothing was certain yet, he could still be wrong. Sherlock could have been referring to something else and John could have put the clues together all wrong, as he sometimes did. He had to be wrong. Because he knew her, he'd been seeing her for over a year, and the woman he knew would never have tried to kill his best friend.

'As ever, you see but do not observe' Sherlock's voice echoed in his head.

"Shut up." John growled to the voice under his breath, flagging down a cab.

The door of 23 Leinster Gardens was slightly ajar when John arrived. After a brief glance up and down the currently empty street, John approach it cautiously, uncertain what he would find. It certainly wasn't what he expected when he walked into the cramped, bare interior of the posh looking town house, so much so that he took a step back outside to look properly at the front of the house, this time noticing the painted on windows.

"Yes, I know, it's bigger on the outside, now hurry, she'll be here soon and we need to be ready." Sherlock huffed, lightly pulling John inside and directing him down the corridor. John hesitated, immediately noticing the extra paleness of his friends features, the strain in his voice and tension in his posture, no doubt in pain.

"You need to get back to the hospital." John corrected, giving his best stern look and planting his feet.

"As soon as this is over, I promise." Sherlock brushed him off. John stared him down a second longer, until he was satisfied with Sherlock's sincerity, then started moving down the corridor where Sherlock directed him.

"You'll need to sit here." Sherlock directed him into a wheelchair, complete with morphine drip that he'd no doubt been using until John arrived. He started ruffling his hair up the second he sat down, making John duck away.

"What the hell are you doing?" He spluttered, trying to cover his hair.

"Making you look like me." Sherlock explained, grabbing John's collar and popping it up "Of course you're far from perfect for the role, but if we turn the lights down then from a distance-"

"Oh great, someone is coming here to kill you and I'm just sitting here looking like you. I do hope there's more to your plan than this."

"Don't worry, John, she won't shoot you, I've made sure of it."

There it was again, that ominous 'she'. Again her possible identity reared up in John's mind, and he pushed it back down as impossible.

He was jerked out of his thoughts again by Sherlock's text alert sound. Sherlock took it out of his pocket, glanced at it, then looked back at John, his eye's urgent.

"John, this is very important, you need to keep perfectly still, don't get up, don't give yourself away, no matter what you see or hear."

"Got it." John nodded, his face set and stern, ready for action. Sherlock nodded to him, and then pressed a button on his phone, lifting it to his ear and he walked away, flicking the lights off as he went and plunging John into darkness, save the street light streaming through the door and a few weak, flickering halogen bulbs.

"Can't you see me?" Sherlock's voice as he spoke into the phone echoed back to him, though it was faint as he disappeared round a corner to hide himself. John couldn't hear his next few sentences, just the soft murmur of his voice, mysterious, yet strangely warm to be talking to his would-be-killer, until he was far enough away, and his voice was no longer audible.

And then the door creaked. And there was no more denying it.

Mary, haloed by the light of the door, but certainly no angel. It was her and had been all along. Even suspecting it as he had, hadn't prepared him for the reality, for the betrayal he felt when he saw her standing there.

"What do you want, Sherlock?" She asked tentatively, staring straight at John and believing the lie they had set. So she wasn't here to kill him then, that was a relief, but not much of one. The fact she had tried to kill his best friend once was enough. She stalked closer, listening to Sherlock talking though the earpiece. John could make out the murmur coming from the earpiece now, but not the words. He wondered briefly what Sherlock had to say to her, because for the life of him he didn't know what he would say. Or most likely shout.

"You were very slow." She mocked, and her defiant tone made John's blood boil even more. He knew it was meant for Sherlock, but still the question burned John. Because he had been slow, he was acclimatised to danger, he should know it when he saw it, but he hadn't seen it in Mary. She had lied to him all along. Did she even love him? Was their whole relationship a sham leading to this, getting close to him in order to kill Sherlock? But no, they had met when he had thought Sherlock was dead, when the world thought Sherlock was dead.

He was distracted from his line of thinking by the sight of Mary pulling out her gun and cocking it.

"How badly do you want to find out?" She threatened. John tried not to tense visibly, as his soldier's instincts prepared him to duck out of the line of fire if necessary. Because from the look in her eyes Sherlock was wrong, she would shoot.

But he trusted Sherlock, so he banked his reaction, watching her carefully as she listened to the voice on the end of the line. Whatever Sherlock said must have worked, as she nodded. There were a few more tense seconds, the gun swinging in her hand, her grip comfortable and sure, before she dug into her bag, pulling out a coin and flicking it into the air, shooting it down with one precise shot. He had tried it himself a few times, him and some of the guys out in Afghanistan. Even with the bright desert's sun reflecting off the coin to show them where it was, the closest he'd come was to nick the edge of the coin. But his wife had shot a hole straight through it, like it was the easiest thing in the world. She'd never looked hotter. The desire and pride was quickly extinguished though by the bitter taste of repulsion and anger, knowing that that was the steady hand, and probably the very gun that had almost killed his friend.

Said friend who was currently striding around the corner behind Mary. She must have heard his heavy footsteps, but she didn't turn straight away. Not even when she heard his silky voice asking "May I see?". Instead she peered even harder into the shadows surrounding John, and he held his breath, sure she would recognise him now. But she didn't, instead she looked down at her feet, then turned her back to him, facing Sherlock.

"A dummy. I suppose that was a fairly obvious trick." She guessed, acting nonplussed that she'd been fooled as she took the bluetooth device out of her ear. Oh if only she knew. It was a small victory, fooling her now as she had fooled him all along. He still watched her like a hawk as she advanced on his friend, kicking the coin towards him. John calculated how long it would take him to cover the distance between them now, ready to launch himself across it if she tried to hurt Sherlock in any way. Funny how he hadn't cared so much about the possibility when she was thinking he was Sherlock. He gripped the armrest tighter as Sherlock bent for the coin, taking his own eyes off Mary and exposing his back, leaving him vulnerable to attack. Already he was thinking of Mary as just another merciless killer, so Sherlock's next sentence shocked him.

"And yet over a distance of six feet, you failed to make a kill shot. Enough to hospitalise me, not enough to kill me. That wasn't a miss. That was surgery."

John's eyebrows tilted together. Not that he was one to doubt Sherlock's deductions, and he wished he could believe the thought of his wife not trying to kill his best friend… but he had seen the wound himself, felt the blood pouring out between his fingers, and had read the report of how Sherlock's heart had failed on the operating table, not responding immediately to the compressions - to the point that the doctors had already called it when the heart monitor started beeping again. John was familiar with wounding to incapacitate, but that was cutting too fine, the risk was too great for him to brush off as easily as Sherlock seemed to be. So it was with a hardened heart he tuned back into the conversation still going on in front of him, at the sound of his own name being said.

"Because John can't ever know that I lied to him. It would break him, and I would lose him forever, and Sherlock, I will never let that happen. Please. Understand there is nothing in this world I would not do to stop that happening."

Rather than a declaration of love, all John heard in her plea was her desire to keep him in the dark. She would have him living in a lie for the rest of their lives, because she thought the truth would 'break him'. Did she really think him so weak, after all he had survived so far in his life? She must look down on him so much, taking him for a fool, and he couldn't stand it.

"I'm sorry. Not that obvious a trick." Sherlock told her, turning with exaggerated movements and turning on the lights. This was it. John took some deep breaths, waiting for her to turn around and see him, as she seemed to be taking a moment to prepare herself too. And then she turned. He could see her heart breaking in her eyes, terrified of losing him and pleading him to stay all at once. And yet he couldn't summon an ounce of pity. He stood straight and tall from his chair, rearranged his hair and put the collar down on his coat, becoming himself again, and yet feeling a million miles from the man he had been when he had taken the seat.

"Now talk, sort it out and do it quickly." Sherlock instructed.

But John still hadn't figured out what to say to this woman. Or more accurately, he had too many things he wanted to say, and wasn't sure which should come first, and was also pretty sure that some were things he'd never entertain even saying in front of a woman before now, yet alone to one. So he waited. Waited to see what she would say, how she could possibly defend her treatment of him. He walked closer, but stopped a good distance away still, not trusting himself entirely as the anger continued to churn away in his stomach.

At seeing that no steps towards conversation were forthcoming from either of them, Sherlock issued a new instruction.

"Baker Street. Now."

He walked away, but Mary made no move to follow, her eyes still fixed on John and begging for forgiveness. John made a point to follow him though, even if it meant walking past her. He clenched his teeth together as he went past, to stop all the vicious accusations and censures bursting forth. By now Sherlock would have already managed to hail a cab, he would have to ride home to sort through it and figure out what he wanted to say.

It could never be long enough.