Sherlock almost doesn't recognise the shell of a man standing in the doorway of 221B.
"John?"
John's eyes, red and brimming with unshed tears, flick up to Sherlock's face without seeing him. He lets the duffel in his right hand fall to the floor before presenting Sherlock with the bundle of blankets that had been resting in the crook of his left arm. Sherlock takes it—it's warm, dense, and heavier than expected—and watches as John silently, slowly steps around him, making his way to the couch. He lies down as if his bones might break if he moves any faster than a slow crawl, turns to face the back of the couch, and stops moving.
The bundle gives a soft sound. Sherlock shifts a loose fold of cloth aside and discovers a small, red, squinched face. The baby lets out another small grunt and moves her lips. "John?" Sherlock asks again, cradling the infant and going to John's side.
John doesn't even give any sign that he's heard Sherlock.
At a loss, Sherlock places the baby in the bowl formed by the curve of John's body and the back cushions of the sofa. He goes back to his experiment, hoping that engaging in normal behaviour will make John stop being so... absent.
The baby is crying. Has been crying for nearly twenty minutes, and John still hasn't moved.
Sherlock is at his wit's end. Speaking to John has been ineffective. Touching him did nothing. Trying to move him nearly got Sherlock's fingers broken. Shouting only made the infant's shrieking worse. At a loss, he plucks the baby up and attempts to arrange her against his chest the way he's seen women do in the past; when she continues crying, he sits down at his laptop and consults Google for advice.
After ten more minutes of reading and trying to ignore infant cries directly next to his ear, Sherlock retrieves the duffel from the hall floor where John had dropped it. He places it on one of the kitchen chairs and clears the table one-handed, gritting his teeth against the wails and squalls.
Three spread towels later, he has the baby on the kitchen table and free of a full nappy. For something as foul in appearance as the contents of the nappy, there's very little odour; more consultation with Google informs him that he's seeing meconium, which then informs him that the infant is likely no more than a few days old. He glances back at John on the couch in concern. He'd been aware that Mary was due very soon, but John had not called for nearly two weeks—John's appearance in the doorway had been something of a surprise. Shouldn't they be with Mary?
The baby gives a fussy little grunt, snapping Sherlock out of his thoughts. YouTube helps him in correctly cleaning her, applying a new nappy, and then re-swaddling her; another video walks him through the process of putting together a bottle of infant formula and testing the temperature. He settles into his armchair with the baby and a bottle, cradling her in one arm and gently placing the nipple of the bottle against her lips with the other. She latches on and suckles greedily.
As she eats (drinks? Feeds? He's still not sure about the correct terminology), her sleepy, denim-blue eyes track around the room, sometimes settling on him but more often just drifting here and there, unfocussed and aimless. She does not start looking at his facial features individually until his face is roughly twenty-five centimetres from her, and her eyes do not follow him when he moves from side to side experimentally. Even so, something tells him that she is observing him on some instinctive level. She meets his gaze and they stare at each other for a long, long moment before her eyes begin to wander again.
When she decides she is done, Sherlock puts the bottle into a sealed container and stores it in the refrigerator—of the articles he's perused on his mobile, most agree that he will be feeding the infant again in two to three hours. He hopes that John recovers before then, but he knows it's unlikely. John still hasn't really forgiven Sherlock for his faked death, and Sherlock has no idea why John would ever trust him with his own baby after the row they'd had over the drugs use just before the Magnussen case, but... here he is, infant propped against his chest as he gently pats her back to assist the outgassing of ingested air bubbles (apparently referred to as 'burping').
Sherlock returns to the sitting room and stands in the sunlight streaming through the window, watching John's sides rise and fall with his breathing. He only has a vague idea of what has happened to drive John to 221B with his newborn daughter (what could it be but something to do with Mary?), but 'keep infant healthy' falls under the purview of the vow he'd made to the Watsons, and he'll be damned if he doesn't keep his word. Without information, however, he's flying blind—he can care for the infant, but caring for John is an altogether more complicated matter.
"John. Does she have a name?"
John's sides stop moving. After a long, tense moment, he resumes breathing and says nothing. Sherlock waits, but when the silence stretches on without any sign of being broken, he sighs and retreats to the kitchen.
Sherlock stares down at the open duffel bag.
The cold glint of the finish on John's gun stares back.
The gun is loaded, freshly oiled.
The baby mouths at Sherlock's neck; she's been sleeping on and off since Sherlock fed her two hours ago. If the Internet is correct, the increase in her mouthing behaviour is indicative of a returned appetite.
Sherlock picks up the gun and takes it to his room. Baby in one arm, he kneels, pries back the loose floorboard beneath his bed, and places the gun beneath an old Upmann cigar box. Except for Sherlock's thumbprint from lifting it, the box is covered in a thin layer of dust.
As the baby nuzzles at his skin searchingly, Sherlock memorises the dust on the box's lid for future reference. He replaces the floorboard.
Six hours, three nappies, three feedings, two bouts of tears, and one last-ditch, hummed rendition of Mendelssohn's piano trios (effective, thank God) later, Sherlock is dozing in his armchair with the baby cradled against his chest when John rolls over and lets out a long, tired breath. "She left," he croaks, so quiet that Sherlock nearly misses it. "She left."
Sherlock furrows his brow. Whether John is speaking euphemistically or literally isn't very clear; his expression is blank and hollow. "Mary?"
John flinches at the name. "Left me. Left us. Told me she'd thought about it, said she'd... changed her mind, said... but she ran away, she left us behind." He speaks in clipped, monotone snippets; every word seems to be a fight to get out. He looks up at Sherlock, teary eyed and expressionless. "Why wasn't I enough? Why weren't we enough?"
Sherlock opens and closes his mouth.
"I did everything for her. We made a life together. Had a flat, a wedding, a gorgeous wedding. I... I forgave her. I loved her. Told her every night. Held her. Bought her things—the coat, the scarf, those were me." John glances up at the window, around the room. Briefly, his eyes settle on the baby where she rests on Sherlock's chest, asleep. His face undergoes a lightning contortion of emotions—love, grief, hate, guilt, hopeless adoration, grief again. "We were going to be a family, Sherlock. Why wasn't it enough?" Tears are streaming freely down his face, yet his expression has gone flat. It's disconcerting. "Why is what I do never enough? Do I not deserve it?"
Sherlock is on his feet and kneeling by the sofa in a flash. "John. John, you deserve it. You did everything right." Even with his temper and his addiction to danger, John had never failed to do right by Mary, at least as far as Sherlock understood it. John had forgiven her for shooting Sherlock, and Sherlock was John's best friend. How was that not the height of magnanimity and trust? Mary had been fortunate—blessed, even, though Sherlock hates the word with its theistic overtones—to have someone as intensely loyal, steadfast, and nurturing as John in her life. Sherlock hates how much energy John had expended on her, how she had him wrapped around her finger, how she supplanted Sherlock in his life, but... John had been happy. John should be happy, deserves to be happy. "You deserve to be happy."
"She still left."
Sherlock doesn't have a response for that. Instead, he presents John with his daughter, sleepy and bundled up in her blanket again. "Skin to skin contact is beneficial for the infant's sense of security and bonding," he says.
For a moment, John just looks at Sherlock with an inscrutable expression. Just when Sherlock is about to give up and return the baby to his own shoulder, John begins to unbutton his cardigan.
Sherlock almost lets out an audible sigh of relief. He's proven competent at tending to the infant, but he knows his limits. He won't be able to do it alone.
The appearance of a black saloon outside of the Sainsbury's is not a surprise. The person sitting inside the saloon when Sherlock throws open the door, however, is.
"Sherlock," Mary says quietly, eyes scanning the bags of nappies, formula, blankets, 'onesies', and other infant accoutrements. She is wan and drawn, but she is impeccably dressed.
Sherlock places the bags into the car, gets in, and shuts the door. He jams his hands into his coat pockets. "One question," he says, quiet and menacing but hopefully loud enough to mask the sound of his thumb working the keys of his mobile. "Why would you do this?" When no answer is forthcoming, he tries again. "Answer me. Why would you do something so cruel as this?"
Mary sniffs disdainfully. "You make it sound like I've got a monopoly on cruelty, Detective Not-Dead."
"I was protecting him."
"You assume I'm not?"
That catches Sherlock. "Explain."
Mary shrugs. "It's that simple. If I stay, John and the baby die. If I go, they live."
"Why?" Sherlock demands.
"Because I was the one assigned to kill John," Mary replies evenly. "The endgame to Jim's endgame, if you will. Did you honestly believe he didn't know you had a way out? He expected you to come back, and when you did, I was supposed to kill John on our wedding day, during yourspeech."
It feels as if Sherlock's heart has just twisted around in his chest, or stopped beating, or perhaps suddenly and inexplicably transmuted to ice cold lead. "You... what?"
Sighing, Mary rolls her eyes. "Classic Trojan horse, Sherlock—get within the walls, raze the city to the ground." She shakes her head in disappointment. "Between you and Jim, I'm not sure who's the bigger idiot."
Being on the back foot does not feel good. "Explain," Sherlock grits out. "Explain, and then explain to me why I should not deal with you right this second."
Mary lazily draws a tiny pistol—a nickel finish Beretta 950BS with a custom wood grip, expensive, sentimental item—from the inside pocket of her blazer. She disengages the safety and rests the weapon atop her knee, pointed squarely at Sherlock. "Why don't we do things in the opposite order? You'll stay right there, Sherlock, because I will deal with you more quickly, and then where will John be?" She offers him a smile that isn't quite apologetic. "What else did you want me to explain?"
Sherlock leans back in the seat and withdraws his hands from his coat pockets, keeping them where Mary can see them clearly. "Why is John still alive if you were meant to kill him?"
"I fell in love," Mary replies simply. "I'm ex-intelligence, not inhuman. Jim always did forget that."
Unless Mary is even more of a sadist than Moriarty and is drawing out the kill, Sherlock is fairly certain she's being honest about that. "If you're not a threat, there shouldn't be any danger to John," he says. "Mycroft and I spent two years ensuring that Moriarty's organisation was... cleaned up."
Mary snorts. "You poor thing," she chuckles. "You caused us problems, there's no doubt about that—accounts closed, schemes exposed, murders solved, the whole lot—but the whole empire? Jim's little 'consulting criminal' thing was a hobby, an outlet. Everything else was business until he fixated on you and started the whole serial-poisoner, blowing-shit-up nonsense."
The disdain in Mary's tone is not difficult to pick up on. "You disapproved," Sherlock ventures. Considering it again, he detects a trace of bitterness in Mary's tone as well. "You were in a position of influence, enough that when he began to deteriorate, your loss of power was marked."
"If Jim was you, as he liked to say, then it wouldn't be a stretch for me to say I was the John Watson to his Sherlock Holmes before he went off the rails."
Sherlock barely manages to stop his mouth falling open in shock.
"There were rules, then," Mary continues. "It wasn't hard to prove that we lost money when Jim indulged his sadism. The Litvinenko debacle was bad enough; the year he spent toying with all those little 'games' he set up for you, profits fell by over sixty percent." She shakes her head slowly. "I hated that year. Never did like a kill that wasn't clean."
"As opposed to clean ones, which you do like?" Sherlock snipes, attempting to gain some semblance of an upper hand. He doesn't like the thought that this... this woman has been near John, much less married to him... in his bed...!
Mary gives Sherlock a bored look. "Really? You're going to pull the 'evil murderer' card now?" She sighs in disappointment. "God. When John puts a bullet in the heart of a cabbie instead of, oh, shooting out the window or the bastard's shoulder, it's not a problem? When you fake your own death to go traipsing around the world doing God only knows what—oh, wait, sorry, I do know, I've got the paperwork and the accounts to prove it—in the name of 'stopping Moriarty', it's not bad? Painting the patio with Magnussen's brains wasn't a fucking problem, but we're going to take issue with the fact that I, too, have killed people? We're going to go there now?"
"You did it for money," Sherlock protests.
"Jim trapped me and dragged me into the business," Mary retorts, gesturing firmly with the pistol, "but yeah, the money was good, and it was better than being tarred and feathered, waterboarded for information I didn't have, and then used as some sick fuck's toy once I got sent off to Gitmo." She takes a moment, breathing heavily, her gaze faraway and troubled. When she comes back to herself and the conversation, her mouth curls into a snarl. "If Jim used money as a carrot for clients, I was the goddamn stick, and you know as well as I do that Jim's clients were not good people. Seventeen of the most disgusting, grasping, scheming, soulless bastards were lucky enough to get a bullet to the brain and little else." Mary leans into Sherlock's space, expression reproachful. "You flog and dismember dead bodies for fun and get pissy when perfectly innocent people aren't getting killed in 'clever' or 'elegant' ways. You slip drugs into John's food and drink— your best damn friend, Sherlock, and you treat him like he's nothing more than a fucking lab rat!" She shakes her head. "Neither of us is fit to cast a single bloody stone at the other, wouldn't you say?"
The mobile is heavy in Sherlock's coat pocket. "You can't leave him," he says, resigned. "You can't leave him with the baby like this. You're his wife. This is going to kill him, Mary."
Mary clenches her jaw, closes her eyes, and takes a deep inhale-exhale through her nose. When she opens her eyes again, the mixture of regret and determination makes something in Sherlock's chest sink. That isn't the face of someone about to capitulate. "Sherlock. If I leave, he hurts. He hurts a lot, but he has our daughter, he has his life, and he has you. If I stay, if I don't take over the empire and redirect all the pent-up, viciously toxic antipathy you've managed to draw to yourself and the people you care about with your ham-fisted bullshitting over those two years, you'll learn that Jim's creative sadism really wasn't very unique after all."
Sherlock shakes his head. "I am apparently John's best friend and possibly an emotional crutch, yet you were willing to shoot me to keep me from exposing your past to John. Why the sudden change of heart?"
Tipping her head from side to side in a somewhat conciliatory gesture, Mary leans back and takes a deep breath. She looks exhausted, but there's grim resolve in the set of her jaw. "I panicked."
"Sentiment." Sherlock's tone is condescending.
"Don't even try to pretend you don't care," Mary growls. She glances out the window. "I'm going to do this, Sherlock. The empire can be collapsed, but it has to be done from the inside, and I have the in to do it." With her free hand, she pulls a flash drive from the breast pocket of her blazer. "There will be cases, Sherlock, the kind you like, but you're going to have to be prepared to deal with me treating you like an enemy if we cross paths. I can't keep John and the baby safe—I can't put an end to Jim's long games—if people get even the slightest inkling that I might have a weakness for them or for you, emotional or otherwise."
Taking the flash drive, Sherlock nods. As the car pulls up to 221B, he clenches his jaw. The mobile in his coat pocket may as well be a hot coal. "I made my vow," he says. "I intend to keep it."
Mary smiles. "Thank you."
In Sherlock's pocket, the mobile begins to cry. He freezes.
There's a long moment where the only noise in the car is the sound of the baby's cries through the phone.
Mary closes her eyes and laughs. It sounds flat, broken. "Get out of my fucking car, Sherlock."
Sherlock gets out of the car. He gathers the bags as Mary unseals the divider; briefly, he catches a glimpse of the driver's seat—it's a complicated, messy tangle of electric motors and wires below the waist of the dummy driver.
Mary leans forward to speak to the heavy sitting in the passenger seat as the door shuts. Nickel glints in her off hand, against the back of the passenger headrest. The saloon rolls away.
The tinted windows aren't enough to mask the flash of a gun firing.
Notes: "Behind every great fortune, there is a crime." - Honoré de Balzac
Inspired heavily by the Mary-as-Moran hypothesis and by Michael Corleone's story throughout The Godfather.
This was my first shot at writing something more serious. Hopefully I didn't bodge it too badly.