John made the school run. Formerly this had been a thirty-minute, agonizing, cascades-of-tears ordeal, but today he barely got Rosie out of her anorak before she said "Bye, daddy," and toddled off without a backward glance at him towards her newest obsession. This was a toy cash register, sized for the preschool set, which could ring up and print out receipts for a variety of cans, bottles, and plastic models of food. It even made the "meep" noise that always fascinated Rosie when they actually went to the grocery store.

He grinned as he watched her set to her day's work. As all parents do, John knew that someday Rosie would grow up and leave him behind, he just hadn't realized it'd quite possibly be for a job clerking at Aldi. He was making to leave, but was ambushed by Rosie's teacher, Miss Melanie, who wanted to talk to him about how he was meant to volunteer at the Christmas fair, a conversation that seemed to carry on far longer than needed…

In which Miss Melanie kept touching his arm, and giggling, and calling him Captain Watson, which he was fairly sure he'd never mentioned to anybody at this school. With a start, he realized that she fancied him. She'd googled him.

And she was quite possibly a bit kinky.

As delicately as he could manage, John extricated himself and went off to work. It was a surgery day, and a busy one, but so routine that it didn't occupy a lot of his mental capacity. Maybe that was why the little incident stuck in his mind. It wasn't as though anyone else hadn't flirted at him, since… since. If anything nowadays he got more direct advances than he'd done at any other point in his life. Women love a widower, which was one of those facts that you only got to learn once it did you absolutely no good at all.

But Miss Melanie (oh, for God's sake, he wasn't the one in infants' school, the woman could just be called Melanie in the privacy of his own head) had a halo of tightly-curled black hair, cafe-au-lait skin, and had been wearing the sort of thin shirt where you could see a lot of her. She was really very attractive, and the first time in a long time, he could envision… asking a woman out. Taking her to dinner. Even-

John blinked, wrote yet another prescription for amoxicillin (strep season was in full swing) and went about his day.

Work ended and he retrieved his daughter, easily dodging Melanie who had twenty rambunctious children to wrangle. Rosie, who was as rambunctious as the worst of them but much cuter, regaled him with all the under-five gossip and showed him today's examples of little pictures and writing. They walked home, where he made a dinner of cheese ravioli with bolognese sauce while Rosie watched an episode of "Loud Backtalking Overacting American Children Grown in a Vat by the Disney Corporation."

It probably wasn't actually called that.

Dinnertime was succeeded by bathtime and bedtime, during which for the seventy-seventh night straight he read her not one but two storybooks and debated whether or not that should just become the official routine. Once again, John decided not. He liked it when Rosie asked him for the extra book. It gave him the pleasant illusion he wasn't, 100%, her serf.

Then, as always, there was that deadly long stretch between when she went to sleep and when he did. Sometimes there would be texts from Sherlock to enliven the hours but his phone wasn't cooperating tonight. John drafted yet another pitch letter to yet another literary agent, tried to watch the news, ran on the treadmill for ten minutes… and couldn't settle down at all.

"Fuck it," he mumbled, and stalked into the living room and opened up the liquor cabinet. This contained his Macallan, a bunch of dust-covered miscellaneous bottles, and, at the back, another brown liquor that he hadn't bought.

Mary was never much of a drinker but on the occasions when she would, she chose this bourbon, a high-tension, high-price, artisanally-distilled blend. It was American, and difficult for her to find in London, he knew, but he'd never asked her where she'd learned that it was her favorite. He'd never asked her a lot of things.

Now, he poured himself two fingers, neat, carried it back into the spare room which served as his study, and sat at his desk. Because he wanted to ask her something, and remembering the taste of her would make that easier. With the first sip (which he winced at, neat bourbon being sweeter than he liked), he was almost able to hear her voice.

"Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?"

She stood in front of him, but she was vague, not like she was in those first desperate months when he had (sort of) thought she was actually real. But then she wrinkled her nose, cocked her head, and asked him, "Seriously?"

"Sorry."

"Because I would never have said anything like that."

"Yeah, I know."

"There was one poetry reader in this relationship and it certainly wasn't me."

"Yeah, well, you're in my head now, I get to make you more literary if I want."

At that, Mary giggled.

"You aren't making me wear the clothes I died in anymore, either. And you haven't wanted to talk to me in a long time."

The first bit was true, he'd put her in the purple dress he'd liked, though it hadn't been a conscious decision. But for the second part? John shook his head and took another sip.

"I want to talk to you all the time. I just don't."

Mary smiled at him, sweetly, and asked, "All right, then. What did you want to ask me?" and when she said that her face was as beautiful and clearly-drawn as she had ever been, even in life.

"You know," John said, because of course Mary knew, she was only a mental exercise he would occasionally perform now, "What would you think about it?"

Mary shrugged one shoulder and frowned ruefully, "Sorry. I don't know anything about me that you don't know, and I hated talking about death. Remember how stressed I got when we had to fill out that life insurance paperwork when Rosie was born?"

"Yeah."

"But I never thought you'd have waited so long. It's a bit out of character."

John frowned up at her, "Your fault. You really screwed me up."

Mary blew a raspberry at him, "As if I'd planned it."

Then, hesitantly, she continued, "I will say, though… the contract we agreed to did have a defined end date built right in. 'Until death parts us.' Which it did. So I've sort of put it out of my power to object. Now all that matters is what you think about it."

John ran a hand through his hair and took a drink.

"I don't know. It didn't even seem possible, until recently. And things are good, even without, aren't they? It's a good life. Just-"

"Lonely, sometimes."

"Yeah. I mean obviously not Miss Melanie."

"God, no," Mary snorted, "She's literally half your age."

"And there are some inkwells into which nobody sensible dips his pen and my kid's teacher has to top that list," John said, sardonically, "But maybe somebody. No idea who."

Mary half-sat on the edge of the desk. If she were real, she would have been close enough to smell, to touch. But even when he'd been arguably insane he'd never gotten to the point where he'd try to test that, so he certainly didn't now. He did look where she angled her head, at the notebook he kept on the blotter, and listened when she softly said, "Try writing it down."

He uncapped a pen and drummed the end on the page, before beginning with:

Maternal.

Good with children.

Loves Rosie.

Mary nodded, slowly.

"Absolutely," she agreed, "Non-negotiable. And if you're after a daycare provider, totally sufficient. But just possibly not quite what you're really looking for here."

John rested his chin in his hand and looked up at Mary, who scoffed lightly at him.

"Oh, come on. This isn't all that hard. What did you like about me? Start there."

Pretty.

Mary made a face at him. John sighed, and scratched through the entry.

Funny.

Intelligent.

No weird hangups around sex.

She chuckled softly at that one.

"We did have some good times together. In and out of bed."

Fancies me.

"I really did, didn't I?" Mary said wistfully.

"Yeah, you were a bit obvious about it," John smiled back at her.

"Oh shut up, like you didn't make googly eyes at me too. Anyway we got married, so it's fine."

Likes Sherlock.

"That might be a bit of an ask."

Can put up with Sherlock.

"Better."

Doesn't mind my second job. If she actually liked it that'd be ideal.

Independent.

Mary nodded again, and said, "Good But-"

"But what?" John asked.

"How about the rest? How about the things about me that you didn't like?"

John looked down at the short list, and hesitated, before writing:

Honest.

Trustworthy.

Mary looked heartstruck and teary-eyed at that last one, which was a deeply unfair gesture on the part of his subconscious, and murmured, "I think… I think maybe if we'd had more time. I think we could have gotten back to trust again."

John cleared his throat. Even now, he could still be surprised by regret. He said, slowly, "Yeah. I think maybe. But we didn't, and I can't go through that again."

"All right," Mary replied, dabbing at her eyes with some supernatural kleenex that she'd conjured.

He started writing again:

So no spies, assassins, or superagents.

"Do you honestly think that's all that likely to accidentally happen twice?" Mary asked, curiously.

"With my track record I wouldn't like to rule it out."

So no spies, assassins or superagents. (Get external confirmation of this before proceeding.)

Mary was giggling at him, and John muttered, "Shut up."

While we're at it, also no on the following: smugglers-slash-acrobats, criminal masterminds, professional dominatrixes-

"But you'd be totally fine with an amateur dominatrix? I ask only for clarity."

"Shut up."

While we're at it, also no on the following: smugglers-slash-acrobats, criminal masterminds, professional dominatrixes, blackmailers, international arms dealers, sexy Mycroft minions, disguised secret Holmes sisters… actually let's just rule out any Holmes siblings, cousins, relations, employees, and homeless network members.

Mary's eyebrows were near her hairline.

"Homeless. Network. Members?"

"Before your time," John groaned, and threw his head back, before taking another drink, "God, I used to suck at this."

"It certainly sounds that way, yes."

A normal woman who has a normal job.

"Yeah, but that's the problem, though, isn't it, cause what you like… what keeps you interested? Hasn't historically been that."

"Maybe I've actually calmed down a bit."

"Maybe," Mary said, though she sounded dubious, "Anything else?"

John thought about it, for a minute.

Doesn't want any kids.

"Really?" she asked, "Rosie's your sun-and-stars."

"Yeah, now, but… I'm going to be fifty before too long and I spent two years on survival mode with her. I can't cope with another incontinent, insomniac lunatic who can only communicate by screaming. I'm done."

"Point. Though if you combine that with the first part of this list-"

"Oh."

Doesn't want more kids.

John thought for another minute, and then, defiantly, wrote:

Pretty.

The list, even in his fairly large script, didn't quite take up a full page. Mary said, quietly, "It really doesn't seem like all that much to ask for."

"Forty-one. I was forty-one, before I found you. And even you didn't have all of this."

Mary laughed, and said, "Well, yeah, but not all that time counts. For… what, the first thirteen years? You weren't particularly interested in girls. And you know that the Army was kind of a sausage fest. So really, with a bit of luck, it's totally possible you might meet somebody nice even before you turn seventy. If you started now."

John set the pen down, screwed the cap back on. If he started now…

His wedding band was plain unadorned gold, slightly battered with use. He hadn't wanted anything fussy. He could put it with Mary's rings, in the jewelry box in the attic, for Rosie to have someday. Or he could wear it on the right hand, he'd seen other widowers do that. Married gay men, too, but he'd gotten past the point of caring about that particular misconception. It acted as a useful filter that caught people who were a waste of time.

John had to twist and pull a bit to get the ring off. He hadn't removed it since she'd put it on him. It was winter, so he didn't have any revealing tan lines, but the ring had actually imprinted a groove into his finger, like he was a topiary.

Sherlock called that groove "adulterer's notch" when he was feeling waggish, and all of a sudden John's gorge rose. There was guilt, and grief, and just… he put the ring back in place, ignoring the pain when he had to force it past the knuckle.

"Not now," he whispered.

Mary had gone. But the thought came, in her voice, "Not now. But sometime."

John finished off the bourbon, washed out the glass, and went to bed.

Notes: In ACD canon, Watson does eventually remarry. If you're a Watsonian, he may in fact have remarried between three and five times (assuming you aren't of the "Mary Morstan didn't die, she just dumped Watson, and the 'second marriage' was them getting back together" school.) But I'm a Doylist and think it's likelier there was just the one:) Despite the title, this story isn't really about his second wife, though she will narrate roughly half of it because it's an incredibly thankless role in canon. Doyle didn't even give her a name. It's about Mary, and what she left behind her. It will (hopefully, eventually, don't hold your breath because I am slow) consist of six chapters, with each one working as a standalone.

The quote about Eurydice is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 10, as translated by Mary Innes back in the fifties.