In theory the evening was supposed to be "dinner with John and Mary." In actual practice it turned into "dinner with Mary because John got called to see a patient in hospital right after the wine was poured and the tagine served." So there they were, Sherlock and Mary and a chicken tagine for three with steamed couscous, naan purchased from the Indian place around the corner, and Greek yogurt with honey and canned clementines for dessert.
Mary grinned at him. "Alone at last." It wasn't salacious, but it did have that reliable tinge of sturdy amusement that Sherlock found to be uniquely Mary's own. He knew no other woman who could be so solidly, unswervingly amused. If he'd had to compare it to anyone else of his acquaintance, it would have been Lestrade: there was something so anchored and at ease about it, and it had such a wealth of good will…
It was part of what had fooled him. Which was embarrassing: he knew what Mary and John did not. He knew Lestrade was more than he seemed—that he played roles, and played them well, with few ever the wiser. The fact that Lestrade's humor was similar to Mary's probably meant nothing, but the fact that Lestrade and Mary were in any way alike should have tripped off alarms, sparked ideas, set off chains of deduction. He should have known, and he hadn't.
Still, he liked her. He liked her humor. He smiled. "Given you're within weeks, if not days, of delivering, I doubt either of us is likely to make much use of the solitude," he said. "Want me to serve?"
"Love you to serve," she said, and patted the vast curve of her stomach. "Getting up is difficult. Ladling food out of serving dishes is worse."
He scooped couscous, and ladled on juices from the tagine. "White or dark?"
"Dark."
"More?"
"God, yes. 'Eating for two' my arse: she's a little black hole, this one. Ravenous."
He slipped a second chicken thigh on the plate, then carefully piled on a healthy serving of chopped salad. "Good for you," he pointed out. "You've included plenty of chopped parsley, too—iron and folic acid."
"How many 'having a baby books' have you read since John and I got fruitful and multiplied?"
"Only thirty-four. The rest weren't current, though I should probably add one basic OB/GYN textbook that's been considered foundational for the past fifteen years. Standard introductory material."
"And how much time surfing the web?"
He grinned. "You know me too well."
"That I do, that I do. Mind if I start? She's roaring like a lion at feeding time…"
"Go ahead." He picked his way through the tagine, sorting out a single breast, several spoons of carrots, avoiding onions and raisins, but carefully ladling up several spoons full of sauce, setting the couscous awash. He pulled the plate toward his place."
"Eh-eh-eh, salad. You need your parsley, too."
"I'm not pregnant."
"You might as well be. And anyway, it's vitamins. You can't turn down perfectly good vitamins."
"Can."
She glowered at him, even as she dove into her own dinner with gusto that proved her claims about her hunger. "Can. Won't, though."
"Why not?"
"Because you kind of like being bossed around."
He snorted. "Don't."
"Do."
He shot her an amused look, and conceded, "Yeah, ok. I do. Don't tell Mycroft."
She snorted. "I'm pretty sure there's no point—if he's not the one who set that bit of Pavlovian conditioning in place, I don't know who did."
"Mummy."
She thought about it. "No. She's a force of nature, but I don't think she bosses. Swept through making pronouncements and left Mycroft to make sure they actually happened, right?"
"You're rather good," Sherlock said, considering. "Not my kind of deduction, but still—very good."
"Oh, I'm definitely more Marple than Poirot," she agreed. "People stuff."
"But you're not very good at people stuff yourself," he said. "You're more like me."
She nodded. "Foot in mouth. Have to work at it, like your brother does."
"Humph. Mycroft." He rolled his eyes. "Drives me crazy. Wants to blend in, wants to be different at the same time. Wants it both ways."
"And you don't? You just want it both ways without having to work at it," she said, with a smile that softened her precision. "He's willing to adapt. You want the world to adapt to you."
"Of course."
She laughed, then, catching the amused sparkle in his eyes. She got his jokes. Even John often failed to get his more subtle jokes. The schoolboy jokes, the wild fun—those John understood perfectly. The quiet, sly jokes, the moments when he poked fun at himself? John sometimes missed those jokes—jokes developed over a lifetime with Mycroft as his only peer. Subtle, serpentine jokes that hissed their quiet amusement and coiled in the brain making wicked suggestions. Now there were two people who understand those jokes. Mycroft and Mary.
He considered her. "I can't decide if you're like me, or like my brother."
Instead of huffing and being offended, she pondered it, shoveling another spoonful of couscous in as she did. "It can't be both?" she asked after a moment.
He cocked his head, considering. "We're rather similar," he conceded.
"Rather different, too," she said, "but that's not necessarily a problem."
"So. You're a brilliant, deductive show-off recluse with ambitions to take over the universe while drinking your morning tea?"
"No. Yes. Maybe." She pushed the plate toward him. "Please, sir, can I have some more."
He nodded, and pulled the plate toward him. "All right. You're a deadly secret service operative who's still threatened by enemies—known or unknown—who might kill you at a moment's notice. And you're in touch with my brother, and probably with your former employers in the United States. And you haven't told John." He pushed the plate back. "Were you going to?"
She met his eyes, unwavering. "I don't know. I'd prefer not."
"He won't appreciate being lied to."
"It's not a lie. Not this time. He's the one who chose to burn the USB." She licked gravy off her spoon. "I'm a surprisingly good cook, sometimes," she said, looking both amused and impressed. "Really, this came out pretty well."
"Burning the USB doesn't change the problems facing you."
"No. But it does mean that, since I don't know what's coming and he doesn't want to know what happened to cause it all, there's not much I can say." She sighed. "What I want—what I want is for it to never matter."
"Hardly a practical basis for long-term planning."
"You've got a better idea?"
He heard the needle sharp counter-critique hidden in her words, and was sufficiently abashed to lean over his meal, focusing on chicken and gravy and salad, rather than on the subtext of their conversation. "Have you chosen a name, yet," he said.
She sparkled, merrily. "May have. If you want to know, though, you have to be a very good boy."
He glowered. "I don't do 'good boy.'"
"Now, now, leopard—a change of spots can be invigorating."
He pondered, tapping the tines of his fork on his plate. Subtext slithered between them. "Did Mycroft know?"
She didn't meet his eye. "You'll have to ask Mycroft."
"He never tells if he can help it."
"Thus proving he's a professional."
"It's hardly admirable in a brother, though. Or in a spouse. John should know."
She did meet his eye, then. "It's hardly admirable in a brother. Or a best friend. And I know perfectly well you've not told John everything."
He looked away, unsettled. "Nothing to tell."
"Don't be ridiculous. He should know what you are by now—and he's still able to ignore it, even when it's right in front of his eyes. I know why you don't hate me, you know."
"Why should I hate you?"
"For loving John and putting him at risk. For lying. For hiding things. I know why you can forgive me. And why you even like me."
He leaned back and gazed hot daggers down the table at her, then, crossing his arms over his chest and letting his legs sprawl.
"Why, then?"
She smiled. "Because I am you. In the end, you know perfectly well why I've made every single choice I have—because you've made the same choices already. And always did." She pulled close the bowl of yogurt, spangled with fruit sections and covered in lashings of honey. "Want some?"
"Yeah, sure," he said.
She dolloped great spoonful into the bowl, then another, and pushed it back his way.
He took a spoonful, licking and shaping it like a child with an ice cream cone, studying her. "What choices?"
"To lie. By omission." She grimaced, tasting her own. "Not as nice as I remembered."
"More likely more taste shift from the hormones," he said. "It's actually quite good."
She sighed. "I hope I get my old tastebuds back someday." She pushed away the bowl.
"What do you think I lied about," Sherlock said, softly.
"Same thing I do," she replied, rolling her eyes. "You're an operative. It's obvious. I have no idea how he can know what you spent the past two years doing and still not really know what you spent the last two years doing. But he can. You spend two years as an active MI6 agent, killing people—and he doesn't get it. They wanted to send you back, after Magnussen—and he still doesn't get it. He doesn't get that you'd done it before. That Mycroft's been trying to find some way to get you back for years. He doesn't get any of it." Then she looked up at him, blue eyes meeting blue. "But I also know you've never, ever sat him down and told him. Have you?"
He started to speak, hesitated, shied from her direct gaze, then returned. "No."
"He still doesn't see you're me."
"No."
She nodded. "And that's why you don't hate me. Because you'd have to hate yourself."
"I'm assured I'm rather good at hating myself."
"Not this way, you're not." She smiled at him. "Don't worry. I won't tell him, either. We don't tell John."
"We should."
"He won't let us. You know that. You know we've both tried a hundred times, and he's turned the conversation away every single time. He wants the lie, Sherlock." She ducked her head, then, and her voice was sad. "He loves us better when we give him the lies he asks for. When we don't steal his illusions from him."
The table was narrow. They'd been sliding food back and forth across it throughout the meal; sliding a hand down the table was no harder. Sherlock's hand slipped toward her, took hers firmly. He wasn't sure if he was giving comfort, or seeking it. "He still does love us."
She nodded, fair hair shining under the modest table lamp hanging overhead. "I know," she said. She fought down a sniffle, and looked up at him with a smile that threatened even his heart with sorrow. "You'll take care of him if anything happens to me, won't you?"
He nodded. "And…likewise?"
"Of course. Already did once."
"What are we?"
She shrugged. "Brother and sister? Mirror and reflection? Husband and wife to John?"
He didn't comment. None of them felt right. But none of them felt wrong, either.
She sighed. "We're Sherlock and Mary. We may not be as dangerous as your brother Mycroft—but we're more dangerous than almost anything else in the jungle. And we belong to John—who's an idiot who thinks we're very nice people. And who refuses to believe we're not." She stood, then, slowly and with a certain amount of moaning as her pregnancy made itself felt. "Ooooooh, that's bad. The thing is…" she picked up dirty plates, then looked at him with a sad smile. "The thing is, we keep hoping if we let him work with us long enough, he'll find a way to turn us into who he thinks we are. Don't we?"
He stood and gathered up the larger serving dishes. "Lestrade keeps saying someday, if he's lucky, I'll be a good man, as well as a great man," he said, softly.
She nodded. "Same dream."
"I…don't think that kind of thing happens," he said.
She shrugged. "We can hope."
He nodded. "Yes. We can hope." And in the name of hope, he helped clear the dishes and load the dishwasher, before deciding that was enough of being good for one night, and going to paw through John's DVD collection to find something to watch while waiting for John to return.