TOO MUCH TO ASK

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

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Wringing her hands with inconsolable worry, "Mary Watson" felt absolutely helpless. John was missing at a Tube accident, Sherlock was investigating, and she was on bed rest, guarding a tender life from jeopardy with deliberate inactivity.

When Sherlock rang in from the derailment site, she blubbered uncontrollably in overt hysteria, her self-restraint completely dissolved by raging hormones.

"No!" She choked on tears in answer to his question, her voice high-pitched in sorrow. "No, he hasn't called…" This sniveling was so unlike her.

Sherlock acted as though he didn't notice. "No? Okay." He shouted over the background noise. "Don't have much information yet …"

Vividly, she could imagine the genius detective scrutinizing the emergency scene with every analytical power at his command (which was considerable) picking out minutiae of everyone in view and filtering out unnecessary information at exceptional speeds. Maybe it was too soon if even he had nothing to report…and yes, she would have been able to tell if he were lying to her about what he knew, especially if he wanted to conceal or protect her from distress; but because the timbre of his voice was normal, the inflection natural, the speed of his words ordinary (for him), the syntax expected, she believed and trusted his words on both an intellectual and instinctive level—for she always knew when people were lying.

Sounds tumbled from her in a wash of weeping that made every attempted utterance inarticulate "What can you see? What's going on? Does anyone know anything? Who can you ask?" She was trying to say, but her words were drowning in tears. "Oh, please, please do whatever you can!" What has happened to me? To be so emotionally fragile!

"Don't worry. I promise you. I will find him." For a "high-functioning sociopath" who claimed to have no heart, he drove right to the heart of the matter. The Best Man's consolation helped her recover her voice.

"I know you will, Sherlock." She clearly heaved a sob, but continued with unabashed trust and hope filling her words. "If anyone can…."

When they hung up, Mary realized Sherlock hadn't revealed anything significant—although the adage "no news is good news" ran through her mind. Greatly significant, however, was that he called at all. It showed how much he had changed, how much he had learned about human nature, because of his best friend—John.

Lack of action was so contrary to her. It made her realize how much she changed, how much she had surrendered from her previous life for the love of her husband. Deeply and genuinely in love with such a decent man had made her vulnerable. John was quite exceptional in so many ways, very "decent" and morally fixed for sure, although he was not a saint—fortunately! Yet by comparison, she had certainly been a "sinner" as a member of an elite Special Activities Division team, the primary action arm of the National Clandestine Service, performing 'reconnaissance' and 'other duties' for the covert intelligence community.

She loved her new identity filled with promises she never thought she deserved. Whilst all instincts told her that allowing herself to become a wife and very soon a mother was perhaps the riskiest thing she had ever done, she could only hope her secret would keep her safe. Love for her husband was transformative. It had changed her. Yet, with this amazing love for her child, she felt her trained fierceness had a life-affirming purpose: to give—not take away— existence, by protecting a precious life. Now as Mary Watson, she could only hope that the omniscient Divine Justice, witness to her bloodied past, would "weigh the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales."

During her darkest days, A.G.R.A. had clung to those lines from Dante's Divine Comedy, not knowing if she would ever be forgiven for the lethal misdeeds she was assigned to perform. Conflicted by her soft-hearted side from which was born the idealist who longed for justice in a terrorized world, she had instead become a hardened covert force, a reckoning, possessing exceptional killer skills and singular focus, an unfailing huntress and most dangerous predator with instincts she may never had dreamed she owned, but to which she felt she had been born.

Always in flux, she was a survivor with a genius for duplicity that informed her life of action and constant changes; who better knew the dire consequences of pause, of rest, of standing still to smell the roses and drink in the world's beauty? Her targets who made that mistake had died.

Whilst she commanded an extraordinary ability to blend, like a chameleon, in the depraved underworld of espionage and undercover operations, normalcy was her best disguise. Socially adroit, gifted with an astonishing ability to mimic very subtle differences in regional accents, along with her nonverbal talents (sweet smile, dimpled cheek, blue eyes, winning personality completed by an attractive, petite figure), she easily baited her prey. An unrivaled master at lying, coupled with an astonishing memory for every nuanced fabrication, she penetrated enemy defenses with guile, not force, that time- after-time ensnared her unsuspecting victims.

The outcome was always the same, but "how" A.G.R.A. executed her orders varied. Those she judged as heinous monsters deserved her direct affront—a bullet to the brain—in the split seconds after recognition, when they saw her truth and realized their errors. At that moment, their faces contorted in ugly rage—and she took them out— preserving that final expression for all to see. With others, for whom she felt a tinge of remorse, she would take a "step back" and let them take their last steps into her fatal traps; essentially their demise would be their own undoing, keeping her hands free of actual bloodshed. Subconsciously, she hoped some would get away. None did. She was too good.

Lying was her art; lying was her salvation; lying brought her back to the safety of anonymity where she would begin again on her next assignment. Over time, the toll of this Mobius loop began to warp reality, and after years of deception, lines were blurring between her undercover personas and the person she once remembered being—a misunderstood American dreamer, too clever for her own good, and running from a troubled past.

Yes, Sherlock, you brilliant man. You alone perceived my original accent!

However, she was not deceiving herself now as Mrs. John Watson.

No! She had spent the last five years purifying herself of that unspeakable past, locking away in a casket the selfishness that made her the consummate killing machine, and finding ways to atone for her sins.

It was a hard-won battle. Once the 'trapper,' she gradually felt trapped by the crimes of her trade. Her superiors' flattery that manipulated her genius and propelled her feats of espionage in her impressionable youth, seemed hollow, untrue, as she aged. Steadily, an innate sense of a remembered morality took root in her soul. Mental arguments in voices from a distant past about right and wrong conjured doubts as she faithfully fulfilled each task she was given. However, stopping and stepping away was not an option; nor could she confide these wishes to anyone. Whom could she tell? What would be the consequences of admitting she recognized the ethical dilemma of her acts? Would it matter that she felt wrong, tainted, cold-blooded, when she completed her assignments? Would the usual debriefing methods truly erase her sins along with her memory? Stranger still, she began to long for an honest love, born of a genuine romantic entanglement; was that even possible?

Finally, the soft-hearted idealist cried out for mercy and freedom, and only the assassin listened.

When the last operation went horribly wrong, an opportunity opened, quite auspiciously. Over six years ago, the clever and cunning A.G.R.A., had apparently "gone rogue" and subsequently "died," lost in the Black sea during an accidental and fiery helicopter crash. A ghost of her former self emerged, roaming, waiting, searching, hoping to rise like a phoenix from those ashes of self-destruction, new, reborn to live again.

Five years ago, when she had surfaced in London as Mary Morstan, trained nurse, working at a local surgery, she did not feel like the phoenix, feathered in resplendent fire and vitality. Rather, she felt like a nervous cat that had managed to extract one more life from the nine she had been given. Trouble was she had lost count. Whilst this one was the best so far, for all she knew, it could be her last.

A shudder ran through her. Was it too much to ask to have a chance at life, at happiness? Could this existence as Mary Watson be her redemption at last?

She was not deceiving herself with John Watson, either.

Their connection was real, their abiding love tested, but true. They were both survivors of violent conflicts: he had seen worlds at war, she experienced underworld warfare, each had been wounded in some way: he physically and emotionally, she had suffered psychologically, knowing there was blood on her hands, both were ultimately invalided from the only lives they ever knew, and both were truly incapable of acclimating themselves in a normal world. Perhaps by random chance, they had found each other, attracted at the subliminal level by kindred spirits—just as Sherlock and John had been in their budding friendship before her.

Providence, destiny, luck? She could not lose him now! Not to arbitrary, unanticipated ACCIDENT! That was TOO cruel! Kind, tolerant, and caring as he was, John was not that good that he should die so young!

How would she survive without him? And their baby would be fatherless? Her childhood memories of abandonment and loss, the feeling of betrayal when her ordinary life was SNATCHED away, like her parents in that fatal car accident too many years ago, like her breath now; everything hit her with full force and tears streamed down her cheeks. How vulnerable love had made her. How easily broken she was.

A text message from Sherlock chimed; a carefully worded haiku appeared:

Some progress at site

Mycroft Lestrade are on it

Waiting to hear more

SH

Mary palmed away her tears. She understood his message. Sherlock was being kind, making no false promises, neither inflating nor deflating hope.

She texted a reply. Staying positive. It was a lie. For the goodness of John, however, she was struggling to remain good. For the love of John, she would do anything… nearly anything...except return to that insane desperation which nearly ruined three lives months earlier.

Swollen with child, Mary eased carefully to her knees on the woven bedroom carpet, clutched her hands together as she leaned on the bed, and tried to pray. It had been so long. She feared her unworthiness was too great, nor did she know if anyone would listen. Could she believe anymore in Divine Intervention, that a Benevolent Force out there would take pity and consider the appeal of such a great sinner? For John, she would try.

Fingers interwoven like she had been taught as an innocent child, she bowed her head in meditative silence. Wordless at first, her thoughts were liquid, rushing and babbling over her like a gentle brook, but they froze over quickly in icy shards of misery and memory about past transgressions that frosted all warmth away. She felt as if her heart would burst with the cold. For everything I've done, I deserve to die, not him! Bring him back. He DESERVES to live…even more than me. Wearily resting her head on her arms, her shoulders wracked with sudden uncontrolled sobbing, she whispered, "bring him home, to me, to our child!"

"The doctor's wife…,." Sherlock's disembodied voice emanating from the earbud had cajoled her as she stood looking down the narrow corridor within Leinster Gardens, "…must be a little bit bored by now."

She had wanted to quip that the doctor had been bored too with ordinary domesticity, even if John didn't realize it. Not until he saw Janine and Sherlock acting the happy couple and making dinner plans. The very idea was a tremendous disappointment John had tried to conceal—she herself thought it ludicrous—but listening intently through the earpiece to Sherlock's voice, Mary stood facing the silent seated figure in the shadows at the back end of the hall and held her peace.

Instead, at the consulting detective's encouragement, she demonstrated A.G.R.A.'s deadly marksmanship and pierced a fifty-pence coin with a quick shot.

"May I see?" The consulting detective's voice was no longer on the phone, nor coming from the seated figure she faced, but behind her at the entrance of the corridor.

Composing herself she turned with a quiet, appreciative snicker toward the master illusionist. "It's a dummy!" She pulled the bud from her ear and shrugged. "I suppose it was a fairly obvious trick."

With her toe, Mary slid the punctured coin across the floor towards Sherlock, who stopped it with his foot, then picked it up, grimacing with pain from the effort. Raising the coin in the air, the consulting detective's inspection was laced with admiration at her skill. "And yet, over a distance of six feet, you failed to make a kill shot."

Distracted by their quietly intense confrontation, she was terrified of the brilliant man who stood poised to destroy her and didn't notice how weak he appeared, that his balance was shaky, obviously suppressing pain, and talking through his breathing difficulties. "Enough to hospitalize me; not enough to kill me," he surmised. "That wasn't a miss," he continued with a hint of a smile. "That was surgery..."

As their eyes met in that moment, she was struck cold with tremendous remorse. Long ago, she had drowned A.G.R.A. to keep the future safe, in hopes that whoever she would become, whomever she would learn to love would not need to fear. All whom Mary Morstan Watson had grown to love were now in jeopardy because Magnussen resuscitated A.G.R.A. It was vengeance toward Magnussen to protect the reborn and pregnant Mary that motivated the assassin's return, but Sherlock was nearly killed in the process. To have sacrificed the friend both she and John dearly and deeply loved gave Mary enormous shame and she bowed her head, expecting the harshest rejection and censure she certainly deserved.

Instead, she received Sherlock's understanding, which stunned her. And despite his deductions about her dishonorable past, he still offered to take her case. "Why didn't you come to me in the first place?" Only his question held traces of anger.

In abject fear she admitted, "Because John can never know that I lied to him. It would break him, and I would lose him forever, and Sherlock, I will never let that happen."

Without acknowledging her words, Sherlock slowly turned and retreated toward the front door.

"Please…" her voice gave her away, prompting the consulting detective to slowly turn toward her again, his hand resting on the fuse box."…understand. There is nothing in this world I wouldn't do to stop that from happening…"

"Sorry" Sherlock said switching on the power that illuminated the corridor and eliminated all shadows, "Not that obvious a trick…"

Just as A.G.R.A. had done to her own victims, she had been tricked into betraying herself. In that sickening moment, the lie was bared and her world exposed. She trembled, afraid like never before, trapped in the livid glower of her beloved husband John Watson who arose from the lonely seat no longer in shadows at the end of the hall.

Oh, once John knew he had married a liar, his fury and distrust frightened her, but his silence and distance, if not for the love of the life growing within her, would have destroyed her. She kept a strong front, but she sorely grieved for his love she had lost, for their life she had betrayed, and for all the promises she had killed, in a moment of madness and weakness when she chose her old tactics to resolve her new problems.

After months of near silence, months of dreary separation, John had found his way past his own misgivings as well as hers to forgive her. "The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future ... are my privilege." The intimacy in his soft voice and the depth of feeling in his deep eyes melted her last barrier of defense, but when he threw the pen drive containing A.G.R.A.'s entire dossier onto the burning logs in the fireplace, "No, I didn't read it." he added, she threw herself into his embrace, never wanting to let go.

Sherlock was right about John being the "bravest and kindest and wisest human being." Her husband's act of kindness, his leniency and compassion were honest, true, and healing, bringing redemption to her lost soul. It is no wonder that Mary, like Sherlock, loved this valuable and incredible man wholeheartedly.

Mary awoke with a start. While praying, she had fallen asleep, slumped against the side of the bed, her neck kinked from the funny angle and her lower back throbbed. Her slumber must have been deep, for she had not woken to the three texts she had received from Sherlock in the interim. Maybe in some way sleep was an answer to a forlorn and fatigued pregnant woman's prayers who was waiting for word about her husband. Quickly she read each message. More haikus.

Permission given

Crowds of onlookers have thinned

I'm staying for John

SH

Moving past the tape

For instructions and info

About time It's cold

SH

No sign of him yet

Waiting in queue after queue

No news is good news

SH

"Him?" Sherlock was too afraid use John's name? If he were breaking down with worry, the scene at the wreck must be bad. Mary blinked and rubbed sleep from her eyes to read the times each message was sent. Like clockwork he had sent them every hour.

It had been more than three hours! It couldn't be good. No! No wonder Sherlock was worried! She couldn't wait anymore. She must go find John herself! As she slowly pulled herself up from the floor with the help of the nightstand and bed, her lower back pulsed with a spasm. She bemoaned her bloated body for not moving as fast and gracefully as she once could: vulnerable indeed is a pregnant woman. Steady on her feet at last, she waddled toward the closet for a coat that no longer closed around her abdomen, found a scarf with matching knit hat that would always fit, and located her purse.

When her phone rang she jumped with surprise and then grabbed the device.

No longer texting, Sherlock was CALLING!

Fear locked her vocal chords, panic made her fingers fumble, but at last, she pressed the answer pad, hesitating. It was an effort to bring the phone to her ear. It didn't matter. Sherlock was shouting loud enough for her to hear at arm's length. "Mary!He's okay! Mary! He's fine!" His voice trembled with excitement.

Mary gasped. A flood of tears burst as she laughed and cried, doubled over by emotional release. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" was all she could mumble, with both Sherlock and God (not necessarily in that order) the objects of her immense gratitude. Then she heard John's elated voice.

"Mary? Mary! Luv, …so sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you!"

"Oooh, John! You're safe, you're safe! I was so…." her voice broke and through her own weeping, she heard him sob with her.

Once he composed himself again, he reassured her. "It's okay. I'm fine. There were injuries. I couldn't walk away… so many needed help…."

"Was so worried…that you were one of them…. I'm just so relieved you weren't hurt!" She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve and reached for a tissue to blow her nose.

"…Been through worse danger…"

"Yes! Yes! I know. I know!" Despite all the languages she could speak, there were no words equal to her joy. All she could manage were monosyllables in her current adopted accent.

"…but before, Mary, I NEVER had YOU to come back home to…"

"OOOOOh, John!" She massaged her belly as she felt the baby kick.

"Please don't be angry at me," his voice hesitated softly, but she could hear his tone rise with that unique comic inflection she dearly loved. "I handed the baby clothes you wanted me to bring home to a woman. To hold for me…" He waited a beat, "and I don't remember her name!"

Mary paused, then snorted a giggled through her tissues and tears. "No!" She teased. "Tell me the truth. You just didn't like those outfits…"

"Got me. Too much pink." He whispered with a smile in his voice.

All jesting aside, Mary could hear the fatigue behind his smile and once again, her heartfelt sentiment brimmed over with more tears. "Oooh, John. Come home soon!"

"Won't be long. With Sherlock's help…".

"Oh, Yes! John," Mary grinned with a mental picture forming in her mind. "Tell Sherlock HE must give YOU a kiss FOR ME."

She could hear John's amusement in his reply. "Certainly not!"

"Bye, Darling!" They bid each other reluctantly, simultaneously.

John was alive! John had done the noble thing—which he often did to a fault. Sparing no thought for self (nor his wife—the extension of himself), he charged into danger, willing to make great sacrifices to help survivors to safety. At least, he would be coming home soon. She imagined welcoming him with kisses and hugs as he walked through the door. Sherlock too for his loyalty and devotion ….

And when they were alone again, Mary imagined, how safe she would feel. Was it too much to ask for a night of peace, a night to find warmth and joy in the arms of her returning hero?

Like a lumbering elephant on parade, she ambled toward the closet to hang up her coat. Another more violent spasm in her back doubled her over, a sharp radiating pain in her abdomen took her breath away and brought tears to her eyes.

Too much to ask?

Now, baby?

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A.N. Thank you, englishtutor, for prompting this fanfiction Too Much To Ask from Mary M. Watson's POV. As a companion piece to Missing in Action and Action in Missing, I hope it is satisfactory as a third perspective on one night of worry …

In the past when composing my fanfictions I would diligently review (over and over) Sherlock episodes to transcribe dialog (over which I claim no rights) from the BBC show, I recently discovered, during the course of composing this fanfiction, the wonderful and brilliant transcripts by Ariane DeVere aka Callie Sullivan which has shortened my labors immensely and to whom I am now indebted.

I welcome your reviews...they keep the creative juices flowing. Thank you for all your support!