A Case of Identity

by thisisforyou

Even months after the Return, there are things about the detective that are purely Martin Crieff. Sometimes it breaks John's heart, but there was always something endearing about the young airline captain. Sherlock/Cabin Pressure: A series of missing scenes from series 3, based on the premise that Sherlock Holmes became Martin Crieff as a cover during the Great Hiatus.

A/N: All right, so a millionth re-listen of Zurich suddenly struck me with a burning need to finish this before s4. Life got away with me again and I missed that deadline, but hey, better late than never. I'm pretty sure I wrote the opening scene before series 3 was even out, so I'm still pretty proud of finishing it. I know there are a million other things I should be doing, and I know I'm incredibly late to this party, but I'm here now!

I'm choosing to ignore The Abominable Bride, because if it took me this long to come to terms with s3 I'll never get over that.

Anything quoted directly from the show was done using Ariane DeVere's marvellous and invaluable transcripts, which I used constantly for reference even when I didn't need to quote anything.

---

Even months later, there are things Sherlock does that are purely Martin Crieff: the nervous jump and stutter when someone catches him by surprise, the little wrinkle in his forehead when he frowns in confusion, the way he tugs on his shirt-sleeves when he's absently thinking, the genuinely fond way he smiles when Arthur Shappey comes to visit him.

Sometimes it breaks John's heart, but there's something quite endearing about the young airline captain.

He'd known something had happened to Sherlock from the very beginning. Well, all right, not the very beginning, he'd been a complete arse that night, but the next time they'd spoken it had been obvious, and when he thought back even that first time there had been this stiff sense of bravado, like he was forcing it. The Sherlock that had risen from the dead was softer, kinder, more the version of the great detective that only John had seen, and only late at night after the conclusion of a particularly unpleasant case.

The soft Sherlock had been oddly tolerant of Mary, accepting her with a smile instead of a hurtful remark, and while John had thought it strange at the time he hadn't wanted to say anything that might snap him out of whatever pleasant mood he was in. He'd probably been able to tell that Mary wasn't like the others, genius that he was.

It wasn't until they ran into the Knapp-Shappeys in a shopping mall four months later that John understood Sherlock hadn't made the change on his own. He'd managed to drag the detective out to look at tuxedos for the wedding with surprisingly little resistance, although he'd supposed Sherlock had always liked nice clothes. They'd stopped for lunch at the food court when a round-faced young man had paused in front of their table.

"Skip?" he'd said curiously, and the change in Sherlock's demeanour had been instantaneous.

The detective's posture had curled in on itself diminutively, like he was trying to make himself smaller, and his voice was higher, more hesitant, when he looked up with a surprised smile that John had never seen before. "Arthur!" he'd replied, standing up with an air of awkwardness like he wasn't sure if he should shake hands or hug. "What are you doing here?"

"We're on a stopover, Mum's taking me shopping," the man continued enthusiastically, pulling Sherlock into a hug that the detective accepted without question, even moving his own arms around the blond. "You look great, Skip, I love what you've done to your hair. Not that your old hair wasn't brilliant, but this is even more brilliant." Sherlock had smiled warily, but John frowned: the young man sounded strained, as though not being incessantly cheerful was not in his nature but something of the situation demanded it.

Sherlock looked even more strained as he smiled. "Carolyn's here too?" he asked, as if this was the worst news he could possibly have received and he was trying to pretend that he was pleased.

Confused as he was, John had watched as Arthur called up an older, grumpy-looking woman whose face had contorted into an odd look at the sight of Sherlock. "Martin," she'd said stiffly, and John had given up trying to understand the situation entirely.

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably. "Um," he'd said, rather uncharacteristically. "This is John Watson, he's a friend of mine. John, this is Carolyn and her son Arthur - Carolyn owns MJN Air, the charter plane company I told you about. Well, OJS Air now."

John hadn't been told any such thing, but as he had done so many times in the past, he played along. "Oh! Martin's told me so much about you," he lied, shaking their hands amiably. Sherlock gave him a quick grateful smile. "It's lovely to meet you."

"John Watson?" Arthur had barked excitedly, but John had watched Carolyn's naturally stern face fall as though confirming her worst suspicions. "As in Doctor John Watson? The one that used to live with the hat detective, Sherlock Holmes?" At a glance from Sherlock, John nodded. "Oh, brilliant! Are you happy that he's alive? I bet you are." He paused for a moment, but before John could reply, he had looked from him to Sherlock and back again. "Actually, Skip," he'd said reasonably, "with your hair like that, and that coat on, you kind of look like Sherlock Holmes."

Uncharacteristically, Sherlock fidgeted, glancing nervously at the thin line that Carolyn's lips had become. "Yes, Martin," the woman said, her voice icy. "You look uncannily like Sherlock Holmes."

The great detective looked from one to the other for a few more moments, as though gauging whether he could carry the lie any further. Then he sighed. "I'm sorry, Carolyn," he apologised. John's eyebrows hit his hairline. "I didn't have a choice, I needed the cover. People would have died if I hadn't, probably including me."

Arthur was frowning heavily at him as though processing the conversation was a quite phenomenal effort. "I don't understand," he said, unsurprisingly. "What are you sorry for? Skip?"

Sherlock reached out and put an unexpectedly tender hand on the steward's arm. "Arthur," he said slowly. "The reason I look like Sherlock Holmes is that I am Sherlock Holmes. When everyone thought I was dead I pretended to be Martin Crieff the charter pilot so that I could fly all over the world tracking down the people who wanted me dead without anyone knowing it was me."

John tried to look like he understood more about the situation than Arthur did, without much success. "So... Martin isn't real? It's just a false name?"

"Martin Crieff is a cover story," Sherlock agreed, looking relieved. "I was undercover, like a spy."

"You're James Bond," Arthur concluded. Sherlock shot an amusedly resigned look at Carolyn, who didn't return it. "And you're Sherlock Holmes. This is brilliant!"

The great detective smiled in an attitude of exhausted relief. "I really am sorry, Carolyn," he apologised once more. John couldn't help but notice that the soft Sherlock had come to the fore again; though he had made the distinction between the 'Martin' that he had adopted when Arthur first noticed him and the Sherlock he had revealed himself to be, the difference was not as pronounced as the first surprised change had been, as though Sherlock was trying to be a combination of the two personalities.

The woman remained stony-faced, however. "All that time I thought you were a blundering fool," she accused him quietly. "All those times you could have helped us and you just sat there pretending to be an idiot. And I felt sorry for you." Sherlock bowed his head, actually looking contrite. "Gerti's wiring," Carolyn said after a moment, two words that meant absolutely nothing to John. "When did you realise?"

Sherlock hesitated. "St Petersburg," he admitted after a moment. "I couldn't say anything," he pre-empted, as Carolyn opened her mouth angrily. "You got there in the end, everything worked out perfectly! Douglas always worked out a solution in the end, and if he hadn't, I would have said something. Like with the brake pads, or that time in Albacete."

Carolyn raised an impatient eyebrow, clearly not recognising either incident from those descriptors. Arthur, though, grinned. "Yeah, that was brilliant," he said eagerly. John was beginning to get the impression that a lot of things were 'brilliant' to Arthur. "So you're not with Swiss Airways, then?" the young man asked, tilting his head to one side curiously.

"No, Arthur," he said, a tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth. "I never applied for the job at Swiss Airways, that was just my exit strategy. I knew I would have to come back to London and maybe come "back from the dead", so my brother faked a letter from Switzerland so that I had an excuse to leave if I had to. Carolyn, if things hadn't worked out the way they did I would have supported you every way I could," the detective promised. Carolyn did not look to be mollified.

"So you can still visit Fitton?" Arthur asked eagerly.

Sherlock stopped for a moment, his whole body freezing in genuine guilt. "Well... probably not, Arthur," he excused. "I can't be away from London too often. Besides, I don't think I'd be very welcome." Carolyn's lips thinned even further, threatening to disappear entirely. "But whenever you're in London you could come and see us - 221B Baker Street."

With surprising sense, Arthur looked warily at his mother before smiling half-heartedly. "Yeah, maybe," he said sadly. "Well... bye, Skip. Mister Holmes, I mean."

"Sherlock, please," the detective corrected. "Goodbye, Arthur. If... if you have to tell Douglas, tell him I'm sorry I lied to him."

He sat back down after they left, Arthur casting a wistful look back at the two of them, looking miserable. John kept quiet, certain that his friend would speak when he was ready.

After a long moment, Sherlock sighed. "I was going to tell you," he said quietly. "You just never seemed very interested in what I did while I was away."

"I didn't want to know," John admitted. "And I was too angry to think that you might need to talk about it."

The detective shook his head, smiling ruefully. "I didn't even want to think about it," he said. "I didn't want to wonder whether Douglas or Carolyn would see me on the news and work out who I was, or whether if they did they would tell Arthur, or how they'd feel about it, or whether they'd even survived without Martin."

John waited for a moment; slowly, Sherlock took a deep breath. "Carolyn owns and runs a charter aeroplane business out of Fitton, near Bristol. Mycroft helped me to create a false identity; I posed as a pilot named Martin Crieff and she hired me. She never knew that half of her jobs were dummies that Mycroft gave her so that I could get to a certain country and spend a certain amount of time there without arousing anyone's suspicion."

"So you can fly aeroplanes?" John asked, grinning, expecting a smug expression along the lines of really, John?

Instead, Sherlock chuckled, looking slightly embarrassed. "Yes," he said slowly, "but I admit actually flying one was harder than I had anticipated. Luckily Martin Crieff had already established himself as a hopeless pilot to give a reason he'd gone for the job with MJN instead of a commercial airline." John laughed. "In my defence, though," the detective added, "not only was that model of aircraft notoriously difficult to fly, but that particular plane happened to be wired with gold instead of copper, which made it even heavier and more sluggish to respond. I'm almost certainly an adequate pilot under ordinary circumstances."

"Oh, I'm sure," John agreed.

Sherlock rolled his eyes at him. "Anyway, I worked hard to make sure Martin came across as useless and diminutive and with terrible luck - someone most people would just dismiss as a no-hoper. That makes this harder for people like Carolyn and Douglas - the other pilot, the First Officer - who are such dominant people, to reveal that I was tricking them into feeling superior in the first place."

John looked at the retreating shapes of Carolyn and Arthur, fading into the crowd and apparently out of his best friend's life forever. He supposed it was a bit like Martin Crieff had died, for them. The person they'd known for so long was simply gone. He doubted it was the fact that he'd tricked them into feeling superior that was the problem, but Sherlock probably wouldn't even consider that he'd also tricked them into caring about Martin.

He pushed it for a few weeks, months perhaps: this had been a huge part of Sherlock's life for the two years he was away, and John couldn't help but think it would be healthier for him to go and visit these people, to include them in his life as Sherlock Holmes so he felt like one person rather than two, to reconcile his double life and put the whole thing behind him.

In this time Sherlock very much acted like two different people; when he was with others, with Lestrade or Molly or, on one very memorable occasion, with Mycroft, he was so Sherlock Holmes it was almost surreal, like an incredibly skilled actor pretending to be the person John had known, deducing and deriding with such fervour John was almost afraid he would hurt himself. When everyone else had gone, however, the great detective seemed to cave in on himself, deflating like a balloon. John knew that was when he was seeing what was left of Martin Crieff.

He asked to meet Martin, to be properly introduced to the person his flatmate had been, once and once only. The look on Sherlock's face when John suggested it had pushed that idea right back out of his head.

"John, Martin Crieff is gone," the detective had told him with quiet desperation. "You have no idea how glad I am not to need him anymore."

John frowned at him. He'd never thought of it like that. "Sometimes, though, you do things, or say things, and it's like you're a completely different person," he said tentatively. "I thought maybe you wanted to be that person."

"Do you know what it's like to be undercover, John?" Sherlock asked quietly, one long-fingered hand falling from his lips. "I was supposed to be dead, I couldn't be recognised. I couldn't be even a little bit like Sherlock Holmes, ever, not even for a moment. I coached myself on how Martin Crieff would react to things relentlessly, so that when someone surprised me I would automatically react as Martin, not as Sherlock. That kind of constant training and reminding... you can't just snap out of it, just let those reflexes go. Martin Crieff was constantly looking over his shoulder, never relaxing, always looking out for trouble, and he couldn't ever turn to anyone for help. The only thing that made those two years bearable was Arthur and Douglas and Carolyn, and I would like nothing better than to forget most of them ever happened. If I could just press a button and never be Martin Crieff again, I would. But he's a part of who I am when I'm alone, part of how I cope with things, and it'll just take time for me to adjust to being back. I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but I can't help it and I wish you wouldn't draw attention to it."

An awful feeling had risen in John's throat like bile at the desperate look on his friend's face. He'd been so wrapped up in his own upset that he hadn't even stopped to think how difficult the years had been for Sherlock. "I didn't mean that," he said quietly.

"I know," Sherlock said, swallowing and looking just as ashamed as John felt. "I'm not blaming you, it's just… I spent every minute of those two years thinking about how you must be feeling, feeling horrible that I was causing you so much pain, wishing I could contact you to tell you I was alive and knowing I couldn't because it would put you in danger and I never want to feel the way I knew I made you feel. And you couldn't possibly think about how I was feeling because as far as you knew I wasn't feeling anything."

Against his will, John felt anger flare up in his stomach again. He was so sick of being angry at his best friend, and yet Sherlock kept insisting on saying things that just stirred the pool of resentment inside of him. "Surely even you understand why I'm angry, Sherlock, it's not because I didn't think it was hard for you."

The detective flapped his hands in frustration. "Of course I understand, John, I just said I know how you were feeling. I don't see how I can apologise any more, and I'm just looking for a little bit of recognition that the last two years haven't been easy for me either."

John took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down so he didn't say anything else utterly stupid, and sat down in the chair Sherlock had dragged back out of the bedroom with reluctance. "So tell me," he said.

---

The next shock came in the form of a tall, slim woman six months after what John had affectionately dubbed "The Return".

He'd entered the flat without knocking and found Sherlock quite comfortably sharing the sofa with the woman, both of them with their knees tucked up to their chests and cups of tea clutched between their elegant hands. Sherlock had looked wholly embarrassed to see John, a tinge of pink lighting up his cheekbones.

"Sorry," he'd said, trying and failing to keep a slightly belligerent note from his voice. "Am I interrupting?"

The woman had smiled, her carefully curled hair bouncing around her face, and lifted herself gracefully off the sofa. "Not at all," she had said cheerfully, her accent thick and exotic, and the jealousy that John had never quite been able to explain flared up in full force. "I really ought to be leaving. I have a dinner reservation it would be disastrous to miss. Thank you for the tea, Sherlock."

Sherlock had stood himself, smiling softly with real fondness at her. "Not at all," he rumbled. John wondered if his voice had actually deepened, or whether his jealousy was merely accentuating it. "Call again next time you're in London."

She turned a slightly stern look on him. "It's not that far to Fitton, you know," she scolded. "Arthur would love to see you."

"I know," Sherlock had said sadly, looking less like Sherlock than John had ever seen him. Theresa took a step forwards, reached her hand out to his jaw and actually kissed him gently on the lips. John waited for Sherlock to push her away, to get angry or disgusted at the contact, but he just smiled at her and let her leave without further comment.

"Sorry about that, John," he said quietly after she had closed the front door behind her. "Your questions?"

John frowned at him. "Yeah, who was she?" he asked obediently.

Sherlock shrugged, picking up their empty teacups and making his way towards the kitchen. "The Princess of Lichtenstein," he told him, like that didn't raise more questions than it answered. He paused for a moment, watching John's frustrated expression grow, then chuckled. "She uses MJN Air to fly her brother to boarding school. I'd worked with her government a few years before and she recognised me when we met. For the whole flight back I was terrified she was going to tell Douglas or use my real name but she asked Martin out on a date instead."

Jealousy flared in John's chest, but he swallowed it. "And did Martin say yes?" he asked, managing a sarcastic smile.

"I didn't really have a choice, she knew she had me over a barrel," Sherlock said, and he was blushing again. "Then she kept flying with us so we sort of pretended to be dating. And you can't really pretend to date someone for months without growing to like them. Theresa is a fantastic leader and I believe she would have taken my secret to the grave if she'd needed to, even though we'd only met briefly before it happened."

John was pretty sure Sherlock would have sung a different tune before what he had subconsciously started calling The Fall, but he didn't comment. "I'm glad you had someone you could trust, at least for a while," he said.

But Theresa von Lichtenstein did not simply go away. For someone who lived in a different country, in fact, she was astonishingly present in John's life. For a few days in the week after they met she even slept in John's old bedroom upstairs in 221B. John hadn't even realised the detective had re-furnished it after John moved out his bed.

Even after she was gone, he saw more of her than he would have liked; Sherlock seemed to have his laptop permanently on video chat, and it was a little disconcerting to have that feeling of walking into a room and knowing the occupants had just stopped talking about him when the only occupants were his best friend and his computer. He couldn't expect that Sherlock could spent two years away from him and not make friends, particularly given his own engagement to Mary, but it did sting a little that the person he spent the most time with now wasn't even one of the people he had worked with every day for years, but a woman he'd pretended to date for only a few months.

He didn't dare say anything, though, not when Sherlock already looked at Mary with such awkward trepidation, and although each of them had always known what the other was feeling they'd never had a conversation about what they meant to each other before the Fall and how they were supposed to acknowledge that afterwards. It was petty of John to be jealous, but somehow he had always thought that Sherlock would be the one person he would never have these feelings for, would never have to worry about the pain of seeing with someone else.

He knew Sherlock saw the frozen looks on his face every time he mentioned the princess, and he knew Sherlock saw him watching his reactions to Mary, but John wasn't sure how to talk about it, or even whether they needed to talk about it. Mary clearly liked Sherlock, and as the weeks turned into months they began to work out some kind of normality that involved all three of them, the awkwardness began to fade, and John's life reached a sort of happy medium between what it had been with Sherlock and what it had been after he was gone, and for a long time they never spoke about it.

"You never told me how you met," Sherlock said eventually.

They were having tea at Baker Street after the conclusion of a particularly thrilling case; it was after things like this that John occasionally wished he didn't have to go back to the one-bedroom in Islington and the fiancée and the responsibility, wished he could just put the kettle and the television on and pretend not to listen to Sherlock play the violin or mutter to himself over a microscope.

The sentence - apparently self-explanatory, as the detective hadn't connected it to anything - broke a fairly long and comfortable silence, and John wasn't entirely prepared to make sense of it on its own. "Sorry?" he asked, putting his teacup down.

"You and Mary," Sherlock elaborated, lifting an interested eyebrow over his own cup. "You never told me how you met. I came back and she just was."

He smiled, and it wavered, and yet again John wondered just how all right Sherlock really was with Mary being a part of his life. "I… well, she's a nurse," he said, slightly surprised that Sherlock was asking this question. Sometimes the detective made such an effort to act like a normal friend that it was as if he forgot he also broke into John's house at least once a month to spirit him away in the manhunt for a serial killer. "I was still working at the clinic, and hating it. I interviewed her for a position as an administrator. She was the fifth candidate I'd interviewed that week - all the others were straight out of medical school, all gave me the same speech about getting their feet in the door and their brilliant work ethic. Mary was like a breath of fresh air."

Sherlock twitched a faint smile onto his face, taking a sip of his too-sweet PG Tips. John smiled back. "She got the job in the end. As my administrator, we spent a fair amount of time together, and… she just never stopped being a breath of fresh air. In the end it was Mary who convinced me to set up my own practice, walked out of her job at the clinic to follow me there."

There was a brief pause while John didn't say all the other things: the way Mary had made him feel the same way Sherlock had at the beginning, swept off his feet and completely enamoured, the way she had said the name Sherlock Holmes so casually one lunch break that John had spilled everything to her before he'd even realised he was about to, all the things he hadn't been able to tell anyone else.

Then the detective put down his mug carefully. "I was so ready to hate her," he said quietly, as though a part of him was hoping that John wouldn't hear it.

"What?" he asked before he could stop himself.

Sherlock looked up at him, his eyes - more blue than green today, thanks to the silk dressing gown that he had donned over his clothes as soon as they had walked through the door - open in a way that even John rarely saw them. "The moment Mycroft told me where you had a dinner reservation the day I came back, I knew there was someone, and I was entirely ready to despise her."

John frowned, not quite understanding. "Why would you hate her?"

The detective smiled sadly. "Can you honestly tell me you wouldn't have moved back here by now if you didn't have Mary?"

"I'm not sure I can tell you a part of me isn't still thinking about it," John admitted, frowning at the double negative.

Sherlock chuckled. "I thought she'd be like all the girlfriends you'd had when you lived here, and I'd have to get rid of her so you could come back. And then I met her."

John grinned. "And it's not quite possible to hate her," he concluded, seeing the grin reflect itself on his old friend's face.

"I suppose I should have had more faith in you," Sherlock admitted. John had thought this quite often in the past, and he let it show on his face when he nodded, making the detective breathe out a laugh again. "I should have known that you'd only propose to someone who actually suited you."

He started to say something nice, something about how he and Mary do suit each other, and how he's really glad that Sherlock thinks so, because it's not as if he would have broken up with Mary if he didn't but it's nice to know that the two most important people in his life approve of each other. Something about the statement stuck in his mind and what came out instead was, "Hang on, you knew I was going to propose to her that night and you still interrupted?"

Sherlock looked sheepish. "I hadn't met her then."

John laughed, because that was so typical of the old Sherlock, the one he gets glimpses of every now and again like a food he'd thought he'd gone off. For a moment they were quiet, returning to the slow draughts of cooling tea, but Sherlock hadn't finished. "Before I left, when you lived here, I was terrified that you were going to decide you liked one of those ridiculous women enough to move in with her and leave me." Something in John's chest squeezed tight and painful: he'd always thought he'd imagined that desperate look on Sherlock's face every time he'd announced he was going on a date. "And then all the time I was away, I thought… there was a part of me that was terrified you'd be married, living in a quiet house somewhere not thinking about me at all, but there was a part of me that was even more afraid that you wouldn't have moved on at all, that you'd still be living here surrounded by my things, hoping I'd come back. I… I wouldn't have wanted that."

It always made John uneasy when Sherlock said something so clearly sincere, and yet he couldn't help but be touched that the detective had cared more about John's wellbeing than his own. The Sherlock that had come back from the dead had been uncannily full of sentimental gestures, and John had been torn between enjoying them and feeling guilty that Sherlock still felt like he needed to make them because John hadn't made it clear enough that he forgave him. "Of course I didn't," John snorted as flippantly as he could. They'd had enough conversations and enough apologies about how much John had suffered over the last two years, Sherlock didn't need to know how nearly he had ended up like that. "My whole life didn't revolve around you, you know."

Sherlock raised a sarcastic eyebrow, his teacup perched doubtfully on his lower lip. John laughed. "Shut up," he scolded, but he didn't miss the tiny glimmer of hurt in his friend's grey-green eyes. He was still getting used to the flashes of emotion that Sherlock gave away; it made him wonder sometimes how much he had used to hurt him and never realise because he never reacted. He sighed. "You're right," he admitted. "You were my whole life. My life before you was bleak and I couldn't cope with being thrown back into that so quickly. When I met Mary she made me feel like you used to, pulling me into doing stupid things in the middle of the night - on our first proper date we broke into a private park in Chelsea at 2am - and it was like getting my life back."

The detective smiled, but his knuckles were white on the handle of his mug and the smile trembled a little. "I'm glad," he said quietly. "I hated seeing you with someone else, but the alternative was worse."

They'd never talked about this; it had always been there, in the back of their minds, and John had always thought about saying something before Kitty Riley and The Fall, but the old Sherlock was less transparent than the new one and he had always worried that he had misread the limited signals, always feared a snort and a disparaging look and never speaking of it again. He'd always thought he had time to wait until he was sure.

"I'm sorry," he said now.

Sherlock shook his head. "I never said anything either." There was a pause while both of them took in what they'd missed, then the detective threw the dregs of tea into the back of his throat and grimaced. "Well," he said softly, "at least you're going to marry someone worthy of you. How did you propose, in the end?"

John blinked at him. After the initial proposal he had mentioned the word 'marriage' several times with no arguments, and he knew he hadn't exactly been subtle with what he had been trying to do that night, so if Mary hadn't wanted to marry him she would have said something then, but never had the words will you marry me actually left his lips. "Well, I -"

The doorbell rang, a tentative buzzing of the sort John had come to associate with conflicted clients. Sherlock's posture straightened immediately, his eyes brightening with excitement. John smiled at him. "I'll get it," he offered. Sherlock only nodded, already steepling his fingers under his pale chin and settling back into character as the Great Detective.

When he opened the front door, however, it was to be faced with a familiar round, eager face. "Doctor Watson!" Arthur Shappey greeted happily. A tall, silver-haired man stood behind him with an incredibly reluctant expression.

"Sorry to disturb you," he said, his voice a confident rumble infused with awkwardness. "Is Mr Holmes in? Arthur was very keen to pay him a visit."

John grinned. "Hi, Arthur," he replied, earning a delighted grin from the steward. "He's upstairs, come on up. John Watson, hi," he introduced himself to the older man, dressed in a sloppily pressed pilot's uniform.

The man smiled, looking deeply uncomfortable. "Douglas Richardson," he responded. "Arthur's told me a lot about you."

"All of it good, I hope," John joked - he knew Carolyn hadn't been impressed with either of them and Sherlock had seemed especially concerned with his former First Officer's opinion.

Richardson grinned suddenly as they climbed the stairs to flat B. "I believe 'brilliant' was the word most often used, which coming from him is quite the endorsement," he replied.

"I have met Arthur," John chuckled.

Sherlock jumped visibly when the door swung open on the three of them, and once again the shift from Sherlock to Martin was perceptible in a slump of the shoulders, an almost but not quite subconscious withdrawal into himself. "Hello, Arthur," he smiled, but his expression was wary as he turned to his other visitor. "Douglas," he greeted tentatively.

"Mr Holmes," the pilot returned, frost gathering at the edges of the words.

"Call me Sherlock, please," the detective murmured. "Would you like tea? John was just about to put the kettle on."

John wasn't just about to do anything of the sort, but he diligently left the room and bustled around in the kitchen to give his friend space to salvage what he could. He made sure to clatter mugs together, trying to drown out the sound of Sherlock apologising yet again. Arthur's voice carried, though, loud and excited, and John could hear him eagerly asking about the case they had just solved as he spooned four sugars into the steward's teacup.

The two of them were engaged in conversation when John re-emerged, and he supposed it was nice that Arthur, at least, seemed to have forgiven him without question. Richardson, on the other hand, was hovering awkwardly by the door and looking like only a sense of responsibility for his young colleague was keeping him in the room at all. John tried to smile at the pilot as he handed over a mug of tea. Richardson made a similar half-hearted attempt.

"You must be happy to have him back," the man said distantly.

John smiled, attempting to describe the trajectory of blood splatters to Arthur. "I am," he agreed. "I was just angry for a few weeks. He put me through hell when I thought he'd died. But I was so busy being angry with him that I didn't stop to think how hard it would have been for him. When he told me what he'd been through in those two years I was just happy it was all over."

Douglas Richardson was not an idiot, and he caught the hint behind John's words that perhaps he should do the same. He arched a superior eyebrow coolly. "I'm sure it was hell for him, flying around with us and pretending to be useless."

As much as he sympathised with the pain that Richardson was going through, he couldn't help but be a little offended at this response. "Look at them," John pushed, trying to keep his voice as quiet and sympathetic as possible as they watched Sherlock patiently explaining to Arthur why he couldn't arrest people. "Sherlock doesn't act like this with anyone else. He really cares about all of you. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to feel that way and not be able to tell you the truth."

The pilot frowned at him, his face pale. "Your best friend died and came back to life," he said, an unpleasant note to his deep voice. "I don't get to be glad it's all over because Martin Crieff isn't going to come back. That man sitting over there - he almost looks like the man I knew but he isn't. I don't know Sherlock Holmes at all, I'd never met him before today, and the person he made me care about never existed at all. I'm not trying to say which is worse and I don't mean to offend, Doctor Watson, I understand you sticking up for your friend, but please don't presume you know how I feel or how I should feel. You're asking me to forgive a complete stranger."

John stared at the older man, feeling shame creep up his spine in a hot rush. He would have reacted the same, he knew, had someone dared to presume how John had felt when Sherlock died. He had just been so defensive of his best friend, who had gone through so much and been rejected by so many old friends.

He opened his mouth to apologise, knowing it wasn't enough, but the pilot had returned to staring at Sherlock with such a familiar expression on his face that it stopped him in his tracks.

It wasn't the look of a man who had just lost a colleague, even one he had sat beside for two days. It wasn't even the look of someone who had lost their best friend. It was the look that John had had when Sherlock had first Fallen, looking on a face that was so familiar and yet so endlessly different.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, rousing the pilot from his look of confused longing. "I didn't realise."

Richardson swallowed. He looked horrified that John had caught him out; he gave a short sharp cough of distraction. "I need some air," he growled, and the next moment he had gone, the door to flat B slamming in his wake.

Sherlock and Arthur looked up in surprise; Sherlock slumped back into his armchair. Even Arthur's ever-present smile faded. "He just needed to take a break," John said lamely, trying to apologise with his eyes without letting anything on to Arthur.

For a moment they sat there, staring at the door and sipping awkwardly at their tea. After the moment had passed Arthur cleared his throat gently. "I should go and check on him," he said with surprising maturity. Sherlock nodded miserably.

John sat down heavily in his own armchair once the steward had left, aching to comfort his friend but knowing the gesture wouldn't be welcome. "He just needs time," he said reasonably.

Sherlock shook his head. "I destroyed everything for him," he explained. "Not just the hope of all the moments he wanted with Martin in the future, but the memory of the ones he'd had in the past as well. I didn't just leave him, I showed him I was never there." He pulled his knees up to his chest, looking more like Martin Crieff than John had ever seen him. "When I realised what was happening I tried to stop it, but everything I did just seemed to make him fall for Martin even more. So I decided to pretend I didn't know and just leave without acknowledging it. If I'd known I would run into Carolyn later I would have told him the truth when I left so he didn't think I'd…"

He looked utterly miserable, and John felt a flicker of jealousy prickling up his spine. "Did you…" he didn't know how to phrase what he wanted to ask without sounding thirteen years old; he swallowed awkwardly instead. "Did you feel -"

"I didn't feel the same as he did," Sherlock dismissed, shaking his head. "But I sat next to him for hours at a time, three or four days a week for two years. He teased Martin a lot but I knew that if I ever really needed anything he and Carolyn and Arthur would be there for me. I'd never felt like that before I met you."

John smiled awkwardly. He knew Sherlock had said that on purpose because he could see jealousy flashing on his face. "You were almost literally a different person when you were with them," he said, remembering what Richardson had told him. "They don't feel like they know Sherlock Holmes at all. Arthur accepted you because he'd heard of you and thinks you're brilliant, but to Carolyn and Douglas you're a complete stranger. They don't know whether or not the feelings you expressed as Martin were actually Sherlock's, so they can either assume that they were, and try to forgive Sherlock Holmes and get to know him as a potential friend, or assume that they weren't and move on with absolutely nothing to do with him. From what I saw, I'm not sure either of them have made that decision yet, and I'm not sure how much control you have over it."

Sherlock frowned at him with a deep sigh. "Thank you for trying to speak to him," he said after a moment's thought.

"I made things worse," John deflected, feeling his cheeks heat in shame.

"Perhaps," the detective agreed with a rueful smile. "But he wouldn't have warmed to me whether you had spoken to him or not, and it was nice to know I had one friend who would stand up for me."

John nodded, touched. "Always, Sherlock."

His friend looked around awkwardly for a moment, then stood up and picked up his laptop. "John, I…" he shifted the laptop to his other hand.

He understood; he would have needed space after something like this as well. "Of course," he deflected, standing up, but the detective was already gone, his bedroom door slamming in his wake. John swung his arms uncomfortably. "Right," he murmured to himself.

He was halfway up the stairs to his bedroom when he remembered he didn't live there anymore. He lived halfway across town in a boring neighbourhood, with a woman he loved more than almost anyone else in the world, whom he wasn't technically engaged to yet. With a deep breath, he grabbed his coat and ran back into the evening.

In the end, it was simple; he had struggled with it for weeks after the interrupted first attempt, and yet once he had burst through the front door it seemed the easiest thing in the world. He supposed that was the way it should be when you met the right person.

The door had opened onto the smell of pizza and garlic; he'd known it had been forever since Sherlock had stolen most of his lunch, but he hadn't quite noticed he was hungry until the smell hit him. Quite often he didn't realise, and that was almost always when Mary decided to cook.

She was just lifting the garlic bread from the oven when he entered the unlit kitchen, the curls around her temples frizzy with the steam, clearly having sprinted there to switch off the timer, and John couldn't hide his smile at the sight of her. "I love you," he said, almost without meaning to.

She grinned at him, brushing her hair away from her eyes with her wrist. "Quite right, too," she replied, in that way she had of accepting compliments in the way that made John the most uncomfortable about giving them.

He took a deep breath, almost not aware he was going to do this until he was already doing it. "Mary," he said quietly. "I know you're well aware I've been trying to do this, and I'm sure if you meant to say no you would have done it by now, but…"

John sank to one knee there in the kitchen, in the twilight with his girlfriend still holding a tray of garlic bread with patchwork oven-mitts.

"Yes," she said, before he'd even finished opening his mouth.

He closed it slowly. Mary laughed. "Sorry," she said, although she didn't sound it.

John shook his head with a rueful smile. "Are you going to interrupt me at the ceremony as well?" he asked. "Will I get to say 'I do', or are you going to say that for me as well?"

"I was taught to always speak up if I knew the answer," she said innocently. She bent her knees slightly to clasp one of John's hands in both of her own. "If I promise not to interrupt you on our wedding day, John Watson, will you still marry me?"

He couldn't help but chuckle; he'd been trying to propose to her for weeks and she had still somehow managed to turn things around so that she had been the one to actually ask the question. "Do you know what, Mary Morstan," he replied, easing himself back onto his feet, "I think I will."

For a moment he fancied he saw a flicker of something unpleasant on her face at the sound of her own name, but there were so many shadows in the room without the lights on that he was sure he had imagined it.

---

The wedding snuck up on him before he had quite realised what was happening; it wasn't as though Sherlock returning changed the way he felt about Mary, but he couldn't pretend it didn't change anything. In the wake of meeting Douglas Richardson - and knowing that Sherlock not only could but had felt what John had felt - it did seem a little insensitive to be parading how much he'd moved on in front of the detective.

Sherlock still dropped in on him from time to time, often in the middle of the night, to drag him out to murder scenes and stakeouts, but there was a certain hesitancy to him that John hated, and he'd stopped going around to Baker Street after work after the third time he walked in on a serious-looking video-chat conversation between Sherlock and Theresa that silenced immediately when he entered the room.

He couldn't imagine having anyone else as his best man, but he couldn't deny things had changed between them and he wasn't sure how to bring up the subject, whether Sherlock would be okay with standing beside him while he pledged his life to someone else, whether it was hurtful to even ask. He put off asking for weeks, until Mary had threatened to change the locks to their flat until he spoke to Sherlock.

John was aware that his best friend showed a different side of himself to people other than John, but the implications of that difference didn't quite hit him until he started telling people Sherlock was going to be his best man. Apparently Mary had been granted access to the side of Sherlock usually only reserved for John, and the wedding preparations went so smoothly that John didn't even stop to think about why everyone else was so worried about it. He was never quite sure whether the detective's enthusiasm was out of friendship or panic; Mary seemed to think he was worried that things would change between them in future, but John couldn't help but worry Sherlock was just barely holding it together watching the man he had just managed to confess feelings for marry someone else anyway.

It wasn't until Sherlock stood up for his speech at the wedding itself that John realised why everyone else was concerned; the detective looked awkward standing there in his tuxedo, a small pile of coloured cue cards in one hand. That was when it hit John that no-one else knew that his friend was capable of this kind of dedication, that Sherlock had actually cared about him enough to prepare a speech and then forget it in front of all their guests. Then he cleared his throat and shuffled his cards, and John had a horrible flashback to the day he had finally worked up the courage to ask him.

"The telegrams," he sighed, putting his head in one hand. He could hear Molly and Mrs Hudson giggle tremulously.

What followed, though, was sweetly inexpert and so heartfelt John and his brand new wife were both fighting back tears by the end of it, and he could see Mrs Hudson openly weeping at her table. John's heart ached. What had he done to deserve two such incredible people in his life, and to have them accept each other with confidence? Anyone but Sherlock would have made a fuss to find someone he loved about to marry someone else and tried to get rid of her, but the detective had sidestepped into the role of best friend without a word or a wistful look where so many people would have considered it a backwards step and taken offence.

He suddenly felt even worse about everything that he had said when Sherlock first returned, and worse still about everything everyone else had said. He wished Sherlock could have someone else, not necessarily a lover, but another friend that he could talk to when John wasn't around. The day he left for his honeymoon Mary patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. "It's just two weeks," she said, somehow understanding exactly why he had hesitated before locking the front door behind him. "He survived two years without you, he can manage two weeks."

"He wasn't on his own those two years, though," John protested. "He had his charter plane crew to keep him company."

Mary raised an eyebrow at him in a very good impression of Sherlock's We Both Know What's Going On Here look. John waited for his own mind to catch up and wondered for a moment why he had had to marry someone with such similar irritating habits to his best friend.

Arthur Shappey was quite enthusiastically a friend of Sherlock's, but he wasn't quite the conversationalist that the detective needed. He could tell it took a lot of energy from Sherlock to spend time with Arthur, worth it or not. What he really needed was someone more like Douglas Richardson, but John had slammed that door in his face for him. And yet - he couldn't help but feel that if someone were to convince Richardson to give Sherlock a chance he would find him a lot more similar to Martin Crieff than he was expecting.

He could feel the Look spreading onto his own face, and Mary's smile widened smugly. "I'll wait in the car," she said.

Carolyn Knapp-Shappey answered the company phone with a crisp opening line, an interesting mixture of disdain and forced cheerfulness. John couldn't help but smile. "Hi - is Captain Richardson available?"

There was a frosty silence. "Who can I tell him is calling?"

John hesitated, but he supposed lying wouldn't set him up for the best start. "It's John Watson. I'm a friend of Sherlock Holmes' and I just wanted to have a quick word with him."

"How did you get this number?" Carolyn asked, the snap evident in her voice.

"It's on the MJN website," John told her with a small smile. "I take it Arthur designed it? I've never seen so many dancing aeroplanes in one line before."

He sat down on the front steps while he waited for her to make a decision; after a long moment she sighed. "I'll get Douglas for you," she relented. "I can't promise he'll speak to you, though."

John grinned. "I understand that," he said. "I'm only asking for a moment of his time."

Carolyn grunted, but the next voice he heard was a deep, begrudging rumble. "Mr Richardson? It's John Watson." The noise that met him wasn't exactly encouraging, but John pressed on: he wasn't sat in the cold on his own front step to give up this early. "I know I was horrible when we met and I can't apologise enough for the things I said, but I would really appreciate it if you heard me out. I understand if you want to hang up on me, though, and I won't call back if you do."

He paused for a moment to allow the other man the chance to hang up; after a moment's expectant silence the pilot drawled, "Go on."

John took a deep breath. "I got married yesterday," he said. He wondered if it was obvious he'd been rehearsing this next bit in his head since he'd first had the idea. "Sherlock was my best man, and his speech was just… he's the best friend I've ever had and I couldn't stand the thought of him being unhappy. I know you don't think you know Sherlock Holmes but I've spent more time with him than anyone, before and after he…" John faltered; he'd tried quite hard to find a word for the Fall that didn't make his heart stutter in his chest. "You know," he finished lamely. "He lives his life in a mask, and I used to think I was the only person who had ever seen him without that mask. But I realised yesterday that Martin Crieff is just Sherlock without all his emotionless barriers up. For whatever reason, he was more himself with you than he is with almost anyone else. And it's so obvious that he… he misses you."

Richardson exhaled deeply at the other end of the phone, sounding more upset than annoyed. John decided to take that as a good sign. "Look, even if you don't think Sherlock Holmes was your friend, you were definitely his. And he's my best friend so I just wanted to tell you that… I think you know Sherlock Holmes almost as well as I do, just in case that changes anything."

Again, the pilot was quiet for a while. "Thank you, Doctor Watson," he said eventually.

John waited for more, but nothing else was forthcoming. "Well," he said awkwardly. "That's it, I suppose. Arthur has his phone number if you change your mind about him. I think I mainly feel bad about leaving him for my honeymoon."

"Well, if the alternative was bringing him with you, I wouldn't recommend it," the older man said wryly. John was delighted to hear an amused note to his voice.

"I suggested it, but my wife shot me down, for some reason," he joked back, feeling a frisson of pleasure down his spine at the word 'wife'.

Richardson actually laughed. "Smart woman, I'd say she's a keeper," he commented.

John looked up at his wife through the window of the taxi; she gave him a wide smile and two gloved thumbs up. "She definitely is," he agreed.

"Well," Richardson said, in that brisk tone that suggested he was fighting very hard to prevent awkwardness. "I'd better get back to work. Have a good time on your honeymoon."

He smiled and gave his wife a thumb up in return. "I'm sure I will," he said, standing up and stretching out his legs. "It was nice to speak to you, Captain Richardson."

"Perhaps we'll see each other again, Doctor Watson," the pilot agreed and a smile was evident in his rich voice. John got into the taxi to his honeymoon, satisfied that Sherlock would have enough to be getting on with while he was gone.

---

221 Baker Street was eerily quiet when John walked in on the first day after they returned; for a while he stood in the hallway toying with the spare key and wondering if it was appropriate anymore to go up to Flat B if the man who lived there wasn't home. More than ever he felt like an outsider here, and even after two perfect weeks with Mary he couldn't help but miss the life he'd had when this flat had been home.

Nostalgia more than anything else drove him upstairs; he thought briefly about just sitting on the red armchair watching telly for a bit like old times. When he got to the door, however, it was unlocked; pushing it open revealed a sleeping detective on the sofa, looking oddly vulnerable in his grey pyjamas with his pale feet sticking awkwardly over the arm. His laptop sat on the coffee table with Theresa von Lichtenstein's Skype profile still open on the screen. John wondered whether his friend had fallen asleep while she was still there, and scolded himself once more for the flicker of jealousy at Sherlock having other friends.

He flipped his keys noisily around his finger to announce himself and the detective sat bolt upright with a sharp intake of breath, instantly awake. "John," he said calmly. "Back from your Sex Holiday, then."

"Don't call it that," John told him for the millionth time, but he knew it wouldn't make a difference. "Did I miss anything good while I was gone?"

Sherlock heaved a great sigh and swung himself upright. "Ohh, nothing interesting," he lamented, closing the laptop without looking at it. "No near-death experiences to speak of."

"Shame," John remarked. He was never sure if he was being sarcastic when he said things like that.

The detective looked up at him from under his unruly curls - Mary had jokingly tried to arrange a haircut for him before they left but it seemed he had abandoned the appointment. "Oh, and Douglas called two days after you left," he said, in a tone that ought to have been casual but definitely wasn't.

John thought about how he wanted to respond to that. Sherlock's tone of voice left him in no doubt that he knew exactly why that had happened, so 'really?' probably wouldn't hold up. "He waited two days," he said eventually. "At least that means he thought about it."

Sherlock snorted, but when he met John's eyes again his expression was soft. "Thank you," he said quietly. "We're meeting for lunch next Tuesday, he's coming to London to see his sister."

"Good," John said.

Sherlock nodded. "Tea?" he asked, clapping his broad hands together with the air of a man about to launch himself to his feet.

John raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Please."

"I'll have one as well, then, thank you. There are biscuits in the cupboard, unless Mrs Hudson is still angry that I used her colander to drain a small intestine."

He laughed at the anecdote before he'd thought about it, and the feeling was so familiar he couldn't even try to reprimand his friend's rudeness. "All right, I'll make the tea," he conceded. "But only because I want to wash everything first, God knows what you used the tea strainer for."

He thought he heard Sherlock murmur 'eyeballs' behind him, but when he turned back around the detective only smiled innocently, so John pretended he hadn't heard it and disinfected everything three times while he waited for the kettle to boil.

Mary convinced him not to call Sherlock on Tuesday afternoon to find out how lunch had gone; he supposed on balance the friendship was less likely to work if John kept forcing it.

"How was lunch with Douglas?" he asked his friend casually a week later instead, ladling pasta onto a plate for him while Mary looked on from the head of their dining table.

Sherlock smiled weakly. "It was a good start," he said with a shrug. "He hasn't forgiven me yet, but I think he's admitted it could be an option for the future."

John nodded, trying to look as though he was only mildly interested in the information and knowing all the while that he wasn't fooling either of the other people at the table. The detective snorted. "John, I… I appreciate that you made the effort for me," he said, picking up his fork and pushing a piece of penne around his plate. "But you've done everything you could. Now you have to sit back and let us work this out ourselves."

He knew Sherlock was right, so he left it alone for so long he almost forgot Douglas Richardson existed until the next time they met.

---

The first time he heard the name Magnussen it was innocent enough: he was sitting in the living room of 221B, he and Sherlock reading sections of the paper to each other while Mary made tea and snide remarks from the kitchen.

"Suspected murder-suicide on the bank under Millennium Bridge," John suggested. "No powder burns on the assailant's fingers from the photo and both of them had debts up to their -"

"I've already spoken to Gregson about that one, he called this morning," Sherlock dismissed. He shook out the business section impatiently. "Oh, Charles Magnussen is being investigated by the PM's office," he commented. "Poor judgment call on their part, I bet Mycroft is furious."

There was the unmistakeable sound of a mug smashing from the kitchen and Mary swore loudly. "Sorry!" she called back to them. "Butterfingers."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at John. "You all right?" John asked.

"Yeah, it just slipped out of my hands," Mary said brightly, poking her head through the kitchen door. "It was empty, I hadn't poured the tea yet. Sorry about the mug, Sherlock. Dustpan and brush?"

The detective looked at John as though he couldn't possibly be expected to know where the cleaning equipment was in his own house. "Under the sink," John conceded. "What's he being investigated for that could bother Mycroft, doesn't he run a newspaper?"

"Several," Sherlock confirmed. "Apparently he's had a number of private appointments at number 10 over the last few months. Which means the PM has a secret he's trying to keep out of the paper, which means Mycroft will have been trying to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. If he sanctioned the investigation at all it would have been with strict instructions on how to prevent it hitting the press."

John couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Mycroft losing control of a situation. Sherlock smiled slightly, but it looked forced, and a distracted look flirted briefly across his face. Then he took a deep breath. "Interesting reading, but not a case to solve," the detective said briskly, throwing aside the newspaper. "The website it is, then. John, get my laptop - and delete anything with the subject line 'I think my spouse is cheating on me'."

The sound of the broken mug being tipped into the bin muffled John's resigned sigh; a moment later, Mary set two whole mugs of tea in front of them with a smile. "I think I'm going to have to leave you two alone," she said. "Kath just texted, another boyfriend emergency."

This was at least the third time this month that Mary's friend Kath had had a 'boyfriend emergency' - John would have worried it was a cover for something more sinister if he hadn't met Kath a number of times himself. He grimaced sympathetically. "All right," he relented. "I'll see you at home."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the two of them, but said nothing. "Yeah," Mary responded, pecking him quickly on the lips and grabbing her coat from behind the door. "Love you both."

She stuck her tongue out playfully at Sherlock, who raised a disdainful eyebrow in return, and then she was gone. The detective drummed his fingers once on the arms of his chair and then raised himself to his feet. "I need to speak to Theresa," he said abruptly, a note of dismissal evident in his voice.

John couldn't help but be a little offended. He was still willing to help out despite his wife leaving - the whole point of the two of them coming over was so that John could help Sherlock find a case, and couldn't he really be more useful to Sherlock than the foreign princess? "Why?" he bit back before he could stop himself. "What could you possibly have to say to Theresa that you can't say to me?"

He wasn't sure what reaction he was expecting - guilt, or frustration, or even pity - but the look of abject misery that the detective slumped into took him by surprise. "John," Sherlock murmured. "It's not that I don't want to confide in you. I just can't - sometimes things happen where if you knew about it you'd be in danger. This thing I'm working on at the moment is huge and it's dangerous, and there's information I can't tell you or it would make you a target, plans I can't discuss with you because they're watching you in case I do. Theresa's halfway across the world, even if they could tell I was in contact with her they would know she can't influence anything from Lichtenstein." He lifted a hand hesitantly, like he wanted to pat John on the shoulder or something, but dropped it pathetically. "I hate keeping you in the dark, and I will tell you when I get close enough because there's no-one I trust more than you to help me close this case. But after Moriarty… I can't compromise your safety to have you beside me again."

Just the name of the late consulting criminal was enough to silence John. He wondered whether Sherlock knew this, whether sometimes his friend used it to get his own way when really Moriarty had nothing to do with anything. "All right," he said finally. "As long as you promise me that you'll tell me when you need me."

Sherlock smiled weakly. "I promise, John."

But John didn't even see the consulting detective again until he ran into him over a month later, almost comatose, in a drug den looking for someone else.

That was the second time he heard the name Magnussen, spoken triumphantly and shot down so fast by Mycroft that if John hadn't been suspicious the first time he certainly was now. He wasn't an idiot; he knew straight away that this was the case Sherlock had been working on the whole time, the one he'd refused to include John in and consulted the Princess of Lichtenstein instead, and as soon as Sherlock offered to include him he jumped at the opportunity. Mycroft's very deliberate decision not to threaten John only served to make him more interested, which he suspected before long was probably the aim of both brothers. It wasn't like the elder Holmes to misread John like that.

If he had known, then, that later that very evening he would be cradling Sherlock's life in his hands in Magnussen's penthouse apartment, he perhaps would have reacted differently. Or perhaps not: it wasn't as though the detective would have been any more likely to survive without him.

It wasn't the first time he had sat with his best friend, waiting for an ambulance and putting pressure on a serious wound. It certainly wasn't the first time he had feared for Sherlock's life. But somehow he felt it even more keenly than before having not seen the detective in so long. In the space of one day he had found out that Sherlock had lapsed back into his old drug habits, sustained a romantic relationship with Mary's best friend - pretext to get into Magnussen's office or not - and caught up on the case he had been left out of. He felt like he barely knew Sherlock any more, and the idea that the detective might die leaving their relationship like this was almost more frightening than the idea of Sherlock dying at all.

Somehow - somehow, with possibly the fastest response time John had ever seen from a London ambulance - he pulled through, and John barely left his side for the first 24 hours, waiting on the edge of his seat for the moment when Sherlock let out the tiniest of groans and a sigh that sounded particularly like Mary. John was so relieved that Sherlock was awake that he didn't stop to question until later why the first thing out of his mouth had been his wife's name.

The following day he went home for a few hours, to shower and change and hold Mary in sheer relief. She hadn't taken any of it well herself, spending almost as much time at the hospital as John had, and the time they were alone together she was jumpy and distracted. He supposed it was nice that she and Sherlock cared about each other so deeply, after the first moment of jealousy and suspicion had been chased out of his mind by the sheer stupidity of the idea.

Naturally, Greg Lestrade waited until the moment he left the hospital to call him looking for an interview with the barely-conscious detective; John nonetheless told him to come in and rushed back after the quickest of showers. He wanted to know more than anything who it had been in that bedroom with them, since Sherlock had barely strung three words together since waking.

"Oh," John let out as he walked back into the hospital room; Douglas Richardson rose from the chair beside the bed, looking haggard. "Hello, Captain."

Richardson gave a weak smile. "Douglas, please."

John nodded. "Sorry to intrude - the MET want to question him, but they can't do it until he's awake, so… we'll come back."

"No, I was just leaving," the pilot excused, pulling at the lapels of his wrinkled uniform and shifting on his feet. John desperately wanted to ask how he had found out that his friend was in hospital, but couldn't figure out a way to ask without being rude. It hadn't even occurred to John to let MJN know what had happened, and he didn't think that anyone else who knew that Sherlock was in hospital had the charter business' contact information. "When he… when he wakes up, tell him I was here?"

The two of them stared at the unconscious detective for a moment. It wasn't the first time John had visited Sherlock in a hospital bed, but it had never struck him quite so gravely before just how small he looked, a shock of dark curls he still hadn't bothered trimming against a stark white pillow and crisp sheets. "You should really stay until he wakes up," John suggested. "I remember the first time Sherlock was hospitalised after I met him. It's easier when you can speak to him."

Douglas was silent for a long time. "Was it your fault, that first time?"

John blinked. "I wasn't even there when he got hurt that time. Why, what do you mean?"

There was another long pause. Then Douglas sighed. "The doctors said he was shot in a penthouse belonging to Charles Magnussen," he said slowly. "I may have mentioned to him that Magnussen had sent me a few messages - he'd managed to dig up an old story from my Air England days that I'm not proud of. I didn't mean for him to break into the man's house, I told him it was nothing, we were just talking -"

"Oh," John interrupted. "No - he didn't break in there because of you." The pilot looked up at him, his eyes wide. "Before you two were even speaking again he took a client in the Government who was being blackmailed by Magnussen," John explained.

"Before your honeymoon?" the other man repeated.

John blinked; on further examination, he couldn't quite remember in which order the two events had fallen. He hadn't been there the night Lady Smallwood had first visited 221B - had that been because he was on his honeymoon? Once again, he hadn't been close enough to his friend since to know the exact order of events. "I think so," he bluffed. "Either way - she was the one who hired him. He broke in to retrieve hard copies of some letters he was blackmailing her about. It wasn't your fault, Douglas."

But he couldn't quite look the other man in the eye, and an unpleasant layer of rage was forming at the bottom of his stomach like magma. It sounded like Richardson had mentioned this the first time he'd seen Sherlock again. The first time he'd attempted to be friends with a detective desperate for his affection and he'd just happened to mention a problem that a detective might be able to solve for him?

The older man shook his head. "I was still listed as an emergency contact in his wallet," he said blankly. "From when we used to fly together. One of the doctors thought I was a relative and called me." John nodded, trying to look as though that answered a question he hadn't even thought to ask.

"I hadn't even got to calling friends yet," John excused. "I would have called you in a day or two, but I -"

"I didn't mean that," Richardson interrupted. "I haven't been the friend to him that I should have been, I wouldn't have blamed you if you hadn't thought of me at all. I've been trying, and we do get on, but it's difficult to get over the fact that I still see Martin every time I look at him."

Not sure what to say, John only smiled sympathetically, and the two of them looked back at the unconscious detective for a moment. "Do they know who shot him?" Richardson asked after a moment.

John shook his head.. "That's why the MET need to question him," he explained. "All we know now is that it wasn't Magnussen, he was unconscious when I got there." He frowned; the thoughts had been wheeling around his head since the moment it had happened. "He was shot in the chest, so he must have seen who shot him. But it could have happened within a matter of seconds, with that much trauma there's no guarantee even Sherlock could have realised who it was, even if he knew them. And he was medically dead for over a minute, we don't know what effect that could have had on his memory."

Richardson frowned, but saying it aloud had somehow sparked the chain of thought. "Whoever it was, they couldn't have known we would be there, Sherlock just happened to be a witness. But Magnussen wasn't even supposed to be there that night, that's why we picked then to break in, and that information came straight from his PA that morning. So either they were there for the same thing we were and brought the gun just in case, or they knew he'd changed his plans last minute which had to mean that they were the reason he changed his plans."

He sighed. "Not that that really narrows it down," John mused. "There must be thousands of people in London alone that Magnussen is threatening. From the scene and the surgeon's report I would guess they have professional experience, probably military, but even then they could have been hired by someone who wasn't." He looked across at the pilot, who looked a little taken aback by John's speculations. He smiled slightly. "Sorry. I'll save it for the Detective Inspector."

In the bed, Sherlock stirred with a little moan and began to work his eyes open. His head lolled helplessly in their direction. "Douglas?" he murmured.

John cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'll be outside," he excused himself, grabbing the chart from Sherlock's bed to look at while he waited. He could hear the low hum of their conversation from outside the door, but he tried his best not to listen in until he read the medication section of the chart and had to interrupt.

"Sorry," he said, walking straight across to the IV hooks. "Sherlock, your chart says your morphine was cut off for half an hour this morning, what happened? You shouldn't be trying to survive without pain management yet."

Sherlock smiled ruefully. "Janine popped in this morning," he explained. He looked surprisingly all right with that. "Apparently splashing my made-up sexual proclivities all over the Daily Mirror wasn't enough revenge for her."

John raised an eyebrow. He had seen the tabloids on his way back into the hospital. With no medical training, he would have thought Janine would know better than to fiddle with the medication of a man who had just emerged from live-saving surgery. "Well, you did fake a serious relationship with her for over a month just to break into her office," he scolded.

Douglas Richardson shifted uncomfortably. "I should go," he said quietly, standing up.

John busied himself double-checking the morphine drip while Sherlock turned to look at him. "Thank you for coming," he said softly.

"Of course," Richardson replied. "I'll bring Arthur around later. I haven't told him yet, I thought you might want to recover a little more first before you had to handle his questions. I just told Carolyn it was a family emergency."

Sherlock smiled. "Thank you," he said. "I'll see you later."

"See you," John said pleasantly as the pilot passed him.

The detective turned back to the window. "My two favourite Captains," he murmured. John checked the morphine drip again, a tiny smile flickering over his face. As much as he hated to see Sherlock on pain medication, the results were usually amusing.

"Lestrade is on his way," he said gently. "Are you all right to answer his questions?" Sherlock nodded, but he looked exhausted. "Okay. I'll go meet him and bring him up."

By the time the two of them made it back up to the room, Sherlock was gone.

---

Lestrade had immediately got on his phone and started looking for places Sherlock was known to hide out or go to think, but John went straight back to Baker Street to think himself. Sherlock wouldn't have just left the hospital to think, he was still too dependent on the morphine. He must have gone to do something, or to find someone, which meant he must have known the person who shot him. He ran these thoughts past Lestrade when he came back to 221B with no leads, but even if Sherlock knew who the shooter was, that didn't really bring either of them any closer to finding him.

Then John noticed how Sherlock had moved the red armchair back into its old spot from the bedroom, like he had known that John would need a space in his old life once more. Running out of pain medication, standing upright and moving on his own for the first time since the operation, Sherlock had made the effort to move a heavy piece of furniture down the narrow hallway. And had that bottle of perfume been there that morning? Mary had left a bottle there after the first time they had slept over at 221B, but had Sherlock moved it into the living room on purpose, or had someone else?

Then, before he had quite managed to connect the two deliberately placed items, his phone rang.

"I'm upstairs," Sherlock said instantly. "Get Mrs Hudson out of there and I'll come down."

John looked up at the landlady. "Big Ben," he lied. "You were right. He says I have to stay here, would you call Lestrade, make sure everyone knows? I think I need a bit of time alone."

Mrs Hudson made a soothing noise and dashed back down the stairs. John closed and locked the door behind her. "Okay," he said into the phone. "Mrs Hudson looked upstairs, didn't she?"

Sherlock's pained chuckle came from both the phone in John's ear and the staircase behind him. "I hid under the bed. She had no reason to check any hiding places, but I needed to speak to you alone." He stepped into the light of the living room, his face pale, bent a little over the healing bullet wound in his chest.

"It's time for me to tell you all the things I've been hiding," Sherlock said gravely.

John poured them both two fingers of scotch - the morphine Sherlock had taken with him from the hospital would be out of his system by now so he imagined he wasn't the only one who needed the numbing effects of the alcohol. "You've been shot, I think it's way past time," he commented.

The detective drained his scotch in one gulp and grimaced. "Perhaps," he admitted. "Although in my defence I didn't realise just how important it was - just how much was at stake - until that night anyway."

John frowned. "What do you mean?"

Sherlock let out a slight groan as he leaned out of his armchair to reach for the scotch decanter. "Magnussen," he said dramatically, filling the tumbler almost to the brim and taking another fortifying gulp. "His influence spreads further than I could ever have imagined, but it didn't really bother me until that first Tuesday I had lunch with Douglas."

It all made sense: the way John had barely heard the name until after that day and yet Sherlock had always seemed so passionate about bringing him down, the way his friend never seemed happy after he returned from an outing with the pilot despite insisting they were friends, the way he had left the room so suddenly after reading about the trial. Richardson had told him in the hospital that he had mentioned it, but Sherlock wouldn't have reacted so strongly on a throwaway comment. "The information Magnussen had on Douglas," he concluded dully. Sherlock looked helpless. "It wasn't just a few messages he'd been sent. So all the time you've been spending with him -"

"Yes," Sherlock nodded miserably. "At the beginning I was desperate. I could tell there was something he wanted my help with and I just wanted more time with him. I think now he likes my company, but by the time we both knew that, I'd realised just how dangerous Magnussen was, and Lady Smallwood had asked for my help to deal with him as well - I was already committed." He tapped his fingers on the rim of the crystal tumbler, biting his lip awkwardly. "Douglas was fired from Air England for having sticky fingers," he volunteered, leaning forwards in his chair. "We all knew that at MJN. But what the others didn't know was that he and a friend of his used to smuggle illegal goods across borders - his friend, Hercules Shipwright."

"Isn't that -"

"Carolyn's fiancé, yes," Sherlock said shortly. "Magnussen had enough evidence to have both of their pilot's licences suspended, possibly jail time, definitely the end of OJS Air. Douglas only agreed to meet with me because it occurred to him that I could help before Carolyn found out."

John felt so desperately sorry for his friend that his chest ached; Sherlock had been so eager to make friends again, and he, John, had tried so hard to bring the two of them together only for the pilot to take advantage of him. He opened his mouth to say something apologetic, something commiserating, but what came out instead was, "…and Janine?"

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling. "Janine?" he repeated, but John could tell he was being deliberately obtuse. "Her brother was in the IRA as a teenager," the detective relented after a minute. "Magnussen found out in a background check and told her he would reveal him if she ever applied for other jobs and then used it to abuse her at work. When we met I was only vaguely aware of Magnussen, but I could tell he was cruel to her. Then when Douglas and Lady Smallwood came to me I knew she could be useful, but I couldn't let her be seen to help me in case Magnussen found out, her brother would have been killed. We had to make it look like she was an innocent victim of my plan, hence the… relationship."

John couldn't help but be relieved; Sherlock had already explained that his relationship with Janine had been faked, but John had never believed that Sherlock could actually be that cruel. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "You kept up the act even when it was just you and me in the room."

The detective smiled sadly. "It would have made you a target to involve you in the case at all before I did," he said. "I had a suspicion Magnussen had some sort of surveillance on us - from the moment we agreed a plan we kept up the act even when it was just me and Janine in a room together. I'd already put Janine and Douglas in danger, I couldn't risk you too." John looked down, but he remembered the earlier conversation about this and he appreciated the effort, as much as he thought he could probably handle himself if Sherlock were to include him in things. It was nice to know he was that important to him.

"But that's not what I wanted to talk about," the detective said abruptly, placing the glass firmly on the table in front of them. "John, there's something I need to tell you about… about Mary."

John frowned at the apparently complete subject change. "Mary?" he repeated.

Sherlock nodded. "I know there's only so much you'll believe without proof," he said slowly, steepling his hands between his knees. "So I'll tell you what I can and then I'll show you the rest."

"Proof?" John asked. He was completely lost, but he didn't like the direction the conversation appeared to be taking. What did any of this have to do with his wife?

The Great Detective chewed on his bottom lip. "I swear I didn't know until the night we went to Magnussen's penthouse," he said hesitantly. The fact that he sounded like he was trying to soften a blow he hadn't dealt yet was making John increasingly nervous. "I knew something wasn't right, but until that night it hadn't even occurred to me that Mary was involved with this."

"With what?" John repeated in frustration.

Sherlock just gave him a long, hard look. "I believe Charles Magnussen has information about Mary," he said darkly. "Information she would like very much to protect."

John raised an eyebrow, not quite believing it. "Information?" he repeated dumbly. "What do you mean? What kind of information could someone like Magnussen have on my wife?" His eyes drifted back to the perfume bottle on the lamp table, to the arms of the red chair he was sitting in.

"John, there's a side to Mary she hasn't shown you before," the detective continued. "And I would never have wanted you to find out like this but - John, Mary was at Magnussen's penthouse that night."

The scene flew back to him; Janine's unconscious face under his hands as he checked her pulse, a familiar scent wafting through his nostrils. Claire de la Lune, the detective had said. Why do I know it?

Mary wears it, John had volunteered, breathing in the scent.

Not Mary, Sherlock had dismissed. Somebody else.

But John had never heard the end of that sentence, never stopped to wonder whom it had actually been. Because whomever had worn that scent, they weren't in the room John had been in, the room with Janine. So they would have had to be upstairs with Magnussen and Sherlock, upstairs at the moment when -

"When you were shot," he finished aloud. For a moment he thought he might be sick. "Are you saying… Mary…" Sherlock sat back in his chair with a strained grunt and a pained expression that was only partly because of the bullet wound. "But… well, I mean, you got shot," John defended. "Is it possible you were mistaken? That you got… I don't know, mixed up with the surgery and the blood loss and the painkillers?"

Sherlock closed his eyes briefly. "It's technically possible," he said in a surprisingly reasonable tone.

John nodded, although this show of acceptance had if anything made him more inclined to believe the detective. "I mean - what kind of information could someone blackmail my wife with that would make her try to kill them?"

"There are a number of variables in that question," Sherlock said tiredly. "John, I think there's a lot more to Mary Watson than you and I have seen. Even I don't know the whole story yet. I left the hospital tonight so we could find out, but I will understand if you don't want to. The only thing I know for sure about Mary is that she does love you, and if that's all you want to know I won't force you to come with me."

"Come with you where?"

The detective almost smiled, bracing himself on the arms of the chair in order to hoist himself up with a great groan that almost turned into a scream. "Leinster Gardens," he said once the pain had apparently faded. "To the empty houses."

And John's entire life fell apart.

---

Sherlock left him alone after the horror of Leinster Gardens until a week before Christmas, most of which time John spent taking the little chrome flash drive in and out of his laptop without opening it and drinking far too much. It was unusual for the detective to understand that John didn't want to speak to him and actually to respect that privacy, and he found himself jumping for his phone every time it rang to shout at Sherlock and then being disappointed at someone else's voice.

When it finally was Sherlock on the other end of the phone it was almost a relief: so long had gone by without contact from anyone who reminded him of Mary that his anger had started to fade and most of John just missed his friends. "Hello, John," the detective answered hesitantly.

He breathed out heavily. "Sherlock," he replied. "How have you been?"

Sherlock made a noncommittal noise. "Steadily weaning myself off the morphine. Keeping busy." John gripped the phone so tightly he almost worried he might break it; he had been so caught up in how his best friend had colluded with and supported his lying, murdering wife that he hadn't even stopped to think that Sherlock might struggle to get rid of his dependency on a drug he'd had problems with before.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry," he said in a rush.

There was a pause. "What for?" the detective asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

John cleared his throat as his cheeks heated in shame. He was the first person Sherlock had ever really trusted, so of course he didn't even realise that he should have been able to rely on John at a time like this. "You're my best friend, and I should have been there for you."

Sherlock actually snorted. "You just found out your wife lied to you for your entire marriage and is in fact a freelance assassin who shot your… your best friend," he excused. John didn't miss the pause before the detective referred to himself. "I was the one who told you and I still tried to help her, it's reasonable that you'd be angry with me."

He wondered how many times Sherlock had said that to himself before he called. "You were just trying to let me make my own decisions about her," John reasoned. "After everything that's happened, of all the ways that you could have reacted to my wife trying to kill you, you were still trying to support me. And then I abandoned you while you were recovering, and I'm so sorry, Sherlock. You should have been able to count on me."

Once more, the detective was silent for a moment. "What are you doing on Christmas Day?" he asked eventually.

"Nothing," John replied glumly. "I was looking forward to spending it with Mary, but I suppose that isn't going to happen."

Sherlock hummed. "Well, I'm being forced to spend the day with my family," he said. "It might be helpful to have someone there who could stop Mycroft and me from killing each other."

John chuckled. "I'm not sure I'm the best person for that job," he said wryly. "I'd probably try to help you kill him instead."

"Even better," Sherlock deflected quickly.

"I doubt your mother would agree," John laughed. "Not at Christmas." Sherlock made an irritated noise. After a moment's amused silence, John could no longer resist asking the question he'd wanted to ask since the moment he'd last left Sherlock's sight. "Do you think I was too harsh on Mary?" he asked. "I mean… would you have forgiven her?"

Sherlock took a moment to consider this. "I can't begin to imagine," he said finally. "The only thing I can try to compare it to is the half second at that swimming pool when we first met Moriarty, when it looked like it could have been you, and that wasn't… if you had been the bomber you wouldn't have asked me to forgive you, so it's not the same thing at all. If you love her, then I will do my absolute best to protect her and your family from Magnussen. If you can't forgive her then I will help you with whatever you think is best for your child. I made a vow to keep all three of you safe, John, but my loyalty is all to you."

John swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat as he remembered the vow that the detective had made to them, and the look on Mary's face when they realised they were going to have a child together.

A trained former CIA asset could fake a lot of things, but somehow John knew that was real.

"She didn't ever… she hasn't done anything like that since we met," John said hesitantly. It was a question that he had phrased like a statement, but Sherlock answered it anyway.

"Not to my knowledge," he confirmed. "She took the name Mary Morstan to distance herself from that life, everything she's done since has been to protect herself and you from it. Who she was with you is who she is now."

John nodded. "That's who I fell in love with," he agreed. "Who she is now, not who she was two years ago, or five, or ten. Her past made her who she is, but is it… is it really any of my business?"

"It is if it puts you and the baby in danger," Sherlock said reasonably. "But you're not exactly helpless. Now that we know where the threat is coming from, the three of us can handle it." He paused for a moment, as though unsure whether or not to say what he wanted to say next. "John - maybe she shouldn't have lied to you, but when was she supposed to tell you? Your first date? The third? Your two-month anniversary?"

He sighed. He knew it wasn't something you would tell someone you didn't know intimately, and he took the point Sherlock was trying to make: the longer she had waited the harder it would have been to tell him, particularly since she thought it was all in the past and he wouldn't ever have to find out. "I know," he admitted finally. "I'll talk to her."

"Good," Sherlock said. "I like Mary."

For a moment they were both silent; John tried to think what he could possibly say to Mary that would even begin to make everything all right between them again. "I heard Lord Smallwood killed himself last week," he said after a while. "I suppose that means it's over."

Sherlock hesitated. "It's upsetting," he agreed. "But ever since we broke in for the letters, this hasn't been about the Smallwoods, and you know it hasn't. It's a matter of all our safety now and it won't be over until everything Magnussen has on Mary and Douglas is extracted." John nodded thoughtfully: if the situation was dire enough that Mary had gone back to the old life to get rid of Magnussen then she was definitely in danger, and now John had made the decision to keep her in his life he wasn't about to lose her again. "I have a plan," Sherlock continued, because of course he had a plan. "Given that it's very similar to my original plan to recover Douglas' information I've already set things in motion, the rest of it will play out at Christmas. If you're there, I would very much like to have you with me."

"I'll be there," John confirmed with a tiny smile. "What's the plan?"

The detective chuckled. "If we managed nothing else with the break-in, we showed Magnussen that I am a capable adversary and someone worth paying attention to. My plan is to use that to negotiate for the information."

John waited for more information, but wasn't terribly surprised when none was forthcoming. "All right," he said eventually. "I suppose I'll see you on Christmas Day, then. Should I bring anything?"

"Just your gun," Sherlock breezed, and hung up before John could ask if he was joking or not.

---

Somehow, right up until the moment Sherlock pulled the trigger, he never believed that the man would do it.

Sure, he was confident that if someone ran at him with a knife before he could react Sherlock would intervene, in that sense he knew Sherlock would kill for him, but this, this was different.

I made a vow to keep the three of you safe, John, but my loyalty is all to you.

They were both arrested, afterwards, though John was released after only one sleepless night. Mycroft himself collected him from the holding cell, looking pale and exhausted. "All the evidence suggests you were there to uphold the law, not to break it," the elder Holmes confirmed as he put John into a taxi. "I've got you and Mary permission to see him tomorrow, but the Court will make a decision about his sentence tonight and it's unlikely he will return to Baker Street."

"They're not going to trial?" John asked indignantly.

Mycroft looked at him. "There's nothing to decide at trial," he said almost pityingly. "Myself and twelve other witnesses saw what happened. Sherlock was wearing a wire so that he could show evidence of the intent to sell state secrets, so we know exactly what was said between the three of you from the moment you entered Appledore. The crime is clear, it's not for a jury to decide his fate."

He looked so haggard that John knew instantly what he meant, whose decision it would be. "He's your brother," he said, stunned into forgetting all the other words he knew by the turmoil on the other man's face.

"And he drugged me and our family, stole state secrets and then shot a man in front of me," Mycroft replied coldly. "You mustn't think me unfeeling, John," he said with a raised eyebrow at John's shocked expression. "It took a lot of convincing to stop MI5 from shooting him on the spot, which is what I would have done had it been anyone else. I would have thought you of all people understood how time-consuming it is running around after him mopping up his mistakes."

For the second time that John had ever seen, the elder Holmes plucked a cigarette from an inside pocket of his coat and placed it between his lips. "After Irene Adler I begged them not to let Sherlock get involved," he continued. "But Lady Smallwood couldn't handle a little pressure from Magnussen. Now her husband is dead and my brother is a murderer, and of course she's one of the people arguing the harshest penalty."

For the tiniest of moments, John almost felt sorry for Mycroft. Then he actually processed the final sentence. "What's the harshest penalty?" he asked, not sure whether he wanted to know.

"Ostensibly, prison," the British Government said idly. "But there are a number of reasons that won't work, and the alternatives could actually be crueller for him." He looked sideways at John. "That's why we haven't made any decisions yet. And why the final decision has been left largely up to me."

John left him to think about that for a moment. "You have already decided," he read in the other man's face. "You're just afraid to make it official because it's…"

Mycroft closed his eyes and took an unnaturally long drag of his cigarette. "Tantamount to a death sentence," he finished on the in-breath, then blew out a long cloud of smoke. John waved it away from his face. "If I suggest anything less I will lose everything, and they will choose this course anyway."

"It's Sherlock, though," John tried to console him despite the hole in his stomach. "He'll find a way out of it."

The elder Holmes twitched a corner of his mouth humourlessly. "I suppose we'll have to hope," he said. "I'll send a car for you and Mary in the morning."

John wasn't expecting that the car would take them straight to an airstrip, a beat-up airplane with a familiar registration hulking over them, several familiar people cowering in its shadow. He never thought it could upset him so much to see Arthur Shappey.

Sherlock himself stood well apart from the others, framed by them like harbingers of doom. He wondered if Mycroft had told any of them they were essentially flying their friend to his death.

The detective barely looked at Mary as she hugged him and promised to look after John; their eyes were fixed together by the weight of all the things John had never thought they would get to say.

"Since this is likely to be the last time I ever speak to John Watson, would you mind if we took a moment?" He looked away for the barest of seconds to consult his brother, who gave him an impatient look and retreated.

Sherlock's pale hands were shaking; John smiled absently at Mary as she backed away, joining Mycroft at the black car. He almost chuckled at the tableau they presented: Mary and Mycroft and sleek, black cars on one side, Carolyn, Douglas and Arthur and the dishevelled Lockheed McDonald on the other, and John and Sherlock trapped in the middle of the two lives. "So here we are," he said as flippantly as he could manage.

The detective smiled tightly and didn't reply; John could feel the intensity of his grey-green stare cutting through his stomach right to his spine.

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes," he said suddenly. John raised an eyebrow at him. "That's the whole of it," he explained with a slight smile. "If you were looking for baby names."

It flashed back into John's head: a beautiful woman facing off with Sherlock, John being intimidated by her for all of two minutes until she flirted with him and he glanced at John in terror and bewilderment, and John lashing out against the sick feeling in his stomach he hadn't had time to think about yet. He laughed stupidly. "No, we've had a scan, we're pretty sure it's a girl."

"Oh," Sherlock chuckled. Both their smiles faded slowly. John swung his arms a little, searching for anything to say that could do justice to the gravity of this moment. Sherlock stepping back into the arms of OJS Air was about to be like watching him die all over again and John could barely breathe from the pain of it.

John cleared his throat. "Actually… I can't think of a single thing to say," he said with a snort.

Sherlock grinned. "No, neither can I," he agreed.

They managed to make conversation for another minute; John listened to Sherlock telling him about his childhood and about where he was going next without really hearing it, and he had a feeling Sherlock's lips were moving on their own accord with very little input from his brain. Mycroft had already as good as told him what came after it, and from the way Sherlock's eyes never left his own he could tell the detective knew it too.

"John," Sherlock said finally, and for the first time in their conversation his eyes matched his words and John focussed instantly. "There's something I… want to say. I've meant to say always and then never have… since it's unlikely we'll ever meet again I might as well say it now."

Three words bounced unspoken between them as Sherlock struggled to summon them, but John didn't need to hear them, didn't want to hear them, because it was too real and too painful and even if it was true and even if they never saw each other again it still felt like betraying Mary to say it aloud. He stared at his friend for a long moment, wanting him to say it but not wanting to hear it.

"Sherlock is actually a girl's name."

John laughed at the silliness of it. "It's not," he dismissed, trying not to imagine what he would feel chasing a little girl with Mary's curls and Sherlock's name, trying to stop her from getting into trouble.

"It was worth a try," Sherlock grinned tentatively.

"We're not naming our daughter after you." Sherlock had told him about the nicknames and the bullying, and even if that was the only reason not to use the name it would have put him off.

The detective shrugged playfully. "I think it could work," he joked. John wondered what Sherlock's face would look like if he found out they actually had named their child after him and he laughed again.

Out of the corner of his eye John saw Carolyn check her watch and shift uncomfortably; he glanced over at Mycroft to see him tapping his umbrella in impatience. Sherlock followed his gaze and nodded slightly. He held out a bare hand firmly, with an air of finality that John hated. "To the very best of times, John," he said stiffly.

It seemed so trivial after everything that they had been through together, and yet they both knew that neither of them could handle it any other way. John took the hand and shook it, trying to keep his eyes on Sherlock's and just about managing it. His best friend gave their hands one final firm shake and the tiniest of smiles, and then he let it go.

And just like that, the Great Detective turned abruptly and walked away from John, back into the shadow of the aeroplane. He stood with them for the barest of moments without speaking, exchanging a significant look with Carolyn. In the shadow John thought he could see something glistening on his cheeks. Then, to John's surprise, the Captain pulled him into a hug.

John stood where Sherlock had left him and watched his other friends comfort him, watched Arthur offer a hug as well and the five of them turn to board the aeroplane. Arthur reached up and plucked the Captain's hat from Douglas' head and placed it on top of Sherlock's curls, and in an instant the man's posture changed, retreating into Martin Crieff once again. He stopped on the ladder and turned back, lifting a hand to Mycroft and Mary by the car, and then to John in front of them.

He stood alone and watched his best friend climb into the plane for a moment longer, then slowly walked back to the car. Mary took his hand without a word, her fingers warm against the December chill, and they shivered together and watched the plane until it finally disappeared into the bright white cloud cover.

Then John turned and put an arm around his wife, and walked away from Sherlock Holmes for what he never thought for a moment would be the last time.