Sherlock's eyes slowly opened to the harsh white walls of his hospital room, and after seven days of repeating this uncomfortable ritual, he was finally able to wake up without suspicious uncertainly of his location furrowing his brow.

"Hey," John's voice quietly cut in, followed by the sound of his newspaper dropping onto the small beside table. "You were out a while."

"And you weren't," Sherlock nonchalantly replied, adjusting the angle of the bed so he could face John. "You've got bags the size of London under your eyes; you can barely keep them open."

"It's my shift," John said simply with a forced shrug. "Mrs. Hudson was here this morning, Molly in the afternoon. It's my turn."

"To sit here and watch me sleep?"

"To make you sure you're okay and that you don't need anything," John replied with annoyance. "Like it or not, there are people who actually care about you."

"Yes," Sherlock pondered. "There's a mystery for your blog."

"Already there." John smirked. "One of the more popular ones."

"Oh, good." Sherlock raised himself up a bit more and let out a heavy breath. "Well, thank you for forgoing your own sleep to observe mine, but you can go now."

"I'm not going," John answered back, picking up his newspaper to resume reading.

"Uh, yes. You are," Sherlock matter-of-factly decided, pushing his fists into the bed to lift his lower body up off of it.

"Nope. And don't do that. You're going to rip your stitches."

"John, you've been here since six o'clock this morning. You haven't slept, you haven't eaten. It's almost 7p.m., you need to go home. And if you're staying here to avoid Mary, then just go to Baker Street. I'm sure at least one of the shirts you've stashed over there are clean enough for you to wear out in public. Although I wouldn't recommend that option, Mrs. Hudson's probing questions are getting more superfluous every day."

John gave him a sore look, though he was secretly glad to see his friend feeling well enough to be his usual self. "Sherlock…how—"

"Please John, don't be impressed by this one. Your fatigue is apparent in your eyes, posture, and skin color; any toddler with a working set of pupils could see that. You've been here since six this morning because you're reading the newspaper. When Mrs. Hudson has the morning shift she takes it with her. She and the new boyfriend like to do the crosswords together. Ridiculous activity. Nothing more than an exhibition of how much obscure and utterly futile knowledge normal people allow their already struggling brains to accumulate. So, you got the newspaper this morning. You didn't read it, all the pages are still together in their original sequence. So, what were you doing here all day? Not sleeping. You were writing. Your computer is charging under your seat. Blogging? Maybe. But probably not. You're writing for your own sake, getting your emotions down. Clearly you've still got work to do because you're still avoiding Mary as evidenced by the fact that the shirt you have on is the shirt you wore two days ago. So, you're only leaving the hospital to change and when you do, it's at Baker Street where you have only a couple outfits to choose from."

John sat there with a dull expression on his face. "I wasn't going to ask how you knew. A blind monkey could see that I'm exhausted from being here all day."

"Oh…" Sherlock gave the subtlest apologetic shrug. "Reflex."

"What I was going to say, was…how can you possibly think I can go home? Mary is there."

"And you two still aren't talking."

"Since she shot you two weeks ago," John said incredulously. "No, probably not!"

"Well you're going to soon."

"Sorry?" John squinted.

"You and your wife, talk."

"I don't think so."

"Oh come on," Sherlock huffed.

"No come on," John interrupted, getting out of the chair and moving toward the detective. He knew his frustration was quick and misplaced, but it didn't stop it from coming out. "You really think I'm ready to forgive her for what she did?"

"I didn't say forgive, I said talk."

"Some would say the two aren't mutually exclusive."

"Some, yes."

"But not me?" John kicked himself for even responding.

"John," Sherlock said finitely, silencing his friend by throwing an open palm up. "Your pregnant wife felt she and your unborn child were in enough danger to justify shooting me. Have you really convinced yourself that you are going to completely keep your distance? Are you really not at all nervous about her safety?"

The doctor fell silent with hands planted firmly on his hips, desperate to hold onto at least some of his irritancy toward the hospitalized detective. He finally let out a heavy sigh. "I went over to our place last night, around midnight."

"Eh, 12:30."

John glared. "Yeah fine, 12:30."

"You hopped over the gate to avoid making a sound or waking up the neighbors, climbed up the fire escape ladder to your bedroom window, looked in, saw Mary sleeping and safe, and left the same way you got there. Probably had a run-in with Mrs. Bell's dog on your way out."

"I do have a key to my own flat, you know. I wasn't shimmying up drain pipes or whatever you're saying."

"Yes you were." Sherlock could barely hold back his smirk. He had been laid up in a hospital bed for too long and deducing the nurses was far too easy and incredibly boring. "You hopped over the gate, obviously. The gate is old and loud, Mary would hear it creek open. Plus you're favoring your left side, possible strained hamstring. My guess is you haven't been exercising in the midst of all this, so you hoped over the gate, landed unfavorably. The light orangey-red marks on the insides of your knuckles are rust strains from when you gripped the fire escape ladder. You probably have the same marks on the bottom of your shoes. Really unsafe fire escape, by the way. Call the landlord. Mrs. Bell's dog, well that one's just too easy. Friendly mutt, jumped up onto you when you reached the ground again. Misses you, I'm sure. There are two pulls in your shirt where the dogs paws would have been and short brown hairs on your trousers where the dog rubbed up against you. And finally, you were there at 12:30, not 12 because the sprinklers had just shut off. You still have some dried mud on your shoes which I assume happened when you hopped over the gate and into Mary's flower beds."

John stared in the way he so often did. "You're an arse."

"That's a far less impressive deduction." Sherlock gave his friend a small smile which, after a few seconds John finally returned. While the rest of his life had just been flipped upside down, it felt comforting to have some normalcy—even if that meant Sherlock irking him to no end with his deductions in endless attempts to prove how much smarter he was than everyone else around him. John made a mental note to bring Mycroft along on his next visit.

"I'll see you later," John said with a fading smile, and grabbed his laptop and went.

It was near nine o' clock when John finally made it back to his and Mary's flat. From the hospital, the trip was about a fifteen minute drive, but the hour and forty-five minutes John spent in the car park contemplating whether or not he could actually go through with seeing his wife set him back a bit. Standing at the door to the flat, he was fully prepared to engage in another hour of contemplation, but unfortunately that plan was foiled by a blubbering Kate emerging from her flat across the hall. Isaac was probably missing again. "Oh, John…" she stuttered, quickly trying to suppress the sobs. "I didn't see you there. Locked out, are you?"

"Oh, uh, no…no I'm not. I was just, eh…" he thought back two weeks prior. That's when it had all started; with Kate. He just had to go get Isaac, had to beat up Wiggins, had to run into Sherlock Holmes in a crack den, had to let the sociopath drag him into yet another ridiculous adventure. All this Magnusson business, it all started with Kate. John decided Kate didn't really care why he was outside his flat staring at the knob; she clearly had problems of her own. He nodded a quick "Goodnight" in her direction and let himself into his flat.

The door shut quietly behind him as he looked around from empty room to empty room. The chingle of the keys meeting the marble countertops in the kitchen resounded through the silent flat. John practically winced at their echo. His slow steps halted when he saw the sliver of yellow light beneath the door to his bedroom, his and Mary's bedroom. He stood up a little straighter, chest back the way his commanding officers had always told him when he was in the service and looked damn near ready for battle. Except for the nervous, fidgety rubbing of his fingers against his thumbs and tightness in his jaw, his determination to get this over with was clear.

He gently pushed the bedroom door open, the lamplight from the bedroom illuminating his increasingly hesitant expression. There was a lump huddled in the bed, which seemed to still as he took his first step toward it. "Mary…"

The lamp by her side of the bed lit up her blonde hair, but not her face, her face was turned down and away from him.

He swallowed hard and decided he couldn't be this way. He didn't want to be there, not even a little bit, but he had come for a reason. "I know you're not asleep," he sighed, dragging a chair from the corner up to the side of her bed. When he got close enough he finally saw her face.

Shining tear streams soaked her cheeks, running all the way down to her chin. From the looks of it, she had given up on wiping them hours ago. Her blue eyes were blurred by tears that had yet to make their escape. Mouth tightly shut as if to keep in any audible sounds of despair, which didn't matter now that John was looking right at her. But she didn't say a word. He had never seen another human being show so much emotional pain on their face.

Looking at Mary like this, he couldn't help wishing she wasn't in so much pain. And having this thought made him incomprehensibly angry with himself. He was furious at her! She lied to him, and not about some small, irrelevant detail of her past. She shot his best friend! He was absolutely livid with his wife and with his life, and yet here he was feeling sorry for her.

"What do you want, John?" he finally heard her say, though her eyes did not move. She couldn't look at him.

"I…" he started, but didn't know where to go next. What did he want anyway?

"Did Sherlock tell you to come?" she asked, and sat up in the bed wiping away what she could of the mess on her face. She brought her knees up to her chest and rested her arms on top, genuinely worried about what her husband had come to say.

John's gaze lowered to the skirt around the bed. "He told me to come and talk to you, to figure something out I guess."

Mary nodded. "He said he would."

"Wha—" John's head snapped up. "… He said…When did—"

"I didn't ask him to," Mary quickly cut in. "I swear." John bit down on his cheek and sent a confused look at her. "I went to see him. He texted me asking if I could come by the hospital, so I did."

"What'd he have to say?"

Mary looked up at the man in the repositioned armchair, elbows tiredly perched on his knees. "He wanted me to know he understands. And that he isn't angry about what happened, about what…I did."

"Well…that makes one of us. Naturally, the sociopathic one."

Mary scoffed. "Oh please, you and I both know he isn't a sociopath. He likes to say he is, makes it easier for him to try to be one."

"I didn't come here to talk about Sherlock Holmes," John retorted firmly.

"Then why did you come here?" she threw back, just as firmly as he did, but regrettably with a slight crack in her voice. "To make sure I'm feeling the right amount of self-loathing? Or to see if I have any weapons stashed in the pantry or an escape pod in the loo? Or was it just to collect the rest of your things to move back into Baker Street? What is it, John?"

"You're getting angry with me?!" John yelled. "You have no right to be angry with me!"

"I know!"

"You lied to—" He stopped when he heard her agree.

Mary's hands came quickly to her face to hide new tears she couldn't keep in. "I am not angry with you John, and I am well aware I have no right! What I did was terrible, lying to you and shooting Sherlock, I wish none of it happened. And even though what Sherlock said was true…about you being attracted to a certain kind of life…If I could undo it, I would. All of it. And I know you have every right to hate me, and I wouldn't blame you if you do."

John was quiet for a long time, or at least what seemed like a long time. It could have been two seconds. Neither could tell. "I haven't been sleeping."

"Hm, what's that like?" Mary sarcastically countered, her voice gentler now.

"For all the obvious reasons, but also because…" she looked toward him when he paused. "Well, you might as well know. I'm worried about how safe you are here."

"What?" She was puzzled. "How safe I am?"

"Magnusson is dangerous, and—"

"I know he is, that's why I was…"she trailed off, deciding it was best not to remind John of the incident, though she reasoned that she probably didn't need to. It was almost certainly on his mind every time he looked at her. "I'll be fine," she resolved simply.

"I'm not moving out," John blurted, surprising himself and his wife. "And don't you dare think for a minute it's because I'm ready to work things out or that I'm ready to forgive you because I'm not. I don't even know how to talk to you about any of this."

"Okay," she breathed, still unsure of what he was doing.

"But you are carrying my child, and I need to know that he or she is safe. So, I'm staying here. I'll put all of my things in the spare bedroom.

Mary furrowed her eyebrows, pushing a still-confused wrinkle between them. "So, you're going to live here? Still? After what happened?"

"It's not for you, it's for the baby," he reminded her. Although, as hurt as he was, he knew that statement wasn't entirely true.

"Is that why you came last night?" Mary asked.

Slightly embarrassed, her husband nodded once. "I didn't think you heard me." She looked away from him and down at the bed sheets. When she first heard the fire escape hit the side of the house she was scared it was someone not so interested in checking to make sure she was safe, but when she saw John's silhouette in the window a small part of her hoped he would come in. Of course, he didn't. "Right then." John stood and pushed the armchair back to its place in the corner. "I'm going to bed."

Mary nodded and sunk back down into her sheets. She was just about the flick off the lamp when John cleared his throat at the bedroom door. She could tell he wanted her attention, but he wasn't saying anything. "John?"

"I don't hate you," he uttered. And then was gone.