A/N: OK. So this is the same chapter with some of the more disturbing parts taken out. I hope this isn't too confusing. Thanks to Zacha for this idea of duplicate chapters. She very cleverly uses it in her writing.

Chapter 9 – several hours later

He had always had vivid, colourful dreams, even before the war, but they were ordinary and sometimes even boring dreams. He always remembered them with perfect clarity, even the stupid ones like the dream he'd once had about a road trip with his mates and the conversation in the car during the dream had been about neckties. In exquisite, boring detail. Then came the war and while not all of his dreams of Afghanistan were horrible, gut wrenching affairs that caused him to wake up sweating, crying and sometimes screaming, most of them were. They were also excruciatingly detailed and vivid and they were anything but ordinary. He'd never had flying dreams before or dreams about visiting weird and wonderful places. It's not that he didn't have an imagination. It had just never shown up during sleep. The war and the exotic local had pried open his imagination and painted his dreams with it. The slumber he had fallen into after lying on the bed beside Mary brought him straight to Afghanistan, but it was the Afghanistan of A Thousand and One Nights.

Walking through the market in a small village in Afghanistan. He was checking the market stalls for interesting items. One's he could send back home to friends and maybe a peace offering to Harry. From behind the stalls strange and wonderful creatures came up to him offering him rare items, jewels and magic lamps, rugs that flew and plump and delicious looking fruit that didn't exist in nature. All the people in the dream had green or purple or blue or red skin. It was their eyes that caught and held his attention. Sharp, piercing eyes that glimmered silver or blue or green depending on the light. Eyes that took one look at him and knew him right down to his soul. And instead of haggling or forcing their wares on him, which is what usually happened in a market stall anywhere in the world, the strange people kept saying. 'He's not here. Keep looking. He's not here, but he's nearby.' And Mary was ahead of him and she was beckoning. 'This way, John. Do keep up.' And she ran ahead and around a corner and down an alley and suddenly it was night and he was back in the alley surrounded by the five Uglies, but the alley was still in Afghanistan and the stars were bright and close and gorgeous, the stars of the desert, not the stars of a city. 'Beautiful isn't it?' said a deep baritone voice, smooth like chocolate. He turned and Sherlock was standing there pointing a gun at a fleeing shape. He looked around and four bodies were on the ground, but the fifth was running and Sherlock lined up his sight along the gun and shot the last Ugly. Another voice, higher, feminine called out "No!" in anguish.

John woke up with a start, still trapped in the remnants of the dream. It took him a minute to orient himself. He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. The light coming in the bedroom window indicated that he'd slept for a few hours. He was in Mary's room and he was about to sit up when he heard it again. The last part of the dream, the voice crying No hadn't been part of his dream. Mary was tossing on the bed beside him in the grips of a nightmare. Her voice was pleading and there were tears running down her face. John sat up abruptly and reached out cautiously toward her, not wanting to touch her. That could send the whole situation spirally out of control. If he woke her up too quickly one of them might get hurt, if she hit him in her confusion. He leaned over and whispered near her ear:

"It's ok. You're safe. It's only a dream. Shhh. You're all right."

He repeated this reassurance several times until her eyes finally snapped open. He could tell her heart was racing and she was close to hyperventilating. Her eyes flickered rapidly back and forth across the ceiling and awareness slowly seeped into them. She sat up and realizing she had been crying, furiously scrubbed at her eyes trying to erase the signs of tears. She stifled a sob. John reached out to her and laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. She stiffened slightly, but then relaxed. He took this as a cue that he could put his arm around her shoulder and comfort her. She leaned into his embrace and stifled another sob.

"No you don't," John said firmly and kindly. "You're going to let yourself have a good cry."

Mary shuddered slightly and then the kindness and warmth of John's tone reached through the wall she always kept up around herself and she started sobbing in earnest. John wrapped both arms around her and drew her close, tucking her head under his chin. He could feel his t-shirt getting soaked, but it didn't matter. He slowly rocked her back and forth and stroked her back. She clutched at his shirt, kneading her fingers in and out of the material. Gradually her tears subsided and she started taking the deep shuddering breaths of someone who has cried their heart out and can't cry any longer. John closed his eyes and continued to rock her.

After a few minutes Mary gradually released John's shirt and carefully pushed herself far enough away from John so she could look into his kind, warm eyes. He smiled at her and there was a moment when they just looked at each other and then Mary threw her arms around his neck and wrapped her fingers in his hair and pulled him close and John let her. Their lips met and a spark kindled in him and a rush of desire flooded through him. It had been a long time and he had been so lonely and sad and he was only human. He knew he was falling fast and hard for this fascinating and dangerous woman.

Dangerous, there was that word again.

Danger

He had always felt the rush with danger. Was addicted to it.

And I said dangerous and here you are.

This was dangerous. He couldn't do this. Not right now. This wasn't right and it wasn't fair, to Mary or himself.

If there was something between them, he didn't want it to start like this. Not for either of them. He had never minded the idea of sex for comfort. There had been other nights when there had been a need so powerful and mortality had been close at hand that you slept with someone in order to feel alive again. But not with this. Mary was drowning in feelings she had probably been suppressing for years and he didn't want to regret this something between them if she realized it wasn't what she really wanted. He could not and would not take advantage of her this way.

His libido was mentally kicking him and whining quietly at the back of his brain. He sighed, mentally and told his libido to shut it. He then proceeded to ever so gently untangle himself from Mary's lips, her lovely, lovely warm lips, which were currently blazing a trail of kisses down his neck.

He found her ear and very quietly whisper in it. "We can't." He then very gentle pushed her away from him. She stiffened in rejection and he looked into her eyes and his resolve almost broke. He gripped both of her shoulders gently and said, "It's not that I don't want to. I want you in the worst possible way, but not like this. I think I might want you forever and I'm afraid." He cleared his throat and continued. "I'm afraid you'll regret it if we do this right now under these circumstances. We are both caught up in these emotions and I'd rather we waited to see if there was something more than sex," he blushed slightly at his bluntness.

Mary looked at him, then closed her eyes and nodded. Her face cleared and she moved her arms from his neck and wrapped them around his waist and snuggled into his shoulder. He lay back with her lying on him and he wrapped one arm around her waist, lightly stroking her back and his other hand was brushing her hair. They lay like that for a few minutes.

"Do you want to talk about it," he asked hesitantly. She didn't say anything for a minute.

"I don't actually remember much about what happened," and John knew she wasn't talking about the dream. "At least I don't have much of a visual memory." She paused and swallowed.

She began to tell him haltingly and cautiously about her 3 days with Moran. She'd been captured while tracking down the location of where he was hiding. He'd blindfolded her from the start, taunting her the first day with what he'd wanted to do to her. John kept up a steady pace while stoking her back. He could tell from the way she spoke that she hadn't told many people about her experience. He felt a growing, almost blinding hatred towards Moran, but he kept that feeling from his hands. Sherlock had arrived before the end and he'd found her, suffering from major blood loss and dangerously in shock. He'd been so gentle with her, untying her and taking off the blindfold.

"I really don't remember a lot, but I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he saw…" she paused and swallowed again.

John remembered Sherlock's reaction to the CIA's mistreatment of Mrs. Hudson and could imagine the fury that must have been in his eyes. Women might not be Sherlock's 'area', but he had usually been gentle with women who had been physically attacked, even on their cases and for a woman he knew he was murderous.

Mary seemed to relax further as she finished. John felt that despite how painful it must have been to talk about, it had ultimately been healthier for her, not letting it stay buried. He was thinking it might bring a fresh round of nightmares. He continued stroking her back.

They lay like that for a moment when she said, "I have physical scars as well as emotional ones."

John looked at the pain in her eyes. He realized she was humiliated and embarrassed.

"Me too," he said simply.

"All over your back," he could barely choke it out. She nodded, biting her lip and a faint blush crept up her skin.

"You did nothing wrong," he whispered. Mary started crying again. But it was a calmer type of crying not quite the heart breaking anguish of before. After a few minutes he got up and refilled her glass of water from the tap in the bathroom. He brought it back to her and she drank it down with a small smile of thanks. He took the glass from her, put it down and climbed back into bed with her. He wondered if a change of subject would help or nor. He decided to ask her a question that had been bouncing around at the back of his head ever since this morning.

'How on earth, did you ever start down the road to becoming an assassin?"

She stilled a moment and he wondered if he had blundered bringing up the subject when suddenly he could feel her laughing quietly.

"I know. It's ridiculous, right? I'm, like, what? 120 centimetres? I weigh about 47, 48 kilograms. But that's why they recruited me. Thought I looked nonthreatening and could get close to targets, because who would believe someone so small could be so deadly. I am deadly, you know," she glanced up at John and he was pleased to see a small gleam had returned to her eyes.

"Oh, yes. I believe you," he chuckled down at her. "I saw you in the alley." He was beginning to wonder where his moral compass had gone in all this. He normally wouldn't have been too pleased that someone he knew could calmly speak of killing people, but it wasn't as if she had randomly done any of that. She was more like a soldier, at least in the eyes of a secret intelligence group. And he couldn't say that he hadn't done similar things during the war. He really wasn't all that chuffed about the loss of the Uglies in the alley. It was him or them as far as he was concerned and apparently he'd killed one and she had killed four of them to save him. He thought about that for a moment. Had she? Killed four? He remembered three, but what about the fourth, the one who had grabbed him at the end and then run off.

"Mary," he asked cautiously. "In the alley? How many of those blokes did you, you know, kill?"

She looked at him quizzically. "Three. The fourth one ran away and someone else shot him as he exited the alley" She frowned, remembering. "I didn't really think about it at the time. I was more concerned with you being hurt and all. Why?"

And John remembered his dream. It was all there. He looked at her with rising excitement. He was so sure this time.

"Because I think I know who else was there. In the alley. I think I know who shot the fourth.

A/N: Hope that wasn't too much.

Just a side note John's dream about the car ride and the discussion about ties is actually my husband's. He really does have the most detailed and boring dreams about everyday things. I am jealous, because I have colourful and fascinating dreams, but cannot remember a single thing I dream. That's what I get for making fun of him.