Leaving the hospital just as dawn was breaking, John had found himself facing a dilemma. Where did he go from here? Not figuratively, that was a decision that could not be made in one evening, but literally. He couldn't face going back to Mary and the flat. For one brief moment he contemplated just staying in a hotel, to be close to Sherlock, but in the end, the call of the familiar was too great and he found himself asking the cab driver to take him to Baker Street.

Mrs Hudson, ever an early riser, was clattering about in the kitchen when he let himself in through the street door and came out to meet him.

'John! Is he okay? Sherlock, I mean? My goodness, he looked so awful when they put him into that ambulance.'

'He's fine, Mrs H. Well - he's back in intensive care, but he's going to be fine. I'm sorry, I should have phoned to let you know. I thought I'd try to get a few hours sleep here before I went back to see him, saves the trek back to Richmond. If that's okay with you, of course.'

'Of course, John. Anytime, you know that. I made your bed up for you.'

'Thank you, Mrs H,' John said, as he slowly started up the stairs. The room looked exactly as he'd left it, and there was his chair, back where it should be. Blocking Sherlock's view to the kitchen.

He started for the stairs that led to his bedroom, but instead, turned, and walked down the passageway to Sherlock's room instead. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. Sherlock hadn't been back there since the day of the shooting. The day that he had found Janine coming out of Sherlock's bedroom and his world had turned upside down.

Sherlock's bed was neatly made, and there was a single long, dark hair on the pillow on the far side of the bed. Janine's of course. So she really had slept here, although Sherlock, of course, hadn't; he had spent that night getting high in the squat. What had Janine thought of that, John wondered? He sat down on the bed for a moment, hand absently stroking the pillow on Sherlock's side of the bed, wondering just for a moment what it would be like to sleep in that bed beside Sherlock. Had Janine ever found out? She must have done, he assumed. And what had they -

He stopped that train of thought there. It didn't matter what had or hadn't happened with Janine. It had gone somewhere beyond kissing and not as far as sleeping with, and that was the end of that. None of his business. So why did he mind so much?

Was he jealous? Of Janine. Did he want - what did he want?

John gave himself a mental shake, patted the pillow one last time, and went up the stairs to his old bedroom, shutting the door tight shut behind him out of habit.

...

Despite his exhaustion, it took John a long time to fall asleep. Being here, in his old bed felt wrong somehow. He missed Mary's quiet breathing beside him, missed her warmth and her weight on the mattress. Sleep when it did come, was full of uneasy dreams, of Mary raising a gun to shoot first Sherlock, then him, again and again. Through it all, Mycroft danced round them in a jester's hat, waving a stick with bells on it, calling them all fools.

He woke with a thumping headache and a dry mouth, opening his eyes with a jolt of disorientation until he remembered why he was back in Baker Street, and slowly, painfully, the events of the previous day came back to him. He resisted the urge to hide his head under the pillow, like a child, in the hope that it would all go away, and instead made his way sleepily downstairs in search of paracetamol.

The coffee might have moved, but the tin of medication was where it had always been. Unable to resist, John rifled through it to see if Sherlock had added any less readily available drugs to the stock, but he found nothing that couldn't be bought in a supermarket or the High Street chemist.

Two paracetamol and a pint of water later, and John was ready for a shower - and then he realised his error. He didn't have any clean clothes here; they were all back in Richmond, and while he was fairly sure that Sherlock wouldn't mind John borrowing his, Sherlock was at least four inches taller and substantially skinnier than John. That and his predilection for well-fitted shirts meant that unless John wanted to face the world in a washed out t-shirt and a pair of rolled up pyjama trousers, he was going to have to head back to Richmond to get a change of clothes after all.

He checked his watch - half two. Good, Mary would still be at work. He could be in and out before she got home. He couldn't face that conversation just yet. Time enough for that when he had worked out what the hell he was going to say to her.

He briefly considered a cab, but instead elected for the tube, picking up a coffee from the Costa next to Baker Street station. There was something soothing about walking down the familiar metal-capped steps of the station, through the barriers with a tap of his Oyster card, and then heading for the steps towards the Circle line, without having to check the signs. He noticed two Japanese tourists, gesticulating wildly at the signs, clutching a paper tube map, obviously confused by its brightly coloured lines and the myriad of routes it presented. He considered stopping to help them but rapidly pushed the idea away. This wasn't a day to look after others. This was a day to get to Richmond as quickly as he could, change his clothes, pick up a few essentials and then get back to Sherlock.

His coffee was finished by the time he got to Hammersmith, and he arrived at the district line platform just as the train to Richmond was pulling in and less than twenty minutes later he was putting his key into the lock of the flat that he shared with Mary.

He pulled his coat off and walked into the sitting room to throw it on a chair, then stopped dead when he realised that Mary was sitting at the table, tapping away at her laptop.

'I thought you'd be at work,' he said.

'I called in sick. Couldn't face it. John, I -'

'Not now,' John said wearily. 'I can't do this now. I've just come back to get changed, pick up some stuff, and get back to the hospital.'

'Did you read it?'

'No,' John said, realising that he'd almost forgotten about the memory stick. He had transferred it from his trouser pocket to the inside pocket of his coat in the cab back to Baker Street this morning, and there it had stayed.

'Are you going to read it?'

'I don't know,' he said, staring at her sitting there, so calm, apparently so unaffected by this.

'Tell me one thing,' he said suddenly, 'Is it mine?'

'What?'

'The baby, Mary. Is it mine?'

'Is it-' Mary went white. 'Christ, John, what do you think that I am? Of course, the baby is yours. There's been nobody else. Not since we got together. I swear to you. I may have lied about my past, but I've never lied about how I feel about our relationship or how I feel about you.'

'And how can I believe you? Tell me that Mary? After everything that you've hidden from me, how can I believe you?'

'Because Sherlock told you that you could. And you trust Sherlock.'

John stared at her, unable to formulate a reply.

'John, please,' she started.

'I can't, Mary, I'm sorry,' he said, his voice cracking. 'I haven't even had time to begin to process this. All I can think about at the moment is Sherlock is lying in that hospital bed.'

'Because of me,' Mary said quietly, 'it's okay, John, you can say it. He's lying there because I'd me.'

'Why couldn't you just have shot him in the leg, Mary?' John asked. 'Why shoot him in the chest if you didn't want to kill him.'

'I had to think quickly. I didn't want to shoot him in the head, if he survived he could never have coped with that. A leg or even an abdominal wound would have left him able to expose me. I couldn't risk that.'

'But his chest, Mary? You shot him in the middle of his chest. You nearly got him in the heart, for fuck's sake.'

'His bloody buttons were crooked, John,' Mary said urgently. 'I thought that I was further to the right than I was. I was going for lung, not the mediastinum. I wouldn't do that to him, you have to believe me, John - I care about him too, don't you see? I didn't want to have to shoot him.'

'So why did you?'

'Because I care about you more,' Mary whispered.

'I'm going to have a shower,' John said, breaking off eye contact. 'And then I'm going to get back to the hospital. I'll stay at Baker Street for a while. It's closer.'

'Closer to who, John?'

'You told me that you wouldn't make me choose,' John said through gritted teeth, walking up so close to Mary that their noses were almost touching. 'You said that I wouldn't have to choose.'

'You don't, John.'

'I don't understand you,' John muttered, walking into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him. When he emerged, ten minutes later, showered and shaved, Mary had gone and the flat was empty. He packed quickly, not wanting to risk the prospect of another difficult conversation, and found himself in a taxi and on his way back to Baker Street with a sense of relief less than an hour later.