"Have you gone insane?" says Mary flatly when John finally discovers her.
He has been searching through crowds of wedding guests, elbowing past the astonishing number of security people (Mycroft or just celebrity paranoia?) and calling her name, ever since she ran down the stairs leaving John standing with his hand on Sherlock's shoulder and no way to pretend that Mary has not seen something which will send he totally off the rails.
He gave up on the house after ten minutes and came outside. It is cold. The moon has a yellow fuzz around it – there will be the first frost of autumn tonight. The castle grounds are extravagantly landscaped with little dells and hidden lakes and no obvious place for someone to escape to, and John is about to despair when he remembers the merry-go-round.
Mary is sitting on the steps of the caged carousel, her coat wrapped around her and a bottle of red wine, presumably pilfered from their table, beside her. Her glass is clasped between both hands and her knees are drawn up to her chin.
John stops in front of her, panting. He needs a moment to get his breath back. He also needs it to work out what the hell he is going to say. The truth, he thinks. Nothing but the truth.
They are far from the house and it is dark, just path-level uplighters and a circle of bulbs around the roof of the merry go round.
"It's not what you think," John says when he can speak and breathe simultaneously.
Mary gives him a pitying glare from the top step. "In that case, I'd love to know what you think I think."
John is no good at unpicking this kind of challenge. "Listen," he says. "What did you see?" He is thinking, what did you hear? Sherlock's case is obviously secret, and Mary is the least discreet person on the planet when it comes to Sherlock.
"I saw you trying to kiss Sherlock, and him, unsurprisingly, shoving you away." She is scathing.
Thank God. "Mary –"
"John. Look where we are. It is his wedding. To a woman. Surely this is some kind of clue that he is not gay?" She gestures incredulously and wine slops from the glass onto the stone steps of the podium where the carousel sits stationary behind its railings and padlocks.
"I just kissed him," John says. "On the cheek. He is my best friend."
"I don't take my best friends up to lonely corridors to kiss them on the cheek," says Mary pointedly, and of course she is right.
"Mary –"
"You're unbelievable. His wedding day! My God." She heaves a sigh. "I mean, I thought you had it for him, but I never thought you would – " She stops. "Even I'm not that mad."
She reaches behind her. "Luckily I brought a second glass."
John stares. She tips the bottle and splashes Rioja into the goblets. The sound is incongruous out here. The wedding party continues, and its music can be heard when the breeze turns towards them. John strains to hear other signs of normality and hears wind in the trees, a plane going overhead.
"Cheers," says Mary. "What shall we drink to?"
John picks up his glass and cautiously sits beside her on the steps. Behind them in the dark, the wooden horses flare their painted nostrils and stretch out their legs in an endless race.
"Come on," Mary says impatiently. "What are we toasting? Marriage? Divorce? Not being gay?"
"No," says John, and raises his glass. "To Sherlock."
She lets out a laugh, but it is sorrowful. "You're right. To Sherlock."
They clink glasses, and drink.
"What happened?" asks John. They have moved, driven by the night's chill, back into the mansion and their room. Neither has the stomach for wedding celebrations, and for the first time in weeks, they are talking.
Mary reaches for the room-service wine, and John pours it. "I was desperate," she says. "He was controlling me. My ex."
John watches her. She is so delicate, so frail. He always saw it, but now he sees it in more than her fine hands and pale skin, more than her orphan eyes. He sees it in her hollowed chest, the tension stored in her wrists, the jaw which never quite unclenches.
"I needed someone to help me. I heard of Sherlock. I saw your blog. -Sherlock's website is impossible." She laughs, and it turns to a sob.
John nods.
Mary is curled up in the armchair by the coffee table, turning the stem of her wine glass round and round in her fingers. John is sitting on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, leaning towards her. Mary says, "I started reading about Sherlock. What he does. He works miracles."
"Yes," whispers John.
She smiles as a tear runs down her nose. "I knew I needed him. Just him. It didn't start like that. He was just a name. But soon – he just – you know-"
"I know." He found her scrapbooks, buried in the wardrobe, before he left. Pages and pages of Sherlock. They pre-date Mary coming to Baker Street with the case. And now John understands about the slender lawyer, and why Mary wanted John: because John was a way to be close to Sherlock after Sherlock rejected her. It is clear, too, why the ex boyfriend was so enraged when he saw Sherlock at his home, he and John trying to collect evidence of stalking.
John took a blade to the shoulder in January, and that wound was intended for Sherlock.
"Sherlock is so perfect," Mary says. "Perfect in every way."
"I wouldn't say that," says John. He thinks of Sherlock's insults, the way he can hurt with his withering assessment of everyone else's intelligence, the way he forgets you even when you are standing next to him because he is working, the way Sherlock does not give, holding himself back from the affection that makes the world go round. Sherlock is hard. He refuses attachment. He is brittle, like a vase which has been left for a century on an attic windowsill; brilliant but fragile, dusty neglect coating the cracks in the glaze which might show the raw white pottery underneath. But sometimes, if you are privileged, he does allow you to see the cracks.
Mary gives John a look of pure distress.
"Sorry," says John. "I am not trying to rub it in."
"You had him," she says. "You let him go, how could you?"
"I never had him," says John. He tops up their glasses, even though this is not the world's best idea, and they drink. He has not told Mary any detail about last winter, but she knows. He thinks she has always known. "No one could own Sherlock, possess him. He may lend himself to you for a while. Maybe he will spend time with you, allow you to be near, even, be close."
She presses tissues to her eyes, her mouth, at the ideas that this brings.
John says, "But his mind works only to itself. He is his own secret. It is what makes him special, makes him impossible." He swallows. "It is what makes him my - friend."
She hands him a tissue but he just holds it in his fist.
"I'm sorry," says John. "I should have known, should have seen, should have realised that you needed –"
"Sherlock," she says.
"No," says John. "You needed me. As a doctor, as a friend, yes, maybe even as a man. But I just saw how beautiful you were, and you wanted me and I got carried away. I'm sorry."
Her mouth is quivering so much she cannot speak properly. She swallows, scrubs her face with the tissues, which are falling apart in claggy lumps onto the coffee table. "I'm sorry too," she says.
"I don't deserve this," says John, "but can we be friends? I mean that. I don't mean it as some sop, some excuse. I mean –"
"-You want us to form some kind of dissed-by-Sherlock club," she says, her mouth in a wry twist.
His shoulders drop."No. Not that."
"Yes that," she says, and pours more wine.
He sighs. Lets her put the glass in his hand. "You know I'm at Baker Street," he says.
She just looks at him. There is no fight in her eyes.
"Don't come there," he says. "If you want to see me, I'll come to you. Wherever. Any time. But please, don't come there."
"It's your place," she says, and she is crying again. "Yours and his. I love him!"
John says nothing. Drinks the wine. Is sad.
"Who can live up to him?" Mary asks. "Nobody."
I can, thinks John. I can be his equal. In the ways that matter between us, I always was.
John puts Mary into the double bed, and stands looking down at her. No make up. Hair a mess. Face covered in tears and nose-run. He rubs the bridge of his nose and feels his own tears, but it is too late for them now. She is still beautiful, but she does not love him, never really did. And he failed her utterly by failing to realise what was really happening in her head.
He takes off his wedding ring and puts it by her bed. He will be gone before she wakes up. He thinks about writing some kind of note – saying what? – and instead just leaves her flat's doorkeys beside the ring. She gets it. She knows him, and she is anything but stupid, and she gets it.
He settles back on the sofa, and as he lies there with the struts digging into his spine he considers Sherlock, and Liesl, and the acting, and the monumental thing that Sherlock has done for those good reasons he could not tell John about earlier. Sherlock, for those reasons, is now married, and this is his wedding night. It seemed unreal to John; the whole Liesl affair has always seemed unreal, and he was right. Yet Sherlock must – presumably – be doing some pretty real things in order to have made this work-?
How do you fake a marriage?
Perhaps that is a question John knows a little more about than he should.
Perhaps he should go to sleep. But first -
It is weird, he knows, but in the early hours John takes out his phone and sends a text to Sherlock's secret number. Thinking of you. J x
There is no reply. Hardly shocking. Still he is glad he sent it, even the kiss. Especially the kiss. He is finally being honest and whatever happens, it will be the result of truth.
And when he wakes up four hours later with a cricked neck and an autumnal draught chilling his body, he sees Sherlock's answering text:
Me too. SH
And then another one:
Don't ask. SH
John snorts. Sherlock. And that little exchange is probably the sweetest thing Sherlock has ever communicated to him. John has his bag packed and is ready to go, but finds he is standing smiling at his phone.
He goes downstairs and books a taxi back to the airport. He can sleep on the plane. And when he gets home, there will be a blue file, waiting for him.