He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.

- John 3:29

"Dr. and Mrs. Watson, I'm arresting you on charges of nauseating public displays of affection. You do not have to say anything, and I'd really prefer it if you didn't."

Lestrade was highly amused that he'd just caught grown adults, two of the most serious and steady people he knew, snogging in the second-floor, west-side Bart's lab like a pair of teenagers. They'd both been so into the moment that they hadn't noticed his less-than-silent entrance. When he'd spoken they'd both startled, and he'd never seen any man get his hands out of his wife's shirt faster.

"How was the honeymoon, guys?" he asked.

"Greg!" Molly slid down from where she was perched up on the work bench and ran over to him. "Oh, it was lovely," she said, giving him an awkward hug, all wrists and elbows.

Lestrade exchanged a look with John. Molly was affectionate in her own quiet way, but she'd never run across a room to hug him before. "I thought you were in Poland or somewhere, until Mrs Hudson said you were back," he said. "When did that happen?"

"Yesterday afternoon," Molly said.

"And you're at work?"

She blushed. "I… had things I'm working on that I couldn't leave any longer," she said, and Lestrade decided not to ask her what. Like his own job, Molly's was subject to privacy laws and often involved sensitive information about people who weren't alive to defend themselves. "But it's so good to see you, you'll have to come over soon," she went on. "We'll have dinner or something, and you can hear all about the trip…"

"And see seven thousand photographs," John put in. "I'm not exaggerating. Literally seven thousand, and I never picked up the camera for the whole trip. This one—" he put one arm around Molly's waist and kissed her cheek—"took a hundred and ninety pictures of the Acropolis."

"Julie took four hundred pictures on our honeymoon," Lestrade said without bitterness. Julie was not much of a sore point now that there was a Melissa in his life. "Doesn't sound like much, except this was the days of film. And we only went to Bath."

"Why Bath?"

"'Cause we were twenty-three and dirt poor, and a week at Julie's Aunt Susan's was all we could afford. Not all of us are doctors who get to do a Grand Tour when we get married."

John smiled. "I'm pretty sure you're well above the poverty line these days. When you and Melissa get married, you can do your own Grand Tour."

"Not sure we'd be interested in one, while Hell is busy freezing over," he said. "I told you: never again."

"She'll want to get married, Greg."

"Well, if she's that keen she can marry someone else. Don't give me that smug I-know-better look. I'm not going to change my mind just 'cause you like being married."

Lestrade had been dating Dr. Melissa Brennan, a forensic psychologist, for almost a year. They'd met at a Yard Christmas party and hit it off, despite the fact that she was almost half his age. John was still getting mileage out of teasing him about this, especially when he heard that when Melissa had met Hayley for the first time, they'd bonded over their matching handbags.

"So what are you doing here, anyway?" John wanted to know. "Case?"

Even though this was what he'd come to discuss, Lestrade felt a sudden coldness run through him. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he put them in his pockets, leaning his weight back on his heels. "Actually, I came to see you, John," he said. "I knew Molly was going to be here, made a deduction…" He cleared his throat. 'I thought this was something you should hear from me in person."

John was looking at him in vague concern, instinctively curling his left hand. "What? Has something happened…?"

Not Mrs Hudson, surely? They'd collected Toby from 221A the night before, and the only problem in that direction was that he was highly put out and yet to 'speak' to either of them for apparently abandoning him. Although Mrs Hudson had a sister and several nieces and nephews in Hertfordshire, John was her offical next of kin: if something had happened to her, he would surely know about it before Lestrade did. Nothing amiss with Harry, either: they'd talked on the phone half an hour ago.

Molly was by now looking from Lestrade to John and back again, like she was watching a tennis match. "Oh, well, um, I'd better leave you boys to it…"

"No, please…"

Molly, taken aback by John's tone, sought out his hand and squeezed it.

"Having secrets… let's not start like that, okay?" he said to her. "Stay. Please. Unless… I don't know… unless there are legal reasons why Molly can't hear this?"

Lestrade shook his head. "Nah, nothing like that," he said. "But it probably wouldn't be a good idea for this to go any further than us three, okay? It's about Claudette Bruhl."

John started to ask who Claudette Bruhl was, then stopped mid-syllable as the penny dropped. Claudette Bruhl. The ambassador's little daughter. The one who'd been kidnapped… "What about her? Is she okay?"

Lestrade sighed. "You remember she wouldn't speak after it happened…" He was not keen to elaborate what 'it' was. Two-and-a-half years after the fact, John still shut down all open references to the subject anyway. "Especially not after her brother died." This had happened three days after Sherlock's suicide, so Lestrade barely remembered it; a nightmare coda on the worst week of his life. Mercury poisoning. A horrible way for a child to die.

"She's not still mute?"

Lestrade shook his head. "Not technically. She makes sounds, just no words. Or she didn't, up until about four weeks ago. Then she started talking during a therapy session… about the man who kidnapped her."

John swallowed. "And?"

And how was it, Lestrade thought, that he was so angry at himself that he couldn't just spit things out and say them? Sherlock was dead. Nothing was going to change that. "Well, remembering it was over two years ago now, she was traumatised at the time, and all the rest… the man she described bears no resemblance to Sherlock at all. Not even close."

Silence. Molly tightened her grip on John's hand, stroking her thumb along his.

"But that… makes no sense," John said. There followed an odd, furtive kind of tug-of-war where he tried to gently release his hand from Molly's, and she refused to let it go; this, Lestrade thought, was basically a primer for anyone who wanted to get to know John Watson without being pushed away. Finally, John reached out and gripped the counter with his free hand, as if he were using it to help him think. "I was always assuming the kidnapper looked like Sherlock… something about him…"

"So was I. I think we all were."

"So, but why—"

"Easiest trick in the book. Apparently she was shown a photograph of Sherlock and told all sorts of horrible things about him, including that he was going to kill her, her brother and her father… she was seven, John. When Hayley was seven, she still believed you could dig a hole in the garden and end up in China."

"I don't blame Claudette…" John gently pulled his hand out of Molly's and sat down in the nearest chair. "Greg, is she in danger?"

"… Danger…?"

"Moriarty's plan had to hinge on her screaming when she saw Sherlock and not ever saying why… on her not describing the man who kidnapped her. Now she has."

Greg Lestrade had never doubted the existence and malevolence of James Moriarty, though his only personal experience of him had been a glimpse of him on the stand during his trial. Things had then become all sorts of complicated when the press had decided the man had never existed, but Sherlock and John had been sure he had, and that was good enough for Lestrade—after all, he'd nearly killed them, according to John, and that was a tall order from a kid's TV presenter. Molly had dated him, for God's sake. But in all his considerations of this spidery, shadowy figure, it hadn't occurred to him that he'd engineer some sort of threat to a nine-year-old from beyond the grave.

"I don't think that matters much now," he finally said. "Moriarty got what he wanted, and he hasn't resurfaced since… well, you know, since. I think it's pretty safe to say he's dead, committed or incarcerated."

"It's never safe to assume anything about Moriarty," John said.

"Okay," he agreed, realising he was treading on dangerous ground. Sherlock may have technically died by his own hand, but nothing was going to erase John's conviction that, between them, Mycroft and Moriarty had murdered him. "Anyway, as for the man who took the children, Claudette described him pretty well. He was distinctive. I can say we almost certainly found him dead in Highgate Cemetery nearly two years ago, with his eyes gouged out."

Neither John nor Lestrade were looking at Molly, who made a rough coughing sound and rushed for the door. Lestrade blinked, bewildered, then looked across at John. "Is she okay?"

"She's going to end up in bloody hospital…" John muttered, but it was mostly to himself. He sighed, then smiled. "Yeah, she's okay. Mentioning the gouged eyes probably wasn't your finest moment. Um. We got some good news just this morning, actually…"

Lestrade stared. "You're joking."

"August. Most people say 'congratulations', or something along those lines."

"Congratulations," Lestrade said. "Most people give it a while before they start a family—at least until they get home from their honeymoon."

"Yeah, well, it was a long honeymoon. We discussed this months ago… decided we didn't really have time to muck around."

"Molly's only, what, thirty-three?"

"Thirty-four. She also wants five kids."

Lestrade's jaw dropped. "Christ. Five? You're not going along with that, are you?"

John shrugged. "We'll see. I don't think we'll have the time or the logistics for five, and that's if she even wants to go through all this again…" He reached for the door. "Sorry, Greg. I really should see if she's okay."

The women's toilets were a long way down the corridor; Molly hadn't quite made it there and had made use of the disabled-access toilet instead, so urgently that she hadn't had time to properly close the sliding door behind her. She was easing herself down to sit on the floor, swiping at her mouth with a paper towel, when she heard a knock on it and glanced up. Only John would knock on an open door like that.

"I'm going to be bossy about this," he announced, looking a little perplexed at the scene, as if he'd been seized with the conviction that he should be bossy, but had no idea how. "I don't like you sitting on a dirty floor throwing up into a public toilet, Molly. Doctor's wives should be using more sanitary, classy things to vomit in... like buckets. Or at least sinks."

"I'm not having much fun with this either," she said, trying to smile and dabbing at her streaming eyes with her mushy paper towel.

"I'll bet. You look miserable." He shut and locked the door behind him and sat down beside her on the floor, putting one arm around her shoulders. "At the risk of making this all about me, you know I feel like a complete bastard about this," he said.

"Oh, it's not your fault…"

"I certainly hope it's half my fault," he protested.

She smiled. "Yes, okay, it's half your fault. I don't know what I'm going to do about work. Even thinking about post-mortems..." She swallowed hard. "I was hoping not to have to take maternity leave for another six months."

"We'll figure something out. The last thing I want you to worry about is work." He paused. "Or any of this business about Claudette Bruhl."

"That poor little girl." Molly wiped her eyes again.

"I know. But she's getting the help she needs, and time is pretty kind to kids. Like Greg said, I don't think she's in any danger." John leaned his head back against the wall thoughtfully. After a minute, he said, "You know what I thought when he brought the subject up, don't you?"

"Yes," she said. "I thought it as well. I thought, what if she's remembered something that… you know… implicates Sherlock? I mean, something that can't be true, but…"

"Sure, I know. But kids say things. I was half expecting her to have said something implicating me."

Molly gave a little shudder.

"Anyway, she didn't." John brushed the thought off with a little too much enthusiasm. "And… I'm not sure the news changes much from where we're standing with this, you know? We already knew Sherlock didn't kidnap her. This is just confirming it. Letting the whole world know. It's about bloody time."

She smiled tiredly, then nodded. "Yes."

John kissed her forehead. "I love you, Lolly…" He winced. "Even though your breath smells like vomit just now. You're not getting a real kiss until you brush your teeth."

She laughed a little and wiped her eyes again. John stood up and held his hands out to her. "Come on," he said. "Let's go home. We've got a Christmas tree to put up… well, I do, anyway. You have a bucket to throw up in."