The news from Lestrade hadn't been hopeful. The shooter had disappeared like a ghost, leaving no forensic trace of his presence. Even Mycroft's team had been unable to discover much more than the signs of the intruders entry and exit from the helipad doors above, nothing more.

John had racked his memory banks for anything that could help Lestrade; any clues, however small, from his brief time in Magnussen's office; things that he might have seen, or heard, and subsequently discounted. He had tried Sherlock's visualisation techniques, closing his eyes, imagining every step of his journey with Sherlock from the lift shaft up, through the office, finding Janine and the security guard, going up the stairs, finding Sherlock and Magnussen in the office, but there was nothing new that he could add to his previous statement. He envied Sherlock his perfect memory, apparently unaffected by emotion. When John tried to remember the evening of the shooting, all he felt was the fear and panic of finding Sherlock lying unresponsive on the ground.

'Stop torturing yourself,' Mary told him. 'It was a random hit by the sound of it. What does it matter?'

'It matters to Mycroft,' John said dryly. 'You think he's going to let whoever did this to Sherlock walk free, Mary?'

'If they're as good as you say that they are then he may not have any choice.'

'But it's odd, isn't it?' he asked her. 'As Mycroft says, why shoot Sherlock, but leave Magnussen unscathed?'

'Maybe Magnussen still had something that they wanted?' she said. 'You don't shoot someone before you've got what you came for. Anyway, why are we talking about this again? Cup of tea?'

So what did the shooter come for, John wondered, as Mary went into the kitchen to make the tea. Secrets, he presumed, no great challenge in working that one out. If it had been an assassination attempt, then it was unlikely that Sherlock's presence would have prevented it. Which left someone trying to reclaim their secrets. And goodness knows there were enough people out there who wanted that. Nothing like narrowing down the field.

His sleep that night was again interrupted by dreams of Sherlock - falling, bleeding, dying. Dreams that woke him up sweating and shaking, trying not to disturb Mary, sleeping peacefully beside him. Because she needed her sleep, and because what he felt he had no desire to put into words at this point in time. And there was something else, a half-recovered memory from his dream, of Sherlock muttering about perfumes in Magnussen's office. Claire de Lune, he had mentioned Claire de Lune. A perfume - and the musical signal that the French Resistance fighters had used to identify each other in WWII. Was there a clue in that? What else could it mean? Who else wore that perfume, other that Mary? Sherlock had thought that he knew who the intruder was. How could he have forgotten that? And he had identified them from perfume. A woman? Could a woman have done this? Who would have? He could think of only one woman from their encounters who could have done this, and she was long gone, beheaded in Karachi. Or was she? Could Irene Adler have been behind this once again? But if so, then why would she have shot Sherlock?

Abandoning sleep, he got up and pulling his dressing gown round him, padded into the kitchen to make yet another cup if tea. What was it with tea and the British in a time of crisis? It gave your hands something to do, and then your brain something to concentrate on as you drank it. Even the warmth of the mug was comforting as you held it. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece - 5.30am. He considered calling Lestrade, as soon as it became a more reasonable hour, telling him about the perfume, but it sounded crazy even as he rehearsed the sentence. How could a woman have done this? Why would they have?

He fell into an uneasy doze on the sofa, lulled by the low murmur on the television, and was woken by Mary some time later with a crick in his neck and the low throb of a headache.

'I thought that you were going in to see Sherlock at half nine?' she said, as she turned the television over to the breakfast news,

'I was, I mean I am,' he said, looking at his watch. 'Christ, I'd better get a move on. I've got an appointment to talk to the James and the ITU Consultant about where we go from here. Are you coming?'

'Do you want me to?' she asked. She still looked tired, John registered. 'No, you stay here and put your feet up,' he said. 'I'll tell you what they say later.'

It was a long journey on the tube from Richmond to Whitechapel, although thankfully he was deprived of the necessity of changing lines, and was able to remain in his precious seat, still holding his now empty paper coffee cup, as the carriage filled at Victoria, and then re-emptied again after Westminster. He was just congratulating himself on the fact that he might get there in time after all, when the tannoy announced that the train would terminate after the next stop, due to a temporary suspension of service. He knew what that meant. A jumper under the train. It depended on the sensibilities of the announcer as to whether they declared the true nature of the problem or not, and when they did, it was often with an edge of irritation, as if frustrated at the selfishness of the person driven to that desperate act. It was the tube drivers that John felt sorry for. It must be what they all dreaded - seeing a body launched from the platform, slamming on the brakes, knowing that they couldn't stop in time, but trying all the same. Mind the Gap. Sometimes people wanted to fall into the gap, and there was nothing that anybody could do about that.

He joined the scrum of people leaving the train, and emerged into the September sunshine at Mansion House. 9.05am. Time to find a cab if he was going to stand any chance of getting to the hospital in time for his appointment. Appointments could always be postponed, of course, but the army had instilled in him a deep sense of propriety and punctuality. He preferred to keep his appointments if he could,

Checking his phone for messages, as he walked towards the main road to find a taxi, he discovered a missed call from a withheld number, received no doubt while he had been in the deeper parts of the tube network. There was also a voice mail from one of the ITU nurses, asking him to call her back. Fuck. This couldn't be good. He selected the number from his contact list rapidly, but it rang out. Trying again, the phone was eventually answered by a ward clerk, who could only tell him that all of the nurses were busy and ask him to call back later. In the background he could hear the familiar beeping of a monitor, followed by the shouted 'stand clear' of a cardiac arrest.

John thanked the receptionist, and put the phone down, fighting back the sensation of panic and the familiar dizziness that came with it. The phone call - the missed phone call must have been to tell him that Sherlock had deteriorated. It was his cardiac arrest that John has heard in the background, he was sure of it.

And he was too late, he was going to be too late. Breaking into a run, he headed for the nearest taxi rank, trying to flag down any available taxis as he went. He phoned Mary as soon as he had climbed into the front cab in the rank and given the cabbie the hospital as his destination.

'What is it?' she asked, answering it on the first ring.

'I don't know for sure - but I got a missed call from ITU while I was on the tube. They wouldn't talk to me when I phoned back, but I could hear an arrest going on in the background. Mary - I think, I mean I could be wrong, but I think -'

'I'm on my way,' she said. I'll meet you there.

'No you don't have to. Stay there, until we know.'

'I'm coming, John. I don't want you to have to deal with this on your own.'

'Then get a cab. The tubes are down. Someone jumped in front of a train at Cannon Street, by the sound of it, and the line's shut from there. I'm in a cab heading to The London now.'

'I'll be there as quickly as I can,' Mary told him.

Fifteen minutes later, John was sprinting up the stairs to ITU, and as he'd expected was met at the door and escorted into the relatives room by one of the nurses to wait. That bloody lake picture again. If he ever had to see that picture again after this was all over he'd...

Anger. He remembered the anger from before. Remembered the hours he had spent at the gym, thumping punch bags bounding on the treadmill, trying desperately to channel it, of he couldn't repress it. His hands clenched into fists as he concentrated on trying to slow his breathing. 'You see what you do to me Sherlock? ' he wanted to say. 'You see why I try to distance myself from you, to try to have a normal life. Because every time you pitch up, then sooner or later I end up like this.'

He wanted Mary to be here, to be with him to hear whatever it was that they were going to say, but it was too late. The door was opening, and the ITU consultant that he recognised from the previous day and one of the nurses were coming into the room, and he didn't want to hear whatever it was that they had to say. That they had done all that they could, but that despite the drugs and the compressions his heart had stopped, and all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't get it started again.

He braced himself for it. But they didn't say that. They didn't say that at all. What they did say was that Sherlock had woken up. They had done a sedation hold that morning, and within thirty minutes he had started breathing for himself, opened his eyes and tried to talk. They had removed the endotracheal tube that he no longer needed, and he had tried to talk to them. 'He got very agitated,' the ITU consultant told John. 'We had to sedate him again to stop him pulling out his lines. He kept saying Mary, over and over again, just that one name, Who is Mary? His girlfriend?'

'No,' John said stupidly, shaking his head. 'Mary is my wife.' The consultant and the ITU nurse looked at each other, and John smiled slightly at their discomfort. 'No, really,' he said. 'It's nothing like that. But how odd, are you sure that's what he said?'

'No mistaking it,' the nurse said. 'It was just that name, until we sedated him again. We thought he might find it easier with someone he knew here, patients often do. That's why I called you. We thought that if you were happy to sit with him for a while, we could try turning down the sedation again, see how he does. He might still be confused, of course, it might not work, but we'd like to wake him up if we can.'

It didn't take long, not long at all. Ten short minutes perhaps, between the midazolam infusion being turned odd and Sherlock opening his eyes, blinking, and then staring at John for several minutes, as if trying to confirm who he was, blinking as he struggled to focus on him.

'John,' he said finally, his voice hoarse from the recent removal of the tube.

'Morning,' John said, with a smile that betrayed some of his relief.

Sherlock looked past John at the partition wall that separated his bed space from that of the patient next door, then turned his head to the other side to take in the mass of machinery, and looked at John questioningly, licking his cracked lips.

'Here,' John said, lifting up the plastic cup of water he had been provided with, angling the straw so that Sherlock could take a grateful sip of water. 'Not too much though or I'll get told off.'

'You're in Intensive Care at The London,' he said, as he put the cup back down again.

Sherlock blinked, as if trying to clear his head, but remained silent.

'You got shot, Sherlock,' John said bluntly. 'You nearly died.'

'Mary,' Sherlock said, slowly.

'Christ, what is it with you and my wife?' John said with a smile. 'They said that her name was the first thing that you said when you woke up. She's on her way over to see you.'

Sherlock closed his eyes and coughed once, again, then the cough turned into a spasm that sent the saturation monitor alarming, and had the ITU nurse sitting him bolt upright in the bed and placing an oxygen mask over his face in addition to the nasal oxygen that he was already receiving. His eyes flew open, as his face reflected the pain that the unexpected movement caused in his surgical wound. The nurse pressed the boost button on the fentanyl infusion, and within minutes he was resting back, breathing settling, his face calm again.

'Surgery?' he asked John, when he finally opened his eyes again.

'Bilateral thoracotomies. Sorry about that. Going to be sore for a while. No running around for you for a few months.'

'Sorry,' Sherlock said, and then closed his eyes and with seconds was asleep.

'Nice to see you too,' John muttered, but he couldn't stop the grin spreading over his face, Sherlock was back. He was going to be okay. Everything was going to be fine. He would be able to tell them who had shot him, and everything would be - fine.