Forty-five minutes later, and John found himself once again sitting, waiting in the chairs outside the operating theatres. A CT scan had confirmed that the bleeding was coming from the right lung, as if the accumulating level of the blood draining from the tube in Sherlock's chest wasn't enough proof. From the scanner, the decision had been made to take him straight back to theatre. The Inferior Vena Cava looked intact, with no leak on the scan, and no evidence that the pericardial effusion had re-accumulated, and for that, at least, John was grateful.

He scrolled through the messages on his phone as he sat waiting. Several from Lestrade, who had been informed of Sherlock's return by the ambulance service, obviously alerted to report any shouts to collapsed idiots with a history of a recent gunshot wounds. And one from Mary, stilted in its politeness, asking him to update her as soon as he could, to let her know that Sherlock was going to be okay.

He fired off a text to Molly before he did anything else, knowing that she'd be worried, chose to ignore the one from Mary, who he considered almost as guilty as Sherlock in contributing to his current condition, and was trying to hit the right combination of sarcasm and apology to Greg Lestrade when he heard the clipping of very expensive shoes coming towards him, and then the sag of his chair as somebody sat down next to him on the row of seats.

'So here we are again,' Mycroft Holmes said quietly.

'I assumed that they would have let you know that he'd been found.'

'I rather hoped that you might have done that yourself, John.'

'I was - busy,' John said, wondering how much Mycroft knew.

'So I understand.'

John looked at him sharply, wondering if Mycroft really had eyes and ears everywhere, then made the connection. 'Mrs Hudson?' he asked.

'Alerted me to your telephone call from Sherlock, and his return to 221b, yes.'

'Did she tell you what -'

'No. She was strangely reticent about the contents of the conversation that went on after his return.'

John felt relief flood through him.

'Is she a risk, John?'

'Mrs Hudson?'

'Don't play the fool. It doesn't suit you,' Mycroft snapped. 'You know precisely who I mean. Is your wife a risk to Sherlock?'

'No. If she'd wanted to kill him that night at Magnussen's office, then she would have done so. She deliberately kept him alive.'

'The fact that she called the ambulance herself certainly suggests that.'

'You knew about that?'

'You think that I wouldn't have listened to the 999 call, John? I'm surprised that Lestrade didn't think of that himself, if only to verify the time-line of events. But then, I did have it deleted fairly rapidly.'

'You - protected Mary?'

'Initially so that I could try to track her back to her handler. I assumed that she had been sent by a third party to dispatch Magnussen. While her decision to shoot Sherlock was a little alarming, I agree with your conclusions. Had she meant to dispatch him, then she would have done so at the time. I had her closely watched following the shooting, of course. You were never in any danger.

'How very reassuring,' John said dryly. 'How did you know that it was her?'

'I recognised her voice on the 999 call, and had her speech patterns analysed to confirm it. That wedding video of yours came in handy for something, after all.

John groaned.

'For what it's worth, John, I'm sorry,' Mycroft said, and for once John actually believed him. 'You deserve some happiness.'

John looked at him and frowned, waiting for the quip, the sarcastic follow-up, but it never came.

'Do you know why he did it?' John asked.

'Why my brother risked his life to run around London only days after major cardio-thoracic surgery in order to let you hear the truth about your wife from her own lips?'

'That would be the one,' John said tightly, wondering why neither Holmes brother was capable of candy-coating even the harshest of truths when their parents appeared so normal and well adjusted.

'I suggest that you ask him yourself, when he wakes up.'

'Help me out here, Mycroft.'

'I think that you know John. If you don't, then you're more of a fool than I took you for.'

'Sentiment?' John asked after a long pause.

'Perhaps something more than that. But then what would I know?'

'Mycroft -'

'Talk to Sherlock about it John, not to me.'

John sighed and closed his eyes. 'But it's not that simple, is it? He'll never talk about it; you know that.'

'How do you know unless you try?'

And by the time that John had processed this, Mycroft Holmes had disappeared, as suddenly as he had arrived.

...

He was allowed into recovery to sit with Sherlock before they transferred him back to intensive care. The plan, they told him, was to keep him intubated overnight, transfuse him up, and then aim to extubate him the following day, or rather later that day, as the clock had ticked from eleven to twelve to one o'clock in the morning while Sherlock was in theatre. The flow of blood in the chest drain had slowed to a trickle now that the main source of the leak had been repaired, and James MacPherson was cautiously optimistic.

'This will prolong his recovery time,' he told John, 'but I don't think he's done himself any permanent damage. If he can behave himself then he'll be out of here in a couple of weeks.'

'No more episodes of VT?' John asked.

'Just one short run of it when we got too close to the ventricle. It settled nicely with some magnesium. I want him on bed rest for at least a week though. That hilum has had enough of a bashing. I wouldn't want to have to go back in for a third time.'

John had thanked him, and settled back into his seat beside Sherlock. When they transferred him to ITU, he went with him, and was amused to discover that Sherlock had been allocated a private room, this time with two of Mycroft's plain clothes security officers placed on the door. Mycroft might not believe that Mary was a threat any more, but he certainly wasn't going to take the risk of Sherlock escaping again.

Almost without thinking, John reached out for Sherlock's hand, lying pale and white on the sheet, and squeezed it. Whatever it took to keep Sherlock in hospital for the next two weeks he would do it, even if it meant staying right next to him for all of that time.

And then there was Mary - Mary, his lying, deceitful wife, who Sherlock was so sure that he could trust. Mary, who was carrying his child. Christ, what a mess it all was. He looked at Sherlock, lying so still on the white sheet, his chest rising and falling with the hiss of the ventilator, looked at his eyelashes curling slightly as they lay on his cheek and the faint freckles across the bridge of his nose that he had never noticed before and squeezed his hand a little tighter.

Sherlock had risked his life to keep a vow that he had sworn, 'Whatever it takes, whatever happens, from now on I swear I will always be there, always, for all three of you.'

'Whatever it takes.'

'For all three of you.'

Even if it meant risking his life.

The stupid, stupid, idiot. Couldn't he see? Didn't he get it? Sherlock was set on keeping him and Mary together no matter what. John, however, wasn't so sure. Sherlock told him that he should trust Mary, but how could he? When she had lied to him about everything? About her past. About who she was. About what she was. And the baby? Had she lied about that too? What if - what if?'

Was that what Sherlock had been trying to tell him? 'You can trust Mary.' Was that what he had meant? That his wife might have lied about her past, but that everything else was true? Was that what he had risked his life to make John believe?

Because if Sherlock was nothing else, he was an excellent judge of character. And Sherlock liked Mary. He was genuinely fond of her – as Mary was of him.

And yet Mary had shot Sherlock.

And still Sherlock wanted John to trust her.

And the vow – the one at the wedding had been not just to John, but to all three of them. John, and Mary, and the baby. And that spoke volumes about how highly he thought of her.

The thoughts went round and round in his head, until finally, lulled by the hypnotic beep of the monitor and the late hour, John fell into an uneasy doze, still with one hand firmly grasping Sherlock's.

This chapter comes, as ever, with thanks to Sevenpercent for pointing out the often inconvenient truths and sorting out my grammar! Any residual mistakes are mine.