Once Sherlock identified the scent, it took only seconds to come up with the name of the woman who wore it. He literally followed his nose up the stairs to Magnussen's suite and down the hall to an open door. The sounds of Magnussen's mewling pleas for his life told him what he was about to see, and he confirmed it with a quick peek around the doorframe. The petite figure holding the gun could be no one else. Lady Smallwood was taking matters into her own hands. He had never known her to be satisfied with a seat on the sidelines. That, plus her fondness for weapons and skill in using them, made this outcome completely predictable. His failure to anticipate it had allowed her to complicate the situation exponentially.

She was standing with her back to the door, clearly not expecting company. Magnussen, on his knees in front of her, was too focused on the weapon she was pointing at his head to notice his arrival. Sherlock stepped quietly into the room, formulating his opening, when he heard her rack the slide to chamber a round. Magnussen's pleading ramped up.

He waited for the man to take a breath, then chimed in. "Additionally, if you're going to commit murder, you might consider changing your perfume... Lady Smallwood."

Magnussen saw him then, and his expression changed. Relief would be appropriate, but not this single arched brow, as if Sherlock had committed some social blunder.

The first whisper of alarm passed almost without notice.

Magnussen glanced up at his attacker, then back at Sherlock. "Sorry, who?" His puzzlement seemed genuine.

Lady Smallwood shifted her weight, and began to turn around.

Magnussen flinched slightly. "That's...not... Lady Smallwood, Mr. Holmes."

Before he could evaluate Magnussen's statement, the woman completed her turn, and took aim on the center of his chest.

It took several seconds for his brain to unlock, and then the flood of data nearly overwhelmed him. None of it new. All of it ignored until this moment. And now, the one bit that mattered most kept repeating, blocking out the rest.

Liar.

Stupid, stupid. The signs had all been there. Mary's history ending abruptly five years ago was a fact he had discovered, and then discarded because surely Mycroft would have warned him if there was anything dangerous there. He knew his brother would have vetted her when she took up with John, and he would not have stopped at the first dead end the way Sherlock had done. Mycroft would not have shared his determination to protect John from what he didn't need to know. Mycroft would never be deterred by sentiment. Sherlock's safety, as well as John's, would take precedence. For the first time, Mycroft's intrusiveness had been welcome. Sherlock had relied on it, in fact. Could Mary actually have managed to hide the truth from Mycroft, only to let herself be trapped by a blackmailer?

She can't kill Magnussen now. She must know that. Not with-

John would be on his way up at any moment.

The same thought apparently also occurred to Mary, and she asked for confirmation. The problem was that Sherlock couldn't seem to find his voice. When he finally managed to get the words out, it steadied him. He took a breath. This was Mary, after all. No matter what else she might be, she wasn't stupid. That seemed to be his own exclusive domain lately.

Magnussen had his hooks into her. She was here to neutralize the threat, and she had chosen the worst possible moment to do it. Sherlock wondered if his own actions today might have pushed her into this. She needed to let him put it right.

"Mary, whatever he's got on you, let me help."

She smiled, but it wasn't warm, and it wasn't for him. "Oh, Sherlock, if you take one more step, I swear I will kill you." Weary. Resigned.

Idle threat. For Magnussen's benefit.

"No, Mrs. Watson." He saw her react to her name, just as he'd intended, bringing John into the equation to ground her. To reach the loving friend he knew her to be. Not the practiced killer he now suspected she must have been before she found John. He smiled. "You won't."

He was looking into her eyes when the gun went off, and his first response was surprise that she could have masked her intent so completely. No warning at all in her eyes. Not the faintest flinch. Professional, then. At least he'd been right about something.

His body didn't seen to react at all, but his brain instantly launched a rapid-fire search, an emergency scan of the data stored so neatly in a palace that was about to fall. Trying and failing to find a point of reference. Finding no data on how to respond to this. Not yet certain what 'this' even was.

The physical sensations seemed too trivial. Nothing he would interpret as pain. Just a tightly focused impact that would have been easy to overlook, if not for the trickle of incoming data now building to a flood that would soon be impossible to ignore.

Blood. There was a hole in his shirt right over the impact site, and it was beginning to bleed.

The shirt isn't bleeding, idiot. She shot you, and it's bad.

His fight or flight response supplied a useless jolt of adrenaline. Flight was no longer possible. Fighting would be a pointless waste of his rapidly vanishing resources. If Mary wanted to shoot him again, she would already have done it.

Pain sensors came back online then and refocused everything on the impact site. He had seen victims react to being shot. John had once told him what it felt like. Sherlock had even tried to imagine the sensation himself, purely as a mental exercise. He had certainly experienced an above average variety of intense pain stimuli over the past two years. His pain threshold was well established. What he was feeling now was empirical proof that some sensations simply had to be experienced first hand to be understood.

The intensity of it took his breath away. From zero to off-the-scale in a heartbeat. Body responses were beginning to overrun the still-functioning part of his brain, forcing it to translate what he needed to survive into familiar faces and voices he could still process with what little he had left.

But the growing certainty that there was nothing he could do to stop this was tearing his focus away from the only thing that still mattered. A thought that kept trying to break through the rising wall of panic.

He wouldn't be able to think at all in a few seconds. It was suddenly that close.

But just as the pain and the darkness were about to pull him under, he had a moment of absolute clarity.

John would never know that his wife had killed his best friend, and that killing him had started her down a path that could eventually force her to do the same to him.

Not unless Sherlock found a way to tell him.

He focused everything that remained on a single goal, crystalized into a two-word mantra that followed him down into the abyss.

Don't die don't die don't die don't die don't die don't-

The siren could wake the dead. John regretted the thought as soon as it surfaced in the frantic disbelieving chaos in his head.

He's kidding. This is an elaborate, senseless, heartless joke like the bomb in the Tube carriage. Like the engagement ring. Like the first time he died- Christ, don't number them. He didn't die then. He won't die now. It's not real. It can't-

"His pressure's bottoming out," the paramedic leaning over Sherlock, called to his partner driving the ambulance. "Pull out the stops."

The driver nodded, and their speed increased to just this side of reckless.

"Sherlock, we're losing you." John leaned around the medic to touch Sherlock's icy left wrist. "Sherlock!"

That's brilliant. Scream at the patient like it's up to him.

The ambulance took a right turn so abruptly, that John nearly lost his grip on Sherlock's wrist. He closed his fingers, and held on for dear life.

Greg came off the elevator on the surgical floor at Royal London a little after midnight. John Watson was standing at the bank of public telephones in the corridor to his right. Not moving. Head down. Shoulders slumped. Greg's heart sank, and he just stood for a moment to brace himself.

The ding of the elevator door closing made John straighten and turn around. When he looked at Greg, there was no hint of recognition, and Greg wondered if he saw him at all. "John?"

John blinked once, and the light came back. Greg took a deep breath and started toward him. "John, how is he?"

John turned back to the phones. "I need to call Mary and let her know."

"Wait." Greg reached into his coat pocket and brought out the mobile phone he'd found on the carpet next to where Sherlock had fallen. "This is yours, isn't it?" He'd already verified that it was before he took it from the crime scene. Sherlock was speed dial one.

John came over to him and accepted the phone. "Yeah, I dropped it after I called the ambulance. Thanks."

The absence of emotion in his face and voice was worrisome. Greg didn't think he could still be in shock, but that's what it looked like. "John? Can we sit down somewhere and talk for a few minutes?"

"Sure. What do you need?" John had slipped the phone into his jeans pocket, apparently having forgotten about calling Mary. "The waiting room's down here." He turned and started walking down the corridor.

Greg watched him go for a moment, noting the lack of any animation beyond what was absolutely necessary to move him where he needed to go. Compared to John's usual energy level, this was barely sleepwalking. A few yards down the hall, John turned right and Greg followed.

The room was dimly lit by table lamps, plus the glowing screen of a television mounted on the far wall above a long sofa. Scattered in groups of two and four were armchairs and side tables and one smaller sofa near the center of the room.

John had stopped to talk with the receptionist stationed by the door, and Greg stood back discreetly to wait for him. He had noticed Mycroft on his first scan of the room, and he glanced back that way now while he waited for John. Mycroft was sitting on the smaller sofa, and his PA was with him, typing furiously into a Blackberry. Mycroft looked up at Greg and nodded, then turned back to the woman whose real name Greg had never heard. A moment later, she got up and walked swiftly past him and out of the room.

John's suddenly increased volume made both Greg and Mycroft turn toward the reception desk.

"I understand that," he was telling the woman, close to the limit of his patience. "But it's been three hours since anyone's come out with an update. I was told that it would..." And suddenly, he seemed to run out of steam. His voice trailed off, and his shoulders dropped.

Greg exchanged a look with Mycroft, then walked over to John and put a hand on his shoulder. "John, we need to talk. I'm sorry, but I need your statement while it's all still fresh in your mind." It was meant to distract him, and it seemed to work.

"Okay. Yeah, we can do that." He wandered off toward a pair of chairs a few yards away and sank into the one facing the entrance.

Greg followed him and took the other chair. He glanced at Mycroft and got another faint nod of acknowledgement. Mycroft had called him an hour ago and heard everything Greg was about to tell John. He had then asked Greg to come to the hospital to be with John. The request had surprised him, but not as much as it would have done a few years ago. John mattered to Mycroft because John mattered so much to Sherlock. It was as simple as that.

Greg waited for John to focus on him. "Magnussen says Sherlock was there for a meeting they had scheduled. Is that right?"

John frowned as if he were trying to remember. "A meeting. Right. We went to meet with Magnussen."

Greg had heard John try to lie before. This was a pretty fair attempt, considering the shape he was in. "Do you know how Sherlock got hurt?"

John flinched slightly at the question. "Hurt. Yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it." He took a deep breath. "Magnussen said he didn't see what happened. That someone hit him from behind, and he was unconscious until just before I found them."

Greg nodded. "Yeah, that's what he told me, too. When I asked him how he knew Sherlock had been shot if he didn't see it happen, he said he must have heard it and just didn't realize. Do you buy that?"

John's gaze narrowed. "He got shot. That's what Magnussen said when I asked him what happened. Not 'I think I heard a shot'. It was a statement of fact. How did he know if he didn't see it happen?"

Greg agreed. "Do you think he could be the shooter himself?"

"No. I don't think so, but your forensics team need to check for powder residue on his hands. I checked him for weapons while the medics were getting Sherlock ready for transport. If he had one and stashed it, seems like it would be pretty easy to find. I didn't exactly have the time to search the room."

"I had them check before I let him out of my sight," Greg said, and then realized that John was no longer listening. His expression had taken on the blankness Greg had seen earlier.

Staring at a point in the distance, John spoke softly. "I thought he'd been knocked out like Janine and Magnussen. He was bleeding out, and I was patting his face trying to wake him up. Those seconds mattered."

And there it was. The guilt that John managed to take onto himself in defiance of all reason, whenever Sherlock was in trouble. Greg closed his eyes in a moment of pure exasperation. "John, none of this was under your control."

John nodded. "Never is. I just get to live with the aftermath." His voice was flat.

Greg had held John together, almost literally, that first night after Sherlock's leap from the roof. He recognized this quiet resignation as the calm before the coming storm. "Have you talked to Mary? Do you want me to get her for you?" If Sherlock didn't make it, Greg knew he would not be able to handle John alone.

"I was about to call her when you got here." John reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. Paused, looking blankly at the screen. "It's late. She'll be asleep." He put it back in his pocket and sat back. "What else did you need to know?"

Greg pulled out his notebook. "Magnussen's PA was drugged in addition to the knock on the head. Something the A&E doc said sounded like a memory altering substance," he referred to the notes, "Like the date rape drugs. Rohypnol, GHB, GBU, Ambien. He said they'll test for all of them, but it doesn't really matter which one. His diagnosis was based on the fact the she doesn't seem to have any recollection of how she was knocked out or who did it. Same with the bodyguard, although he got a much heavier blow to the head than she did. Serious concussion."

John was focused on him now. "Not something a burglar would bother with. That sounds like a professional planning to kill Magnussen, but leave the witnesses alive." He frowned. "He went to all that effort to kill Magnussen, but he shoots Sherlock instead and leaves Magnussen with a bump on the head? It makes no sense."

Greg put away the notebook. "I know. Makes you wonder if he was there for Magnussen at all."

John was instantly on alert. "You think he was there to kill Sherlock? That's not possible. No one could have known we would be there."

Greg shook his head. "No, I think they surprised the shooter, and Sherlock took the hit for it. Whatever he was there for, I don't think the primary goal was to kill Magnussen. I think he was after something."

John's eyes narrowed. "He was a blackmailer," he said softly, as if thinking out loud rather than talking to Greg. "Sherlock said-" He broke off and went very still, his focus now riveted on something over Greg's shoulder.

Greg turned to follow his gaze. A man in blue scrubs had just entered the room. Mycroft got to his feet and headed toward them. John stood up slowly, like a man braced for a blow he would never be ready to take.

The man came towards them just as Mycroft reached the group.

"You're waiting for news on Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes," John's voice was barely audible.

"He's my brother. What can you tell us?" Mycroft's smooth facade was firmly in place.

"He's still in surgery, but that's a good sign. I'm one of the surgical nurses. They just brought in some relief staff, and the surgeon asked me to give you an update. I'm afraid no news is good news at this point."

John swallowed visibly. "You were working on him?"

The man smiled. "I was assisting."

John nodded. "Yes, that's what I meant. Was there cardiac damage? Can you tell me what was in the damage path?"

"Sorry, no. I can't give you any details. That will be the surgeon's responsibility. He's holding his own. It shouldn't be more than another hour now."

Mycroft studied the man for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, I see. Thank you." He turned and went back to the sofa.

John smiled vacantly. "Yes, thank you." He sat down.

The nurse looked at Greg and nodded. "We're doing everything we can." He turned and left the way he came.

Greg turned back to John and found him sitting back with his eyes closed. "John? What did that mean?"

John answered without opening his eyes. "It means we don't know any more now than we did two minutes ago."

Greg tried to engage John in further discussion about the attack, but his interest had evaporated. After a few aborted tries, he stood up and stretched his back. "I think I'll go down and see what they've got in the cafeteria at this time of night." He knew better than to ask if John wanted to come along. "Can I bring you anything? Coffee?"

"No. Thanks." John looked up. "You don't have to stay. I'll call you when we know something."

"I can stay a bit longer. Let me get you some coffee." He got a head shake in response. "Okay, I'll be back shortly."

By the time Greg found the cafeteria and then made his way back to the waiting room through the maze of identical corridors, he was beginning to feel the strain himself. He'd had the same experience as John, after all. Thinking one of his closest friends had killed himself, and feeling that he was in some way responsible. It had been hell for a long time. The thought of going through it again- for real this time- was much worse because he knew exactly what it was going to feel like.

But Greg couldn't really compare his loss to John's. What John and Sherlock were to each other was unlike anything Greg had ever seen. They were simply essential to one another in ways that defied definition. Greg envied them both. And he was more afraid for John right now than he had ever been.

When he walked into the waiting room, John was sitting hunched forward with his face buried in his hands, elbows on his knees, and Greg's heart turned over. Mycroft was nowhere in sight. Greg set the two paper cups of coffee on the receptionist's desk without glancing her way and sat quickly down in front of John. "What happened?"

John shook his head back and forth, not raising it from his hands. He took a long, shaky breath and let it out before he looked up. "He's out of surgery. They took Mycroft back to see him."

Greg sat back and exhaled slowly to counteract the dissipating rush of adrenaline that was making him feel slightly sick. "Christ, I thought-" He looked at John more closely. "What's wrong?"

"He's a long way from being out of the woods. His heart rate and blood pressure are unstable as hell. Don't get me wrong, it's a huge relief that he made it through surgery. I really thought he was going to die in the ambulance. He came so close..." John seemed to be looking at a memory. A few seconds later, he literally shook it off and took a slow breath. "The next 24 hours will tell us more."

"John?"

They both turned to see Mycroft looking down at them, leaning on his umbrella with both hands. "They've moved him to a private room. I'm afraid I will have to be absent for a few hours. An issue has arisen that demands my attention. I will return as soon as I can. I have arranged for you to have unlimited privileges, if you want to sit with him."

John was on his feet before Mycroft finished the sentence. "Where?"

"I'll take you to him." Mycroft turned to Greg. "You can stop by for a moment, if you like."

Greg followed them down the hall a few paces behind, listening to Mycroft recite what he'd been told by the doctors, no doubt verbatim. From John's responses, Sherlock was still in very critical condition. Mycroft wasn't saying how he had managed the private room when anyone else would have landed in the critical care ward with a dozen other patients, and John didn't ask. It wasn't hard to guess.

"Here." Mycroft stopped in front of a closed door next to a large window that showed the entire room and its single occupant surrounded by monitors and support equipment.

Even from ten feet away, Sherlock truly looked like death warmed over, and barely that. Greg heard John's sharp intake of breath and knew that his assessment was the same.

"You go ahead, John. I'll just stay out here," Greg told him, unnecessarily. John was already on his way.

"Thank you for coming, Greg. He needed a friend." Mycroft turned and walked away, swinging his umbrella in a short arc at his side.

Greg turned back to the window, knowing it would be the last time anyone would see John Watson outside this room until Sherlock's condition was resolved, one way or the other. John was standing at the foot of the bed, hands braced on the footboard. Studying the monitors.

If there's any way he can do it, he'll come back to you, John. I would bet my own life on that.

As he turned to go, he saw John move to the chair next to the bed and take Sherlock's hand.

End of Chapter 5