The day had come. Everything had to be perfect, the hair, the earrings, the dress. Her dress was beautiful. She had gone shopping with Janine who had a good eye for fabrics and had found one that perfectly complemented her coloring. The cost had been a pair of wickedly expensive shoes for Janine. They'd be eating at home for the rest of the week, but she didn't mind, because she knew that this time he would actually ask her, and she would say 'yes'.
The place was posh. The table was cozy. The menus had no prices which meant that they were ruinously expensive. So, they would be eating at home for a month then. John was clearly nervous, so she decided to give him a moment to calm himself.
"I'm going to the powder room. Can you order us a nice wine to start with?"
"Yeah, sure, Mary...I'll do that."
She rose gracefully to her feet, and he jumped up reaching out his hand to pull back her chair, but she put her hand on his wrist to stop him. "I'm only going to the loo. Relax, we're here to enjoy ourselves."
John nodded. She left the table and climbed up the stairs. When she looked down, she caught him pulling a ring case out of his jacket pocket. She smiled, and then went to the powder room to touch up her make up. When she returned a few moments later, he seemed even more nervous than before. She tried, but she couldn't hide her smile.
Mary didn't consider herself sentimental. She had never been the kind of girl to watch romances or dream of marriage proposals. She had preferred martial arts and playing with knives. Even so, John nervously trying to find a way to ask for her hand softened her heart. He was adorable. She realized then, while watching him fidget, that she truly loved John. She loved him. And when he asked her, she would say yes not simply because it would solidify her cover, but because she wanted to.
She wanted John. She wanted a life with the man. Suddenly all of those things that she had discounted like a home and a quiet life, seemed attractive. The thought of having tea, and waking up next to a man who would smile at her and say, 'Hello love' filled her with a warm glow.
What was wrong with her? Was this the same cold-blooded killer who had taken out a room full of mafia thugs with a pocket knife and a semi-automatic stolen from a deadman? Did people like her have a right to marry and live a happy life like normal people? At this point, she didn't care. She was going to enjoy her marriage proposal. It was likely the only one that she would ever get, and oddly she felt that it was the only one that she would ever need. John laughed, and her heart skipped a beat.
"Well then, what'd you want to ask me?" she said as coolly as she could, her cheeks still betraying her smile.
John began to talk, starting sentences and not finishing them. He kept beating around the bush. It took all of Mary's resolve not to lean across the table and pull the ring out of his pocket for him, he was so slow! "Meeting you...meeting you has been the best thing that could have possibly happened."
"I agree," Mary said immediately regretting it.
"What?" John asked.
'Oh God, did I say that out loud?' she thought. 'He's going to think that I'm an arrogant ass!' She decided to forge ahead. "I agree, I am the best thing that could have happened to you."
John laughed nervously.
"Sorry," Mary said, but he waved it away and went on. He wasn't phased by her arrogance. Of course he wasn't. He used to live with Sherlock Holmes. If John's stories about their life together where to be believed, there was no one who was more of an arrogant ass than he.
John's brows furrowed, and he continued, "If you'll have me, Mary, could you see your way... uhm..."
She couldn't help it then. She laughed. He was so comical, so earnest. She had already said yes with her eyes and her smile, and yet he forged ahead with the plan doggedly, like a good soldier. She could have kissed him silly, would kiss him silly as soon as he finished his sentence.
Then the waiter came back with the wine and interrupted him. She put her hand to her cheek to cover her smile. This was too ridiculous. Would he ever get a chance to say the words that he was planning to say? The waiter talked incredibly fast, going on about the wine, and John smiled too finally seeing the humor of it. He looked up at the waiter and then he jumped.
John rose to his feet and stared at the man in shock. His hands clenched into fists, as a dozen expressions crossed his face: pain, shock, hope, anger. They stood staring at each other for a moment, and Mary wondered who the man was. John obviously recognized him. Was he a criminal, like Moriarty, come to get revenge? But no, John would certainly seem more defensive in that case. He had a hair trigger when it came to danger. It was one of the things that she liked about him. It turned her on, actually. But it didn't seem like he was in danger now. It was recognition. John's eyes never left the man's face.
She looked at the man then. He had a silly painted on mustache that wouldn't fool anyone for more than a moment. She thought that she recognized him from somewhere. The man who had been confident and joking before, now looked a bit nervous. He said, "Well, the short version, Not Dead."
She remembered then. She had seen his face before, in a scrapbook, John's scrapbook. "Oh no, you're..."
"Oh, yes."
"Oh my God!"
"Not Quite."
"You died, you jumped off a roof."
"No."
"You're dead."
"No, I'm quite sure. I checked."
He dipped a napkin into a water glass and wiped off the fake mustache saying, "Does yours wipe off too?"
The callousness of it! The heartlessness. Sherlock Holmes was alive, and yet he had let John believe... She had thought of herself as heartless, but this was an entirely new level. Even she had been touched by John's loyalty. She had watched him morn, visiting Sherlock's grave week after week without fail. She had heard him cry in the night when he thought that no one could see. Sherlock's death had destroyed him, left a broken shell that she had worked hard to patch, and now, Sherlock simply waltzed in smiling as if it were all a joke?
"Oh my God. Oh my God! Do you have any idea what you done?" she said. But they were both distracted by the sound of John thumping the table with his fist. John, she honestly didn't know what he'd do. She had never seen him so shaken. She had never seen him so angry. She called his name, but she wasn't sure that he even heard her. He was shaking. He took a deep breath and began to talk.
"Two years," John muttered, and no one else moved. "I thought you were dead...hmm...and you let me grieve...hmm... how could you do that? How!"
Pain was written all over his body. He looked like he was about to cry.
Then Sherlock raised his hand. "Now, before you do anything that you might regret, one question, just let me ask one question." They looked at him wondering what he could ask that would possibly make up for the way that he had treated John? He pointed above his mouth then and said, "Are you really going to keep that?"
The mustache? Honestly, at a time like this he was going to bring up John's mustache? John had described Sherlock to her as the most annoying git that he had ever met, but she had thought that it was hyperbole, an exaggeration, but no. Sherlock Holmes was arrogant, self-centered, annoying, and completely clueless as the effect of what his actions had done to John. It was mindboggling. She didn't know how to respond, but John did. He reached out and tackled the man, trying to strangle him to death with his bare hands. That might be for the best, but no... John would certainly regret having killed the man whose death he had morned so much, so she rose to her feet and tried to pry him off the man.
It was all quite embarrassing. They were asked to leave the restaurant. They stood outside on the pavement, John staring up at Sherlock, his teeth gritted, Sherlock looking down at his feet, and now and then glancing up at John.
"So," John said, teeth still clenched together, "explain."
"Here John? We're in the middle of the pavement."
"I don't care!"
Mary reached out and took John's arm. "Look dear, there's another restaurant a little down the way. We can walk there, get a bit to eat, give Sherlock a chance to explain himself, okay?"
"Okay, okay," John said, and he set off down the road. Sherlock looked over at Mary and she shrugged before rushing to catch up with him. This was certainly NOT the night that she had planned, but she did have to acknowledge that it wasn't boring.
They sat down at a table with a checkered table cloth, and Mary smiled at John trying to get him to calm down a little, but all of John's muscles were tense. He visibly strained with the effort to keep himself from doing physical harm to Sherlock. Sherlock began to explain how he had escaped, and Mary sat back in her chair. She was genuinely interested, professionally interested to be exact. She had met James Moriarty before, and he did not seem like a man who could be easily fooled, and yet, this man had killed him and successfully played dead for two years with no sign at all that he was still alive, except for that nutter fan group that believed that he was running around Asia somewhere solving crimes. She wondered for a moment if those stories were true.
John had his arms crossed and was staring angrily back at Sherlock who went into an elaborate explanation of how he had escaped. John stopped him saying, "I don't care how you did it, Sherlock. I want to know why."
"Why because Moriarty had to be stopped... Oh."
And in that moment she understood Sherlock Holmes. It wasn't an act. He honestly didn't feel emotions like a normal person. He had thought of how to solve the problem without thinking of the emotional cost to John. He had not even imagined that John would be upset, until he had seen it on his face in the restaurant. He really didn't understand human emotions at all.
John had been loyal to Sherlock, more loyal than anyone, and yet Sherlock had left him behind like a faithful dog left at home while he went away to school. John was thinking that Sherlock didn't trust him. Despite all of the faith that he had given to Sherlock, Sherlock had no faith in him. It hurt him, and it angered him, and she felt for him.
"Who knew?" he asked, and what he was really asking was 'Who do you trust more than you trust me?' He held himself back when Sherlock mentioned Molly Hooper, and his brother Mycroft Holmes, but when he mentioned the twenty-five homeless people who had helped him, John lost it again, and they had to find another place to talk.
After being tossed out of the third restaurant with John running down the street waving his arms for a taxi, and Sherlock Holmes holding a napkin to his bloody nose, Mary smiled. This was actually the best of all possible worlds. Moriarty was dead. His network destroyed, so that no one was around to come searching for her or John. John would get over his anger. He always did. And when he did, he would be overjoyed that his dearest friend was still alive.
"I'll talk him round," Mary said smiling.
"You will?" Sherlock seemed surprised.
"Oh yeah."
Sherlock looked at her then, his piercing gaze boring into her like an x-ray. Her smile widened.
John called for her, and she climbed into the taxi with him, only then remembering that he had never quite got around to asking her to marry him. Oh well. There was still tomorrow. John would calm down, and Sherlock would keep him distracted while she needled Janine for information about Magnussen. Then once Magnussen was dead, there would be no one who knew of her past, and they would be safe to enjoy their happily married life.
Yes indeed, life was good.
