It takes hours for her to calm John enough to come to bed. He hangs his clothes in the closet without looking at them, the ring forgotten in his pocket. She strokes his arm to steady him as he lays beside her angrily glaring at the ceiling. When she wakes the next morning his muscles are still tense as if he hasn't slept.
Has he?
Mary rises from the bed and pats his shoulder before walking into the bathroom and closing the door. She looks into the mirror at a face that no longer knows how to smile. Sherlock is back. Is the contract still on? Moriarty is dead, so it shouldn't matter, but... not in all her years of work has she let a target go free. Letting Sherlock live would ruin her reputation, if she wants to continue working as an assassin.
Does she?
She told herself that she had given it all up, that she was retired for good? She will marry John and have her happily ever after. That is, if he still wants to marry her now that Sherlock is back.
Does he?
Does Sherlock know about her?
Will he tell John?
Will John still love her if he does?
Sherlock appeared, and John had forgotten all about asking Mary to marry him. It was a big shock. She was shocked! But would that be enough to make him forget her? Did John still love her?
Yesterday she had known what her future would hold. Now, all that she has are questions.
Sherlock traveled for years destroying Moriarty's network. Does he know about me? If so, why didn't he try to kill me?
No, Sherlock can't know. Only Moriarty and I knew about the contract, and even if someone did find out about it, the person assigned to kill John Watson was A.G.R.A, and A.G.R.A is dead. No one knows that I am still alive.
Do they?
Yes. C.A.M. knows.
He knows who she was. Perhaps he knows about the contract too. Even if Mary marries John, and Sherlock never finds out about her past. Nothing in her future will be certain until C.A.M. is out of the way. But, everything that Janine has told her about him suggests that Magnussen is a very hard target to hit.
She fills the sink and thrusts her face into the cold water. The coolness and the lack of oxygen help to bring her mind into focus. She gasps, lifting her head from the water and watching as the rivulets flow over her skin. This is no time to panic. If Sherlock is coming after her, she will deal with him then. No need worrying about that now. C.A.M. is a blackmailer. He won't do a thing without sending her a message first. The worst thing that she can do is panic and give herself away.
But why has Sherlock returned now?
Destroying the network would mean destroying the assassins sent after Sherlock's friends. He would not have returned if John was still in danger. Did that mean? Had there been another assassin assigned to John if she should fail? That sounded like something Moriarty would do. But, if Sherlock had missed her, how many other assassins might be out there even now with their sites on John? When Sherlock's return was known, would someone else finish what she had refused to do? Was there someone out there now waiting to kill John and maybe also kill her?
Perhaps her best bet would be to run. Finish the job that she was assigned, and get out. She has a German passport hidden away and some money. She could leave the country fast enough if she needed to, but ...where would she go? A.G.R.A. is dead. She would either have to reclaim her title and come out of hiding or start afresh, and Mary is too old and too tired to have to prove herself all over again.
Mary drains the sink and walks back into the bedroom to find that John has finally fallen asleep. She looks down at his sleeping face. Lovely John, there are so many ways that she can kill him. She sits on the edge of the bed and runs her hand across the sheet until she touches the edge of his pillow.
A pillow over his face. That might be the easiest. Hypoxia. Suffocation isn't the first assumption in such cases. Usually they blame the heart. But he would probably struggle, and I've wrestled too often with him to underestimate his abilities in a hand to hand scuffle. Perhaps if I tied him down? I could pass it off as a desire for adventure, a little sex play, but it would leave marks on the wrists. More difficult to claim that it was just an accident.
She runs her fingernail up the outside of his arm, then strokes softly over the tops of his shoulder until her fingers cradle his neck.
He's always complained about that lamp cord being too long, a tripping hazard. I could wrap the cord around his neck. Twice to make sure, and pull until his hyoid bone snaps. It would only take a couple of minutes, but It would be an obvious murder, I'd have to be ready to leave the country immediately, but if I timed it right, it might be half a day before the body was found. Then again, there's always the gun.
She looks up at the ceiling.
Would it wake him if I stood up on the bed to retrieve it? No one would hear, not with the silencer on. Then again, the bullets would tie the death to my old identity more solidly than any other evidence. It is, after all, an assassin's gun.
She looks down at his face, stroking his cheek with one hand.
What if he woke before I could kill him? He would ask what I was doing? Would he try to kill me then? Or would he stare up at me with a look of shocked betrayal. Perhaps he would stare blankly at me as if he did not care if he lived or died. The way he looked before Sherlock returned. John would never expect me to hurt him.
She runs her fingers through his hair.
Because John would never hurt me.
And I could never hurt John.
She kisses his forehead. She has done the one thing that an assassin is forbidden to do. She has fallen in love with her mark. Such relationships only end one way, only one.
A tear lands on John's nose. Mary is crying. She wipes the tear away, and then leans over to kiss John on the lips right below his ugly mustache. His eyes flutter open, and he reaches out putting his arms around her and pulling her down onto his chest. He kisses her hair holding her tightly. She closes her eyes. Then he rolls her onto her back pushing her shirt up before kissing her abdomen. His mustache tickles the skin around her bellybutton, and she laughs. Then he pulls off her pajama bottoms and kisses lower until she lay her head back and moans.
John doesn't know about her past, and she will do whatever it takes to make sure that he never knows. Sherlock, C.A.M., it doesn't matter who tries to take him from her. Mary is clever, and she is in love. She will win, and anyone who opposes her will die.
