"Sherlock did what?" Mary cries clutching the phone even tighter in her hand.

"He's left the hospital," John says. "Through the window apparently."

"But… that's not possible. He's been shot. He's not going to be climbing out of any windows."

"Apparently, he has."

Mary can feel the panic rising in her, but unlike most people, her response to panic is to become still. She lowers her voice. "So... where would he go?"

"Oh, Christ knows! Try finding Sherlock in London."

Mary frowns, her face becoming cold. "Well, call me as soon as you hear anything. Anything at all."

"I will. Love you." John says, but Mary has already disconnected the call.

"You don't tell him," she had said to Sherlock, and apparently he hadn't. But fleeing the hospital while critically injured was definitely an attempt to get beyond her reach, and that meant that he was planning to tell John. That was the only reason that Sherlock had for risking his own life by leaving the hospital.

But he had made one fatal mistake. He had left without telling John or his friends that she was the one who shot him. That meant that everyone still thought of her as the concerned wife of Sherlock's best friend. Best use that advantage as soon as possible to get to Sherlock before he gets to John.

Mary dials Lestrade's number. He answers a bit out of breath, as if he is on the move, "Hello."

"Hi Greg, It's Mary."

"Oh Mary, John is here with me. Do you want to speak to him?"

"No, no. I was just calling to ask if you knew of a place where Sherlock might go to hide."

Mary goes to the closet and squats down. She balances the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she pulls open a hidden panel, retrieving her gun.

"Where he might hide? Do you think that's what he's doing, hiding?"

"Don't you? If we can only find him, then we can help. And he needs our help."

Mary checks the clip of the gun making sure that the bullets are properly loaded, then she puts it in the pocket of her grey coat.

"He has three known bolt-holes: Parliament Hill, Camden Lock, and Dagmar Court," Lestrade tells her. She calculates in her head which she can get to first and heads toward the tube station. "Give the phone to John now, will you?" she says, and soon she hears his concerned voice through the phone.

"Do you want me to come and get you so that we can search together?"

"NO!" she says. The last thing she needs is for John to find him first. "I mean. We'll cover more ground this way. You and Lestrade ask around and find more places to search. I'll check out the ones you gave me."

"Are you sure you want to help? You won't get tired... with the baby and all?"

Mary stops for a moment and smiles because she knows that will change the timber of her voice. "Of course not. I want to help. This is Sherlock whose missing after all." The line goes strangely silent. "John...John...are you still there?"

"I'm here, It's just... It's just not the way it usually goes."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... Mary, I love you."

"I love you too, John. Now, find out where he's hiding and call me as soon as you can, okay? I mean it. The moment you see him, I expect for you to have the phone in your hand, okay? Promise?"

"Of course, Mary. Talk to you soon. Bye."

"Good bye."

Mary continues walking down the street. She gives up on the tube and flags down a cab. Heaven forbid John insist to come with her. She must see Sherlock alone so that she can make absolutely sure that he doesn't tell John, that he never tells John anything again.

Each lead seems more unlikely than the last, but she is patient and determined. It is well past midnight when she finds herself on the corner of Leinster Terrace and Leinster Gardens.

A beggar accosts her. "Spare any change, Love?"

"No."

"Oh come on, Love, don't be like all the rest."

She turns back and drops a few coins in the bucket only to have the man grab her arm and press a phone into her hand. "Rule one of looking for Sherlock Holmes, he finds you."

She recognizes the man now. It's Bill Wiggins, the one from the crack den. "You're working for Sherlock now?" She says with a grin.

"Keeps me off the streets, innit?"

Mary looks around at the deserted street. "Well, No."

The phone rings then and she answers placing the bud in her ear so that her hands are free. "Where are you?"

"Can't you see me?"

"What am I looking for?"

"The lie, the lie of Leinster gardens, hidden in plain sight."

It is only then, as she walks down the empty street searching for Sherlock, that she finally understands what James Moriarty saw in him. She had thought of Sherlock as a lonely, sad, pathetic man, but under threat he is playful and devious, much like James Moriarty himself. She stops in front of a darkened house and asks, "What am I looking at?"

"Twenty three and twenty four Leinster Garden's, the empty houses. They were demolished years ago to make way for the London Underground. The vents for the old steam trains. Only the very front section of the house remains, it's just a facade. Remind you of anyone, Mary, a facade?"

She looks up to see her face projected on the side of the building. Her image is wearing a wedding veil.

"Sorry I never could resist a touch of drama," he says. Mary walks inside.

It's a small space, only a hallway really. The dim lighting reveals an electrical box and some cables. Water drips repeatedly from a pipe. She sees him sitting at the end of a dark hallway. She could end this now, but he wants to talk, so they'll talk. It will give her time to figure out out his plan. She checks for her gun. It's there. Good. She asks, "What do you want, Sherlock?'

"Mary Morstan was stillborn in October, 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where five years ago you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter, her identity."

Mary walks slowly down the hall toward Sherlock. His face is completely in shadow. She says "You were very slow."

She can see the edges of him now. He's in a wheelchair. It will be easy to shoot him, but who else is here? She's seen one person, Bill, and he needed someone's help to get out of that window, not to mention setting up the projector. She needs to get closer.

"How good a shot are you?" he asks, his voice pained. He's still feeling the last one.

She smiles taking her gun out and cocking it. "How badly do you want to find out?"

"If I die here my body will be found in a building with your face projected on the front of it. Even Scotland Yard could get somewhere with that."

He still isn't moving at all. She tosses up a coin and blows a hole through it. Then Sherlock walks up behind her.

She stares at the end of the hall, and then turns around to face Sherlock. "A dummy? Well, I suppose that was a fairly obvious trick." She kicks the coin toward him, and watches as he bends over to pick it up, pain flashing across his face. Definitely feeling it then. Might not even need to shoot him. A punch to the spleen, and he could be bleeding internally again. She smiles and walks closer.

"And yet, over a distance of six feet you failed to make a kill shot. Enough to hospitalize me, not enough to kill me. That wasn't a miss, that was surgery." Does he really think that? Does he really think that he was meant to survive? "I'll take the case," Sherlock says.

"What case?"

"Yours." His voice turns sharp. "Why didn't you come to me in the first place?"

"Because John can't ever know that I lied to him. It would break him, and I would lose him forever, and Sherlock, I will never let that happen." Sherlock frowns and turns away disbelieving. "Please..." she calls, voice shaking, "understand, there is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening." Her hand closes around the gun in her pocket. She angles it toward him, eyes piercing like daggers.

"Sorry," he says shuffling over to the box and putting his hand on the light switch. "Not that obvious a trick."

'What?' she wonders and then she realizes what he must mean. That's no dummy in that chair. The glare of the overhead lights exposes everything, and she can't make herself turn around. She doesn't want to, but in the end she has to be sure.

John is sitting in the chair behind her. He's heard everything that she said. Watched her shoot her gun. Listened as she threatened Sherlock. Her gasp is completely involuntary. John rises from the wheelchair and shakes out his blond hair. The collar snaps as he turns it down. It's like watching a train approaching a broken bridge. She knows what's going to happen, but she can't look away. She has to watch the crash. Their crash. Her life falling off the edge into the abyss.

"Now talk, and sort it out, but do it quickly," Sherlock says. She can hardly process the words. John is looking at her, and the look in his eyes is one that she has never seen before. He walks toward her and stops well out of her reach. He glares at her with disappointment bordering on disgust, as if she's an apple that he's just found a worm in, something rotten.

I've lost him.

"Baker Street, now" Sherlock says before striding out of the building. John follows with a heavy gait, his teeth clenching in anger as he passes. She stares, her heart racing, then she follows. There is no escaping this. John knows, and he can never unknow, but there is always a chance for mercy.

Mercy. Don't fool yourself.

She climbs into the cab behind Sherlock taking the seat across from both of them. John stares fixedly at her. His glare growing harsher and harsher until she has to turn her face away. They pass the time in silence as the quiet streets go by. John is the first out when they reach Baker street. He storms up the stairs. Sherlock's tread is much slower. He's going pale, but she can't spare the time to think of him.

John is angry, but he's forgiven before. He forgave Sherlock. Can he forgive me too?

Mary's heart is beating very fast. Her body wants to run, but she holds herself still. She's been caught good and proper. There is no way that she can get to one of her stashes without being spotted at this point, and even if she did, where would she go? How could she hide, with a baby on the way, and all of her old contacts thinking her dead?

She shot Sherlock, and now he has her, and he has no good reason to keep her alive. The only possible reason is John, who is looking at her as though she is the most disgusting thing that he has ever seen. She wishes with all her heart that she had never lived to see that face. She would rather have taken Sherlock's bullet herself than to have seen it.

She remembers another scene. Blond hair, a body falling to the floor. Then years later, Her father in a cell, shocked that his own daughter would turn him in. He'd taken away her mother, and yet he didn't understand her anger at losing the one person who she'd loved most in the world. She sees that same anger in John's eyes.

He turns to her and growls, "You, what have I ever done, my whole life to deserve you?"

"...John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You are abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you fall in love with conforms to that pattern?"

John's voice cracks. He waves toward her and says, "But she wasn't supposed to be like that. Why is she like that?"

"Because you chose her."

John cries out, "Why is everything always MY FAULT!"

She can't look at his face anymore. Only days before, she had wished to see a wilder John. Now he kicks the table over in his anger, scaring Mrs Hudson out of the room. Be careful what you wish for.

She understands John's anger, it is Sherlock she doesn't understand. He should be condemning her, but instead he's defending her. He says, "John, listen, be calm and answer me, what is she?"

"My lying wife."

"No, what is she?"

"The woman who's carrying my child who has lied to me since the day I met her."

"No, not in this flat, not in this room, right here, right now, what is she?"

John is sneering at her. He seems only seconds away from violence, and she wonders for a moment which of them is the better shot. Her father had taught her to shoot. Hours on the range with hands that were almost too small to hold the gun. Did my mother have a gun?

He turns his head and says to Sherlock, "Okay, your way. Always your way." Then he picks up a chair and puts it firmly down in the middle of the room. "Sit!" he tells her.

"Why?" she asks.

He spits out his words."Because that's where they sit! The people who come in here with their stories. The clients. That's all you are now Mary, a client. This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen. Then we decide if we want you or not."

The hate in his eyes looks familiar. Like her father's eyes. She imagines herself with a bullet hole in her chest. Blond hair falling to the floor.

John turns away from her then and sits in his chair. Sherlock moves into the room and takes his. They are waiting for her.

Her father looked up from the body when he'd caught her watching. She had wanted to run then too, but he had already seen her. He held out his hand, the gun still smoking in the other. She had walked forward then and put her hand in his. What else could she do?

She feels the same churning feeling in her stomach as she walks forward and sits down in the chair.