A/N: Sorry for the long, long delay but I was struggling a bit with this chapter. Well, not this chapter exactly, since this was originally going to be Chapter 6, but I finally realized I wanted it to be Chapter 5 after all, so here it is. Hope it was worth the wait!

Sherlock had never been so relieved to see London – or so reluctant. He'd been released from his temporary exile to Cairo at the end of the promised three months, leaving Irene behind with a show of reluctance he was fairly certain fooled neither of them. But although Irene had hinted at knowing he was under duress that one time, she'd never brought it up again, never dropped any other hints that showed she continued to harbor doubts about his true reasons for lingering with her for so long.

Because she respected his silence, didn't care, or because Moran had warned her to back off?

Either way, the end result was the same; Sherlock was in London, and Irene was still in Egypt, although she'd left Cairo for Alexandria on some mysterious errand he had no patience to try and ascertain.

The only thing currently on his mind was confirming that Edmund remained healthy, and that Molly...

No. He couldn't let himself think about Molly at all, or else he'd completely fall apart. Although that would undoubtedly provide Sebastian Moran with a great deal of entertainment, it was hardly a productive way of dealing with his current situation. He allowed himself to linger on some of his best memories of his time with her on the flight back to England, then reluctantly closed those memories up into the attic of his mind palace, to be brought out only when this situation had been resolved.

Now was not the time to try and come to terms with the likelihood that his relationship with Molly had been irrevocably destroyed, although he would consider it a fair trade as long as Edmund came out of this alive and healthy.

Even if he never saw his son again when this was all over, he would learn to live with the loss. Knowing Edmund and Molly were safe and alive and no longer threatened by Moran – who was not coming out of this alive, not this time – would have to be enough to sustain him the rest of his life.

After all, he'd resigned himself to loneliness long before they came along, before John came along. The work would continue, the work would have to be enough.

oOo

John Watson was not happy. To put it mildly.

That fucking bastard. How could he have done something so monumentally cruel? What did he want to do, cause Molly to miscarry, for God's sake?

Sherlock been back almost two weeks now, and John still harbored dark suspicions about the nature of the suspiciously protracted "case" Sherlock had supposedly been called away for after dropping that emotional bomb of a letter on Molly. She'd been quiet and withdrawn the last few days when he spoke to her over the phone, and he'd finally coaxed the truth out of her during a visit he paid to her when Mary was at work.

She'd seen Sherlock. The bastard had the gall to stroll into the St. Bart's morgue as if nothing had changed, as if it wouldn't absolutely destroy Molly for him to just show up with no warning. Yeah, so it was supposed to be Molly's day off, but still, didn't he have any shame? And Lestrade, that prick, John was almost as pissed off at him as he was at Sherlock. Couldn't the copper get some other big-brained shithead to look over his corpses for him?

It wasn't just that Sherlock had strolled in as if he owned the place (the way he'd always done); oh no, he couldn't possibly leave it at that. Instead of just turning around and heading back the way he'd come, he'd actually commented on Molly's pregnancy.

John hadn't been able to worm any details out of her, but by the drawn whiteness of her face, whatever Sherlock had said had hurt her deeply. Yes, she'd admitted that he'd made some off-cuff remark about increasing the maintenance agreement and having Mycroft find her a bigger flat, but that, John knew, even without verbal confirmation from Molly, hadn't been the end of it.

It was the last bloody straw. John fumed all the way to 221B, more than ready to go back on his private vow never to speak to that sodding twat ever again, and instead deliver a well-deserved piece of his mind. As well, perhaps, as that beating he'd threatened three months earlier. How dare that stupid, bloody tit add to the damage he'd already wreaked on his girlfriend and son's lives? Why the fuck couldn't he just do the right thing and keep his stupid gob shut? Or just stay in Cairo, or Canada, or Antarctica?

With thoughts like those chasing themselves around his mind, John was in a fine temper by the time he reached his destination. He didn't bother to knock; he'd never returned his keys, been told by Molly and Sherlock both that they'd rather he kept them, and so he had.

He pounded his way up the stairs, not caring if Sherlock heard him coming. He hoped he'd deduced John's mind and was ready with some stinging remark. He welcomed the idea; it would make it that much more satisfying when his fist slammed into the taller man's aristocratic nose…

When he pushed the door open – slammed it, actually – however, he could do nothing more than stop and stare as he saw Molly Hooper standing there, tears flowing from her eyes while Sherlock handed her a handkerchief.

What the hell?!

He said the words aloud, apparently, as Molly started and turned to stare at him. How had she missed hearing him slamming open the door? "John," she said, and her broken voice sent a sharp pain through his gut.

"What's he done now?" he growled, lunging forward and pushing Molly away from Sherlock. Standing between the two of them, one hand already clenching into a fist even as the other one remained protectively against Molly's abdomen. He felt the baby kick, and noted it with absent approval. The baby seemed to be fine in spite of all the emotional stress his (or her) mother was currently enduring. Good. One good fucking thing to hold onto, at least…

"It isn't Sherlock," he heard Molly saying from behind him. "It's Eddie, he's gone missing…"

All the built-up adrenaline seemed to drain abruptly out of his body; he felt his face go cold and knew he'd turned pale.

And all the while Sherlock simply stood there and watched him through the emotionless mask he'd long ago perfected, eyes cold, face composed, body still.

Perhaps…a bit too still?

With a terrible clarity he recognized the nature of the unnatural stillness (if such a saying wasn't a contradiction, nothing else was, but he knew what he meant); it was the way Sherlock held himself when he was trying desperately to cover up some kind of emotional reaction.

It wasn't the stillness of a man who couldn't care less what happened to his ex or his child.

In that moment, as John met Sherlock's icy blue eyes, an ice that the doctor knew wasn't more than a fragile sheen on top of turbulent waters, he knew.

"You. Fucking. BASTARD!" he shouted, right into Sherlock's face. "How long? How long have you known Eddie was in danger and not told us? Answer me," he added in a low growl as he heard Molly's sudden gasp of comprehension from behind him.

"Since two days before I left for Cairo."

Those words, quietly spoken, confirmed everything John had ever suspected – and discarded in the absence of proof, in the absence of any kind of communication or contact with Sherlock – about this entire fucked up situation.

Sherlock had done everything he'd done because Eddie was being threatened. Another life was at stake, and he was blackmailed or otherwise forced into his actions.

Only this time, it wasn't just John's mental stability that had been affected. Yeah, Sherlock might have done what he'd done to protect Eddie, but at an unforgivably high cost to Eddie's mother.

He punched him. Hard. And Sherlock stood there and took it, rocking back on his heels, arms flailing as he just barely maintained his balance, but with no other reaction except to shift his gaze from John's furious face to some point just over his shoulder.

To Molly.

When Sherlock spoke again, it was directly to her, as if John had never punched him, had vanished from between the two of them. "I'm sorry," he said, just as quietly, his face suddenly transformed from the icy mask he'd been desperate to maintain just moments earlier into something tortured and distorted with pain. "I was trying to protect him. He was being poisoned. I'm sorry, Molly. I'm so sorry. For everything."

Her face had gone white, John noted as he turned to face her. Whiter, he corrected himself as she said, "Who? Who has him, Sherlock?"

He seemed to be steeling himself, even allowing his gaze to flick toward John's furious face as if the answer involved him somehow. And when he answered Molly's question, John knew why. "Sebastian Moran."

"He's dead. I shot him," John responded without hesitation. "In the fucking face. You were there."

"Body double," Sherlock replied succinctly. "Irene Adler arranged it for him."

John knew his face must read like the very definition of bewilderment as he processed that remarkable statement. "She's...she's dead," he stammered, head whirling.

"Alive," Sherlock contradicted him, then returned his attention to Molly, who was wringing her hands and shaking her head as if in anticipation of more bad news. Which, clearly, Sherlock was about to deliver. "And before you ask, no, Moriarty is still dead. But Irene is the reason I was in Cairo. Moran needed her to perform some particularly delicate negotiations while he began to reestablish Moriarty's criminal network."

"So why did he need you there?"

Molly's question was barely a whisper, and John knew, he just fucking knew, the answer wasn't going to be one either of them would like.

Apparently now that his secret was out, Sherlock was all about full disclosure. Later, when John had time to process it all, he would find himself wishing that the other man had kept this particular detail to himself, or at least saved it for a private confessional with Molly, but no, the words had spilled out of him as if keeping them inside were causing him physical pain.

And maybe they were, because repeating them aloud certainly caused pain to the two listeners. "He needed me to keep her...distracted," Sherlock said, his voice not much louder than Molly's. "To keep her happy, he said. But it was all an excuse to keep us both out of London – "

Molly stepped around John as Sherlock fell abruptly silent. She walked right up to him, gazing up at him as she asked the obvious question. The one John knew she wouldn't want to hear, the one he certainly didn't want to hear, since he already had a feeling he knew what the answer would be. "How, exactly, did you keep her 'happy'?"

Sherlock's eyes remained locked with hers as he answered, while John looked unhappily from one to the other, wishing he were anywhere else but in Sherlock's flat. Or on Baker Street. Or in fucking London at all. "Sex."

Christ. Sex. Flatly said, that single word doing more damage to Molly than all whatever horrible things he'd said to her in the morgue.

John braced himself, waiting for Molly to collapse in tears, to drop back into the depression that had followed her nervous breakdown, for her to shatter, for any one of those reactions or all of them.

He wasn't prepared for her to raise her hand and land a stinging slap across Sherlock's face. Then she turned on her heel and marched to the door, pausing only to turn her head back and say: "You find him, Sherlock. You get our son home safely, or so help me God I will kill you myself."

Then she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her as John looked from where she'd just been to Sherlock. Gauging his reaction to all this.

"I deserve so much worse than that," he said in answer to John's unasked question. "And I know I don't have any right to ask..."

"Damned right you don't," John snapped back, crossing his arms across his chest and glowering at Sherlock. "But," he added with a sigh, "yeah. I'll help you. Because I want Eddie safe just as much as you and Molly do." He gave his friend – yeah, he'd think of him that way again, impossible not to now, no matter how angry he still felt – a hard look. "But after this is over and Eddie's safe, you and me, we're gonna have a little chat about how NOT to handle things next time something like this happens."

Sherlock's response was a sharp nod, the ghost of a smile on his lips as he took a chair and proceeded to explain everything he knew or had deduced to John.

Another A/N: I'm sure some people are going to ream me for having John forgive Sherlock so easily, but at least Molly didn't fall into his arms and tell him she was fine with what he'd done, right? No, that moment will not happen soon...or easily. If at all (no promises, although I will reiterate something I've said in other dark!fics in other fandoms: I loves me a happy ending, no matter how hard the struggle to reach it. :)