(A/N: I REALLY didn't think I'd have any time to work on this for a while, but you guys all got lucky that I've been stuck waiting for a response to a critical email and had some time to kill. Plus, this chapter flowed quickly and was one I LOVED writing. I hope you all love reading it as much as I loved writing it. Please leave reviews to let me know what you think of Sherlock's life revelations and clarity on the choices he wants to make going forward. He's always come across as such a decisive character, one who examines a situation, formulates a plan, and acts immediately, that I can't imagine him being much different in this either. Share your thoughts, please! And thanks so much for all the story favorites and follows! You guys are all amazing readers!)

Chapter 14 – One Hundred Percent

The reflection that stared back at me from the mirror almost appeared as something from a horror film. Dried blood matted my hair and streaked across my face, causing a shiver to run through me at the reminders of the harrowing seven hours I'd just spent with Lestrade and Donovan.

It went insanely fast as far as murder cases go, the turn of events absolute insanity, right down to how close I came to being the next victim and Lestrade saving my life instead of John doing so.

And all while Victoria spent the last hours of her first day at Baker Street without me.

Moving day… and I took a case… then nearly died.

I showered in the hottest water tolerable, scrubbing my skin raw, reflecting obsessively over the day in minute detail, from asking Victoria to move into my bedroom to what Mrs. Hudson said about children to my all-too close view of a man's brains splattering across a wall as he held a gun between my eyes. Every decision I'd made through the day replayed in my mind, each one along the way that led to me standing in the shower, washing away someone else's blood at two o'clock in the morning while the woman I loved slept in our bed for the first night.

Wearing nothing but my dressing gown, I didn't bother with pajamas before pulling back the covers and slipping in behind Victoria, wrapping my arms around her, and curving myself against the back of her sleeping form. I breathed in the scent of her hair and placed kisses on her bare shoulder, hyperaware of how little clothing there was between us with her wearing a satin nightgown and my dressing gown having fallen partially open as I climbed into bed.

She stirred slightly, turning her head toward me. "Mm. You're back. What time is it?" she asked drowsily, voice low and soft.

"After two. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you," I whispered, kissing her shoulder again. "Go back to sleep."

But she didn't, rolling over to face me instead, fingertips lazily entwining with the ends of my damp hair in the dark, her proximity and my brush with death giving rise to my ever-deepening need for her. "Victoria…" Unsure what else to say, I pressed my lips to hers, pulling her closer, and hoped my body wordlessly said everything I didn't know how.

Victoria tangled her fingers in my hair, tugging and encouraging the passion of our kiss, and as she hitched one leg over my hip, arching into me, I slid one hand down her body, seeking the hem of her short nightgown, stroking gently when I met with bare skin at her thigh.

"Sherlock, did you get condoms?"

She was breathless yet still composed enough to think of such matters, a topic we had discussed previously, despite not taking action to engage in intimate activities, and I was well aware of her severe allergy to oral contraceptives, accepting the responsibility to provide in that area myself.

"Yes. But they're in the kitchen." And I felt absolutely no desire to go retrieve them at the moment, in part because it seemed like a great deal of trouble, in part because I didn't wish to stop touching her in any way. Most of all, I didn't want to for a few particular reasons that weighed heavily on my mind much of the latter hours of the day, ones I could not escape after the events of the night's case.

"In the kitchen? What, were you experimenting on them?"

Even in the dark, I felt her staring at me expectantly. "I was… um, well, yes… testing them."

Bowing my head, I connected my lips with the soft skin of her throat as I nimbly worked my fingers along her inner thigh, attempting to effectively end the conversation.

"Sherlock?"

I groaned in frustration. "According to certain studies, the typical sexual encounter between an average healthy couple in a first-world country results in pregnancy only fifteen to thirty percent of the time."

"Only thirty percent of the time."

"Fifteen to thirty percent," I reiterated. "Therefore, seventy to eighty-five percent of the time, no pregnancy occurs."

"Mhmm," was her breathy reply as I grazed my fingers distractingly further up her inner thigh, and her fingers gripped more tightly into my hair.

"However, I love you one hundred percent of the time, Victoria, and I'm decidedly too stubborn for that to change." My own voice sounded foreign, husky with needs and desires I hadn't allowed before. "I intend to love you for the rest of my life. Were we to conceive a child together three years from now or six months or tonight, I would not regret it. I would love our child, just as I love you, and would give you both everything I have and all that I am to make you happy and keep you safe. Always."

I stilled my hand, deciding I wanted an actual coherent response from her to all I had declared.

"You are stubborn." She kissed me quite soundly, with no less passion than I held for her, and left my heart racing. "And I love you too, and I believe you mean everything you say, but I've been in relationships before, and even though I want the same for us, are you sure you know, absolutely know this soon that you're ready for all of that, because a baby isn't something you can just undo later."

Rolling over to look down at her, seeing little more than the outline of her face in the pale light of the first quarter moon, I brushed the back of my fingers along her cheek and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. "By what rules does love play to claim my commitment to you now is less than that of tomorrow or ten years. … I care about few people in this world enough to call them my friends, and those I do have my utmost loyalty, but you have my heart, Victoria. You are so much more to me. … Yes, I do know. With one hundred percent surety, I know."

I lost my virginity in the wee hours of that first night my bedroom became our bedroom on Baker Street, and I did so forgoing pretenses of control, indulging in the passions and desires I felt for her, for Victoria, the woman I knew would be the only woman I would ever love that way, ever touch that way. We explored every nuance of one another's bodies, leaving no secrets of the flesh, and I made love to her twice more, loving and needing the intimate connection we shared, a feeling I believed more spiritual than any religion's god could lead me to in a lifetime of searching.

"I nearly died last night," I confessed, Victoria in my arms, head on my chest, hair splayed everywhere, our legs tangled lazily in the quiet of the early dawn hours.

Thoughtful silence filled the room for some time after that before she said a word. "So you had a showdown with death, won, and came home set on creating a new life as further proof death didn't get you?" I didn't fail to notice the mild annoyance in her tone.

"Certainly, someone could interpret the sequence of events as such, but that was not it, Victoria." Taking her hand in mine, I intertwined our fingers together and used my free hand to stroke her hair, lingering at the ends, twirling it around my fingertips. "But you can actually thank Mrs. Hudson for planting the idea quite firmly in the forefront of my mind this afternoon and for tamping down my greatest fear on the subject, that I cannot and should not be a father. It wasn't that I hadn't thought of wanting a family, wanting us to at least. I just… I don't know. She just made me see myself differently."

"Friends have a tendency to do that." I could feel her smiling against my chest, which made me smile, thinking of the ways my friends had somehow changed the way I viewed myself over time. "Still, for years you didn't want love or children, so what's the rush now?"

"Exactly that. Faking my death led to realizing all the things I was missing, everything I wanted yet had learnt to bury deep down beneath the icy veneer I presented to the world. Now… Now I'm more afraid of dying, actually dying, regretting all the missed opportunities to truly live when I had them. … After the whole charade of jumping off the rooftop of St. Bart's, Mycroft made all my funeral arrangements, but I chose my own headstone, and all it had was my name, simply 'Sherlock Holmes'. I watched John say his farewell at my grave in a cemetery dotted with headstones marking the grieved losses of beloved husbands and fathers, and once he left, I stood there alone, staring for the longest time, painfully aware of my headstone memorializing that loneliness."

Victoria squeezed my hand and said nothing, not needing words to tell me I was no longer alone. I hadn't been for a long time. I had John and Mrs. Hudson, Molly and Lestrade, but none of them could fill the kind of empty loneliness Victoria did.

The sun had fully risen before either of us spoke again.

"Do you know what today is," she asked sleepily, and I was rather surprised either of us were still awake at all.

"Mm." I yawned, thinking. "Sunday, sixteenth June?"

She waited a few moments, but I hadn't a better answer to give, and she obliged my ignorance. "It's Father's Day, Sherlock. Which means, one, we should go see your parents, and two, it would be kind of perfect if we did just conceive our first child, don't you think?"

In the past, I'd have balked at the suggestion I visit my parents outside the necessity of such things as Christmas and the occasional unavoidable insistence of Mummy I couldn't refuse, but situations change, and I wanted them to meet Victoria, knowing that, unlike my brother, they would adore and accept her as family. "If we go, they'll want us to stay overnight."

"I don't have anything I have to go into the office for tomorrow, so I can make that work."

"But you're right. The timing of conception for our first child would be quite perfect." I hadn't overlooked that we'd somehow gone from discussing a child to a first child, yet found no fear seized me at the thought, not with how my life had changed, not with Victoria. I found only happiness and pulled her closer, leaning down to capture her lips as if it had been forever since the last time I'd kissed her. "So we shouldn't put forth less than our best effort to ensure such perfection, should we?"

"Of course not," she replied with a wicked grin.

Another hour passed before we left our bed for the day, and I have no regrets.