One really great thing about life with Sherlock is that you get a lot of experience of being unlawfully detained. I spent almost all of Christmas day locked in a bare room, amusing myself by having a staring contest with some enormous SpecOps twat in black combat gear and purposefully not thinking about what the hell my best friend had gotten himself into.

They did let me have a bathroom break about four hours in, at which point I saw there was a faint splattering of Magnussen's blood on my face. I hadn't noticed getting splashed at the time. Must have been the wash from the helicopter rotors. I cleaned up with a wet paper towel and was taken back to my cell.

And then they let me go. No explanation, by myself, no sign or word of Sherlock, I got driven back to his parents' house. It was well after midnight, but a light was lit in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

I let myself in without knocking. On the sofa in the front room was Bill Wiggins, asleep and snoring the heavy apneic growl of the opiate abuser. Leaving him undisturbed, I climbed up the stairs to find the one lit room. And there, to my complete lack of surprise, was Mary.

She was in the same clothes she'd been wearing this… or yesterday... morning, and she was laying on her side, curled up around her own belly like a prawn. I was quiet, but the second I set foot in the room she came instantly awake. Mary had always been a really light sleeper, and now I had a good idea why.

"Hi," she said, in a hoarse sleepy voice.

"Hi," I said back.

"I thought I'd stay and see if you came back. Marian and Siger went to London to see if they could do anything for Sherlock."

"What could they do?"

"Well, Siger was the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee for a while in the nineties. I imagine he's still connected. It's all an old boys club."

I stared at her, because until this second I'd had absolutely no idea about that. He'd always seemed like a faintly daft old duffer, amiably bewildered by his weird brilliant kids. But I suppose you probably can't be all that good of a secret agent if you really look like a secret agent.

E.g. my wife.

"Is there some sort of special spy database where you people get all this information? I could do with a look at it." I was exhausted and starving, and I regretted the snapping as soon as I'd done it. I decided that the exhaustion won out and sat down at the end of the bed and toed off my shoes. Mary raised her eyebrows at me and said levelly, "There's loads of special spy databases. But that I got from wikipedia."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Once you get above a certain level you mostly stop being a secret agent and start being a politician."

"Huh."

We looked at each other, and then, slowly, she shifted over to one side of the double bed. Making a space for me. After a minute or two she switched off the bedside lamp, and we lay, side by side, in silence. Little glow-in-the-dark star stickers began to shine on the ceiling.

"If I had known," Mary began, hesitantly, "What Sherlock's plan was, I wouldn't have gone along with it. I'd have found a way to stop him. I want you to know that."

"The shooting wasn't his plan. He made a snap decision. But if it had been his plan-" I thought about it for a bit. The gun had been in my pocket, after all. Sherlock had thought faster, like always, but I'd been the one with more to lose. And at the end of the day, unlike Sherlock, I am not a good man.

"I'd have gone along with it. Though I'd have given a hard "no" to the drugging. Are you-?"

"I'm fine. And the baby seems fine too. Kicking up a storm earlier, but I think it's asleep now."

"Good. Good."

The baby still didn't seem quite real to me. I had tried, over the last few weeks, to imagine it, and the best mental pictures I could come up with seemed copied from diaper adverts and not like something that applied to my life. My life was the cold Yorkshire night, and the fact I'd had a man's blood on my face that day… and then eventually Mary's hand, creeping through the darkness, to twine her fingers into mine.

The smell of bacon cooking woke me up. We'd curled closer to each other for warmth as we slept. Mary's face was six inches away from mine on the pillow, and she whispered, "Hi."

"Hi," I said back, looking into her wide green eyes.

The first time I'd ever noticed them was right after I'd asked her out. There are some people whose full attention feels like an actual physical force, with Sherlock being probably the strongest example of it, but Mary's definitely got it too. I'd dropped the question into the conversation, being incredibly smooth, though I say so myself, and she'd really started looking at me, and when she'd stared down at me I'd thought, "Jesus Christ, she's got eyes like a cat's."

The woman in my brain had instantly transformed from "Mary-with-the-good-tits" to "Mary-with-the-big-eyes." That moment was probably it for me, though it took me a few more months to realize it.

But now her wide, beautiful eyes got even wider, and she started pushing on my chest, saying urgently, "Move. Move. MOVE."

I scrambled out of her way, she speed-waddled out of the bedroom, and from the bathroom down the hall I could hear the quiet, sad sound of her retching. I followed along, feeling the old sense of guilty responsibility that her morning (And late night... And after-dinner...) sickness always gave me.

"So you're... still doing that, huh?" I asked, from the doorway. She was well into the third trimester and that had to be a rough way to spend eight months.

"Yep," Mary said into the toilet bowl, "Most days. Look, John, can you just-? I'm fine. I'll be out in a bit."

She waved a hand in my general direction to drive me off. I'd forgotten: she didn't want her back rubbed or her hair held back while she did this, she wanted to be alone. Thus I followed the smell of bacon downstairs, to find Wiggins, left arm in a sling, dishing out a full-English onto plates.

"Morning, Doctor Watson," he said, heaping beans on toast and passing a plate over to me. I set to, ravenously, and he joined me.

Mary came downstairs ten minutes later, pale but not looking like she was planning to throw up again for a bit. Certainly nothing in her appearance remarkable enough to explain why Wiggins made a high-pitched yelp and flinched back at the sight of her. Mary glared at him, flat-eyed, and started heaping eggs onto a plate.

I had to ask, "What?"

"She broke my wrist," Wiggins tattled.

"It's sprained," Mary said, coldly.

"And she said she was going to slit my froat and light me on fire and feed me to sea lions."

Mary set down the spoon with a loud clack and spat out, "I believe that I said 'Get away from me with that syringe or I'll...' do that stuff. Which he did not do, hence: the spraining."

I looked over to Wiggins and inquired, delicately, "Syringe?"

He looked down at his plate, and muttered, "She didn't finish her tea and Mr. 'Olmes didn't want 'em to wake up for anovver 'alf hour."

Mary looked ready to spit nails but she said levelly, "Well I'm sure we're all good friends now." I have literally never heard a scarier tone of voice in my life, and I've heard Jim Moriarty threatening to skin someone.

We ate, for a few minutes, until I had to ask, "Why sea lions?"

Unbelievably, Mary blushed, and mumbled embarrassedly, "I was pretty high and thought I was dying. It wasn't my best work."

This was my life, Jesus Christ. We finished the rest of breakfast, cleaned up the house, and left… tucking the key under the mat, because apparently in that village you can do that.

I drove, because Mary automatically got into the back seat where she could stretch out and there was no way I was letting Wiggins drive my family anywhere. This meant I had to shift the seat of Sherlock's rented SUV forward and empty his candy wrappers out of the ashtray, and that made me wonder about him again. What he was doing right now.

The ride was silent except for the occasional interjections of the GPS until we got past Nottingham, when Wiggins piped up with a cheery, "So are you two 'aving a boy or a girl then?"

Mary sighed, and said, "I haven't found out."

Startled, I looked at her in the rearview mirror, and said, "Seriously? You hate surprises."

"It's not for lack of trying," she agreed, with a faint smile, "I've had five ultrasounds and we've never been able to get the right angle. It's a terribly uncooperative baby."

"You've had five scans? Why have you-" All of a sudden I was terrified, because I knew Mary was getting her care on the NHS, and I work for the NHS, and we do not do repeated procedures like that just to get fun little pictures for the proud parents to put on facebook. Something was wrong with the pregnancy.

But then… I made a deduction. I do this occasionally since my second round of living with Sherlock. Every time it gives me a faint stabbing headache just above my right eye, which goes a long way to explaining why he's so tetchy all the time. I remembered the abused, pinpricked look of her fingertips, and the way she had looked hungrily at her toast then eaten exactly one half of one slice, and I realized:

"You've got gestational diabetes. Jesus, Mary, why didn't you tell me?"

I looked at her in the rearview mirror, and she frowned back at me, and said, "Well, I mean- I didn't need your help. I can read a diet sheet and take my own blood glucose. And it's not been much of a problem, really. My sugar's very well controlled, I haven't had to go on medication at all. And the baby's looked just fine at all of the scans"

"Still."

She sighed, and said more quietly, "And it would have felt like I was begging."

There wasn't really much response to that. We rode along, and about five minutes later, Mary said hesitantly, "I wasn't supposed to get another one until next week, but I texted and asked Carole if she could get me in this afternoon, because of-"

"The drugs," I said.

"It's seriously the most widely used obstetrical anaesthetic on the market," Wiggins pouted.

"Wiggins shut up," Mary snapped. "So- I mean, you don't have to. But if you wanted to, you could- you're welcome to come along."

"Oh, wow, that would be really interesting, thank you Mrs. Watson!" Wiggins chirped in his cheery cockney accent.

"Not you, Wiggins," we chorused.

I cleared my throat, and continued, "Yeah, yeah, I'd like to. We'll do that."

We dropped Billy off at an overground station as we got into London, to both his and Mary's transparent relief. Then we drove to the clinic I used to work at, in Stepney.

They were closed for the holiday, and Mary had to let us in with her keyfob and switch on the lights. It was weird coming back. I'd started there after a shattering change in my life, quit a year and a half later after another one… and all the time the place had just kept chugging along regardless. The only difference was a "Doctor Singh" nameplate where the "Doctor Watson" one had been.

Carole came in ten minutes later, brushing the snow that had started to fall off her shoulders.

"Afternoon, Mary- Oh! John. How nice to see you at one of these."

After today I'd have a new heirarchy of threatening voices: Moriarty, Mary… and at the top, fifty-something spherical obstetrician Carole Palmer. She left to answer a few emails while the ultrasound computer booted up, and I asked Mary in a low voice, "What did you tell people about why I left?"

Mary bit her lip, and said hesitantly, "I didn't tell anybody anything. But… I may not have tried too hard to correct whatever conclusions they came to. Sorry."

I'd always liked Carole, and we'd always gotten on well. So much for that. Eventually she came back in, I helped Mary onto the exam table, and we got on with it.

I was trying very hard not to stare at Mary's belly, because while she looked big even in her clothes it was frankly remarkable to see it bare, when Carole said, "Oh" and I had a minor heart attack.

"No, sorry, nothing's wrong," she continued, "You know how kids usually show favoritism to their fathers? This one's getting started antenatally, and we finally got the right angle. Did you still want to know the sex?"

I looked at Mary, and we nodded in unison.

"It's a girl."

"You're sure?" I asked, though as it turned out I really didn't care either way. Girl or boy seemed equally unreal.

"Pretty sure. There's always the slight chance it's a boy who's… tucking, as it were. But those definitely look like the ladybits."

I looked back at Mary, and she had her hand over her mouth. She smiled shakily at me and said, "Sherlock- he's… he's absolutely convinced it's a boy. He's been after me for months to name it after him. He's going to be so pissed."

Carole didn't seem to notice that little Americanism, and I wondered how often I'd missed things like that, before. But then Carole moved the ultrasound wand, muttering, "Let's see what else we can show daddy while we're here."

I didn't really enjoy my obstetrics training back in medical school. It tends to be incredibly routine and repetitive or else a miserable bloody nightmare, nothing in between. Then I'd been a trauma surgeon, and after that I'd avoided doing antenatal work as a GP, so what with one thing and another it had probably been fifteen years since I'd spent much time with an ultrasound and a pregnant woman. In that time, the technology had obviously come along, because the screen switched from the rearview "fat person sitting on photocopier" image to…

A clear and perfect little face, with plump cheeks and a tiny button nose. I could even see her closed eyelids.

"She's sucking her thumb," Carole said, unnecessarily.

Wow.

"Hi," I said to the black and white image on the screen. To my daughter.

Once we'd got home, Mary went straight upstairs to rest, even though all we'd done that day was a car ride and a doctor's appointment. This was a new feature: she'd always been an incredibly high-energy, ten projects on the go, getting up at five in the morning to exercise, "John I'm bored, would you like to have some sex?" type. Sitting-still Mary was vaguely unsettling.

I stayed downstairs and made a few phone calls, for all the good it did. There was still a blank wall of impenetrable silence around Sherlock, and Magnussen's death hadn't made the news yet. I did get a typical mysterious Mycroft Holmes message in the form of a text from a blocked number saying:

-Patience, Doctor Watson

And nothing else.

The place was pretty much the same, though in the absence of male restraint, Mary had bought a ton of new cushions. Calton came in through the catflap and sniffed at me, but when I tried to pet him he put his back up and hissed, which- well, fuck you too, mate.

She wasn't asleep, when I went up. She was propped up on pillows in our bed and reading a book, and she marked her place and smiled faintly at me. I climbed in next to her, but after a minute switched around so we were perpendicular. The old way to do this was out… you can't rest your head on somebody's stomach when said stomach is five feet above the bed. So I put a cushion where her lap used to be, and settled in.

She ran her fingers through my hair. After a minute, the baby started kicking me in the ear, which was… amazing, but also a reminder that I was going to be a father in less than a month, and the only person I'd ever really watched do that was my own dad. You can look at how Harry and I turned out to get a clear idea of exactly how good he was at it.

As I lay in this remarkable combination of delight and pants-shitting terror and making the resolution to buy some books on parenting tomorrow, Mary asked, "What do you think of Joan?"

"Who's Joan?"

"No, for the baby's name. Joan."

I didn't think much of it, actually, and asked, "Are we hoping for a lesbian rugby coach?"

"It's your name," Mary replied drily, "But for a girl."

"Well, yeah, but I'm not such a malignant narcissist I actually require my kids to take my name. I don't see you wanting to call her Mary."

Mary thought about it for a second and said, "Ew, you're right, that does feel creepy."

"How about Emma, after my mum?"

She sighed.

"I actually like the name Emma a lot, but we can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Emma Watson?" she asked, and then when I shrugged, she continued, "You know, the actress. She played Hermione in "Harry Potter." We're not sticking the baby with the same name as somebody famous. So no Emily either, I suppose."

There was an.. unusual amount of determination to her statement, and despite myself I was curious. So I sat up.

"You sound like you've got some personal experience of that. And I've never heard of any other Mary Morstans."

She shut down instantly and averted her eyes from me.

"I'm sorry," Mary said quietly, "I know you don't want to know."

"No…" I said slowly, "That's not exactly what I said. I said I don't need to know."

I ran my hands through my hair. I knew what to do, obviously… we hadn't really been able to relax around one another yet, and it was on me to fix that. And you do have to say these things from time to time in a relationship, even though they make you sound like a tit.

"I'm never going to need to read a list of the worst things you've ever done in your life, or your spy CV, or whatever was on that drive. But I am, actually… in love with you. I didn't realize quite how much, until-"

Until a man whose neck I could easily have snapped had stood in front of me and said, "Come on. For Mary," and I decided that I could let him humiliate me, I could go to prison, if that was what it took. But Mary didn't need to know that bit.

"Until recently. And because I'm in love with you, I am also interested in you. So I do want to know things about you. Including your old name. If you want to tell me."

And then a minute later I added, "Oh, dry up, woman, you'll never pass for English if you keep having all these emotions all over the place" because she was meebling again.

Mary did that pointless thing women do where they press on their faces to stop crying, and with a rather damp laugh said, "It's not me, it's the bloody hormones. I'm basically insane now. Last week I saw a cat carrying her kitten in her mouth and I had to go have a lie-down, I was so touched. But, oh, John, I am glad that you do. So glad."

"Yeah, well," I grumbled, "You're supposed to say it back, you know."

She sniffled and said, "Well obviously I'm in love with you too. God help you."

"So what do you say?"

She cocked her head, and asked, "If you're sure?" and then when I nodded, she said, "It was Amy. Amy Adams."

It wasn't much, as revelations go. An ordinary, pretty name, that gave no hint of the extraordinary woman who it had belonged to. Then I snapped my fingers, because I'd remembered.

"The redhead, right? Who got her kit off in 'American Hustle.'"

Mary laughed, "So that's what an actress has to do to get you to remember her?"

"It was a pretty good lack-of-kit."

"Yes, well, that's the one. She didn't get famous until the oughts but it was so annoying once she did. Bloody 'Enchanted.' Everyone got a real kick out of singing the songs at me. So I'd like the baby to be able to go through life without having people think they're hilarious for shouting Wingardium Leviosa at her."

"It's a pretty name. Amy Watson. How about that for the baby?"

Mary frowned and said, "I never much liked the name. And women called Amy tend to be bitchy."

"Is that a fact?"

"Pretty much universally."

We were smiling together, and I sort of thought… "Yeah, we might actually be okay."

"What are the other two?"

"Pardon?"

"The G, and the R. A.G.R.A."

It had seemed like a pretty harmless question, but Mary tensed up when I asked it, and the dread crept back into me. Then she sighed, rubbed her forehead, and looking me square in the eye said,

"Amy. Galadriel. Rainbow. Adams."

Which... was one of those tests of husbandly virtue, wasn't it?

"Those are unusual," I said mildly, "Though I'd prefer not to call the baby either of them."

"No," she agreed.

"Mind you, if she grows up and wants to bathe in patchouli and cannabis and become queen of the fairies I will obviously support her in that but I really don't think it's right to pigeonhole a child-"

I stopped then because Mary had yanked a pillow from behind her head and expertly biffed me across the face with it. I didn't care because I was laughing too hard, and Mary was trying not to laugh along with me.

"Like you've got any room to mock, Hamish."

"Oh, no, I'm never complaining about Hamish again. I love Hamish. How did that work when you were a secret agent? Did you walk up to baccarat tables in Monte Carlo, gun in your garter, and introduce yourself with, "Rainbow... Galadriel Rainbow?"

"My mother was literally seventeen years old when I was born, and it was the seventies. So she went a bit fairytale. So what?"

"Wait," I said, because there had been one more revelation than I was expecting, "You have a mother… so I have a mother-in-law?"

But Mary was shaking her head even before I finished the sentence, and my laughter was cut short by pity.

"Oh. I'm so sorry."

She shrugged, one-shouldered.

"It's okay, it was… I mean, it was awful, but it was also ten years ago. Lymphoma."

So not all her secrets were dangerous, after all. Sad, maybe, but I could handle sad. Hell, I could possibly even help with sad. I took hold of her hand, and smiled, and said, "So. Amy. Hi."

"It's Mary," she corrected me, but she was smiling sunnily back, "Hi."

I had to kiss her, at that point. There were months of time we needed to make up for. Her mouth was as soft and sweet as it had been the first time we'd ever kissed. And just like the first time, just like every time, I thought, "Yeah, I definitely will need to do this again."

I swear I didn't go into it intending to put my hand up her shirt, but… again, months where I hadn't gotten laid, it was honestly reflexive. Mary pulled back from me gently, and her big beautiful assassin's eyes were alarmed, and I realized that it's probably wrong to sexually importune a woman who's that pregnant.

Damn it.

"Sorry," I said, abashed, "We don't have to-"

"Oh, no. No no no no no. We're doing this. It's not all crying and sleeping, I've also been gagging for it for months now. It's just…" Mary hesitated, "I'm really not sure how it's done. When I'm this-"

She was gesturing at the orb of her belly, and said "Fat," just as I said "Pregnant."

Then in unison, "Big."

I looked down at it and agreed, "It does present us with a bit of a logistical challenge, yes."

"I mean, people do, obviously. I could probably google how."

I laughed. I had to. And I kissed her again and said, "We're pretty clever. I think we can work it out."

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Author's note: And that's all there is, there isn't any more. Thank you to everyone who has read this story all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Special thanks to all of you who have left reviews. I know I'm terrible about replying to them but I have read and cherished every one.