-ooo-

Mary knew how to take care of herself. Quite frankly, Mary also knew how to take care of others - in every meaning of that expression, from the sweet love for the man who was her family now to a ruthless violence over anyone who tried to threaten her. Of course John couldn't know about that last part. And so, slowly, she had come to start lying about small things to John. Places she went, people she talked to... You don't just turn your back on your old life. You need to keep tabs on it, to make sure it won't catch up with you unexpectedly. She had no intentions of returning to her past. What she did secretly were preventive measures to insure just that.

And that was how she'd find herself at Camden Road, walking the alongside the brick walls of the old low industrial stores that hid some of the unordinary crowds of London. It was beyond the multicultural people, the embedded smell of curry and fries, the alternative look scenarios on display in the windows, it went deeper than that - if you talked to the right people, if you made the right impression, if you compensated them adequately. It was all business in the end. That was what Mary was looking for there. The illicit, the illegal, all up for auction at the right price.

She knew she had been followed for the last ten minutes. Now she finally stopped short, looking controlled over her shoulder.

'Give me your purse', a scruff looking man told her, holding a knife, enclosing the distance between them.

'No', she told him calmly.

'You heard me', he insisted, looking at her in a violent manner.

She shrugged her shoulders and reached for her purse, like she was about to take her wallet out. Instead she pulled a gun and pointed at him, coldly, slightly bored. 'No', she repeated, spelling every letter in the word.

'Okay', he got frightened and pulled back instinctively.

'I'm not done with you yet', Mary informed him. 'I'm going to need your help.'

'You're mental!'

'No, I'm pressed for time. Look, this is how I'm going to need you. You are going to tell people that I'm on the market for old World War Two ammunition, and I need them today. People who can supply me will meet me at Charing Cross Train Station in three hours, with the goods on a gym bag. I will settle the pay accordingly there, and today I'm in a generous mood... So, old ammunition, Charing Cross, three hours.'

'I don't know anybody!' he stated, almost looking scared.

'Do I look like the police to you?! Does this look like a registered gun?!' she was being sarcastic. 'Good pay. Split it with your friends. And use some of the money to take care of yourself, you need it.' She turned her back on him and kept walking away. She could see the reflection on the window displays of the stores that at first he hesitated, then he turned around and walked away from her at some speed.

-ooo-

Mary got off a cab in front of her home. Taking a hand to her pocket, she passed her fingertips over the metal of the keys for a second, before glancing over the shoulder to the seemingly deserted street. But no, not there, in that residential neighbourhood she was never alone. There were at least four snoopy neighbours. One of them was bed stricken by age and slightly demented, so she didn't count as a real life spy. But the other three were certainly on a look out. There was Woman #1, boring marriage, plump, moralist, with a stoned thief for a son that she praised like a saint, two doors down from theirs. Then there was Woman #2, middle age, skinny and dried to the bones, the typical widow who used to look at John as if she was undressing him with her eyes (John never noticed), across the street, with a bay window facing them. And Man #1 from next door, an unemployed x-rated movies addict that always spoke first at every neighbourhood meet, trying to pick up fights with everyone (John had one to stand up to him in defence of a single mum from the end of the street, now John was his favourite target for gossip).

Another one, Woman #3, opened her door next to the Watson's and came out to water her flowers on a perfectly damp rainy day. 'Oh, Mary, how are you today? Well, I haven't seen you these last few days, you were away?'

'Yeah, staying at a friend's house, actually. We'll be back in no time.' She opened the door with her key and let herself in, under the carefully disguised scrutiny of Woman #3. Pocketing her keys, she bent over the mat on the doorway and lifted it up. There was a loose floor board that she lifted. And right there, at a small compartment, was a transparent plastic bag with quite a lot of cash inside. She threw the bag in her purse and replaced the mat on the floor. John had never found that out. And she was hoping she hadn't the need to use it, nor to ever explain how she had come across it in the first place. She was doing it for both of their own good. If only John was as secretive as her, then maybe she could have felt like he had to forgive her deception. She had to force on her mind that he kept some things from her as well...

-ooo-

Charing Cross station. A beautiful mixture of tradition in the stone masonry architecture with the contemporary rush of today. As Mary came out of the supermarket nibbling on a snack she knew she was being watched by different people. To her left there was the Camden thief, on her right there was an indiscreet security camera (Mycroft Holmes might have some interest in that tape by the end of the day), behind her there was a concealed camera doubling up for the first, and closer to the gates there was a familiar outline with a smirked smile. Only the latter annoyed her.

She head on out to the nearest waste bin, to dispose of the packet of snacks. The man with the heavy gym bag approached as well. Mary threw out the packet and also took from her purse a crumpled envelope that she tossed out. The man had stopped a few steps away from her. He now hesitated but at last stepped forward to the waste bin, leaving the gym bag behind. As Mary passed by the gym bag she picked it up without even glancing at the man taking the envelope with cash out of the waste bin. His scruff look didn't make the gesture the more suspicious and it'd go unnoticed by the police officers guarding the station.

'Hello, Sherlock', Mary greeted as she approach him, gym bag in hand. 'Fancy seeing you here.'

'Before you ask: no, John is not here', he said, looking all around, 'so your secret is safe with me for now.'

She nodded slowly, pondering her options. He anticipated, trying to disarm her, perhaps: 'You're going to tell me you work better alone. That John cannot be burdened by knowing this. That you care for him.'

'Yes', she maintained, strong. 'Yes to all of those.'

Sherlock looked all around at the station, it was his time to talk again. 'John isn't with me', he repeated.

'I heard you the first time.'

'Greg took him back to the Hospital', he said, judging her reaction at close range, cold-bloodily. She turned to him, distressed but mostly distrusting. He elaborated: 'Some sort of reaction to the blood transfusions. Apparently the more you have in a short period of time, the more you react to them.'

'Why are you lying to me, Sherlock?' she held his gaze.

'I just told you that your husband...'

She cut him off: 'You wouldn't be here if he was at the Hospital, Sherlock... You did startle me, I'll grant you that. Was it a homemade punishment for me for not being the perfect housewife?'

'No', he stated quietly, 'it was a test, on how blind you are right now. And you failed it, Mary', he finished the conversation, walking away.

'You're not going to ask me what I have in my bag?' she taunted him.

He turned to her, still moving away. Confidently he assured her: 'I already know.'

She walked briskly to catch up with him. 'That was a low blow, using John to...'

He stopped short, and so did she. With a pained expression, he remarked: 'Think, Mary, don't be boring. Where did I learn that medical piece of medical trivia if John doesn't know I came here?' And he walked away again, leaving her puzzled, then suspicious.

-ooo-

Mary looked down on the abstract pattern of the marble flooring in the station, torn with doubt. Mentally she abused Sherlock with swear words, but her resolution was still as strong as always. She looked all around the station again and then turned to leave. She had a train to catch now. To the outskirts of London.

Travelling on the train with a bag full of old army bullets would have been disconcerting to most people, but Mary found herself partial to a sense of exhilaration that came from holding her ground to a major secret. Seated by the window, she took her phone out of her pocket for a second. She chose the contact name carefully from her list. But she didn't press Call. She didn't intend to. She just stood looking at the picture in the illuminated screen. John. Looking like John, doing John things, unaware of the camera. That was why she particularly cared for that picture. John being John. He may have been talking to Sherlock or Greg, just listening with a sense of wonder in his eyes, that innocent expression he had that was so accepting. Mary had never found a picture of him doing that to the camera on purpose, and there could be none, really.

Strange habit people had of placing pictures of people by their names, even though they knew them so well. Sherlock didn't do that, he much preferred the type of list a secret agent would have on his phone. John was probably discretely listed has JW. Also a precaution if he ever lost his phone on enemy hands. Trying to hide obvious link between the two of them. Greg had a picture of John drunk, has most of his phone list was. Molly had John in a picture with Sherlock in it as well (she bore either a very organized or an obsessed mind). Mrs Hudson's phone was low tech and she kept everyone with first and last name, followed by a mention of the city they were in. John Watson, London. All of John's closest friends, and they were almost his entire family as well apart from Mary, had a different outtake on him. But they had certainly all come together now that he had been vulnerable. And that was certainly something that Mary wasn't used to. She had always worked alone and taken in the consequences alone. What she witnessed now, she put it all on John, and that particular smile of his, and the fact that he was always out to help other people. Because honestly, the John that John was on an everyday basis was quite a stiff cold John, controlled, soldiered, that felt that he had to be like that for everyone's benefit. Not so much with Mary, of course, but even with his best friend he was like that. The two of them were. That's how they got along so well. Both slightly disconnected from the world, together.

It was about John, that ride, about to end with Mary stepping out of the train in a cold dark part of the town. She knew that place well. She went there every Friday, like clockwork. When her supposed gym class took place. Only there never had been a gym class to begin with. That was her free hour. The one to stroll the streets, read a book, or in case of necessity take control of people and events from her past.

There was this cafe where she came to sit on every Friday, it had become a habit. And today she returned there.

Two streets away she would stop a young woman on the street, a stranger, telling her a story and handing her a piece of paper. The woman smiled at last, nodded, and departed for the cafe. Mary watched the young romantic blond of approximately her height and built go take a seat in the cafe, eluded by the story of a love affair, and that Mary needed her to hand this romantic letter to a man that would soon come in to the cafe. The fact that she had payed the woman would assure that she stayed in the cafe at least for half an hour before realizing there wasn't a man to Mary's description coming in (and to be honest, Mary had described Sherlock, that had more uncommon features then John).

Mary walked to a near back alley where she took her place behind a dumpster, surveying the street. She was looking for the shooter, coming for his third victim. First it had been John, then Sherlock, now the shooter was after the big prize, he was after her.

And she'd get him before he could get her. The young woman in the cafe was a decoy, a necessary risk in order to end something bigger.

Mary took out her gun, scanning the empty flats across the street. The shooter was bound to use one of them. It was his method. And she'd stop him before he could take the shot. Anonymously, she'd end the danger, and just go back to Baker Street, hug John, lie to him and Sherlock about her whereabouts, and go back to the Watson's everyday life.

A/N: Just to be clear, I have no idea of any illegal life in Camden - I made that up for narrative purposes. I grow tired of nondescript locations. And I've been to Camden once. Nostalgia, in short.

"Most people, when they blunder around the city, all they see are streets and shops and cars." Thanks a lot, Mycroft, you've just described me.

I've been called out before on inaccuracies as to my stories' London settings, and as much as I try to avoid them, like J. K. Jerome once said: the writer advises the reader not to regard his novel as a travel guide, it wasn't intended that way. -csf