Mary and Molly had been on the road for several minutes. Minutes during which Molly had been staring out the car window, thinking. Her head ached and she was trying to process everything that had happened, everything she had seen and heard. She had never claimed to know Mary very well. Now, as she pictured the blonde woman with a gun in her hand, she suspected that she didn't know her at all. After some time, she steeled herself to speak. "That man... I was angry with him, furious, but I was mostly afraid. I didn't want him to see it, so I tried to hide it." Molly cleared her throat. "But he was... terrified of you."

Mary kept her eyes glued to the road in front of her, her jaw muscles clenched tight. Of course Molly would have questions, the woman wasn't blind or deaf, but what else could she have done? She'd had to protect John.

"What you did was a good thing, I won't argue that. Like you said, John can yell at you to his heart's content later." Molly looked straight at the other woman, all traces of the timid school girl she often appeared to be, nowhere to be found. "But I need to know. If he should be afraid of you?"

If she hadn't been driving, Mary would have closed her eyes. Why couldn't she just leave all of that behind? Maybe because hell was a place of your own making, built choice by choice. She swallowed once and gripped the wheel hard. "You mean Sherlock."

Molly nodded. "And... maybe John."

It was a sad, weary sigh that escaped Mary's lungs. "I've hurt them both enough. Sherlock and John. I never want to see my husband look at me like that again." She gave a genuine shudder at the thought. Some days, she was genuinely surprised she had survived those first few hours after it had been revealed that she was the one who had shot Sherlock. It was ironic, really, that she probably owed her own life to the detective.

Molly remembered when Sherlock had been shot and the apparent coincidental timing of the Watson's separation. For one fleeting moment, she wondered if it had been Mary who had shot the detective, but she dismissed the idea almost immediately. Mary would be in jail in that case and John would have long since divorced her. Still... "What if John weren't your husband anymore?" Molly whispered the question, afraid of the reaction she would get.

Mary shifted her hold on the wheel, flexing her hands. It was something she didn't want to contemplate, but the idea of John leaving her, of her letting him go, kept rolling through her mind. "I wouldn't hurt them, even then." She had to learn to think like normal people did. Didn't normal people put the happiness of their loved ones before their own? She did love John and she wanted him to be part of their daughter's life.

The traffic light they had stopped at changed to green and she pulled out. There was the screeching of tyres, the sound of an impact and a gut-wrenching sideways lurch of the car. People leapt from passing vehicles to check on the occupants of the cars.

In the time it took for the two women to disappear into the darkness, Sherlock had picked the lock on the handcuffs dangling from his left wrist because, of course, the idiot kidnapper hadn't had the keys to the cuffs on his person. He pocketed the cuffs for later use.

John wasn't touching him anymore, but Moriarty was blissfully silent. Sherlock wasn't certain how long that would last, it was far too soon for his hallucinations to stop, but he was grateful for the respite.

While the doctor held his gun on the kidnapper, Sherlock picked the lock on the cuffs holding the man to the heavy machinery.

"John, shall we escort our guide to the car?" the detective asked and received a brief nod in return. As the trio walked by the fake bomb, Sherlock retrieved the dropped syringe. It might come in handy later on.

At the car the detective opened the passenger side door and John shoved the kidnapper none-too-gently into the seat. The doctor kept the gun trained on the man as Sherlock fastened the loose cuff to one of the metal supports under the seat.

With occasional reminders of the gun that was trained on him, the kidnapper led them to a residential area. Sherlock drove passed the indicated house and drove several blocks then around the corner before pulling over.

John fidgeted slightly. "So now we wait for Greg?"

Sherlock nodded, then he let himself slump against the car door. Every bit of the strain that he was under was plain to read in his profile and on his face. After a moment he opened the door. "I need some air." He let the window down and made a show of breathing laboriously.

"Sherlock? Are you okay?" The doctor's voice was full of concern.

Sherlock stepped out of the car and let his knees start to buckle even as he reached his left hand into his pocket. John climbed out of the car and went to the detective's side. As quick as he reached out to help his friend, Sherlock had cuffed him to the open frame of the car door's window. He stepped nimbly out of John's reach as the doctor started spewing invective.

"God dammit, Sherlock! No! You are not fucking..."

The detective tuned John's words out. He took the syringe and his mobile from his pocket and lay them on the pathway, cautiously staying just beyond John's reach. "For when Greg gets here. You may need it when you come after me." With that, Sherlock ran back towards Walsh's house. He slowed to a walk and approached with his hands held up and out to his sides.