Author's note: Finally, an update! Thanks for the patience :) Chapter title inspired by an IM by EJBRUSH1952 :)

Enjoy!

Chapter 15: Forever trusting who we are

There's a dead man on the ledge below, leaking blood into the void, down, down to the clear waters below, but somehow neither Mary nor Sherlock seem worried about that. John can't really find it in him to worry about anything anymore. There's only confusion and the slick film of so-much-death coating his skin, his mind, but there's something else there, too, a guilty feeling he can't keep down, burning like welcome acid up from his stomach. Relief, John realises, he feels such tremendous relief. He doesn't know if that makes him a bad man... he doesn't know what it makes him, but in that moment he just can't find an iota of energy to care. It's in that crash after the high, once the danger John so unwillingly can't help loving has been washed away by a spurt of blood and a rush of water, that the nauseating, sticky aftermath composed of betrayal and too much pondering floats into John's system like an emotional hangover.

There is background noise trying to steal away John's attention, which is currently focused fully and unmistakably (if somewhat unconstructively) inwards, a hungry bird of prey hunting over the fields of his mind and heart. It isn't until silence breaks into that noise like a clumsy burglar into a house full of people, that John realises it had been words, human voices, explanations force-fed to unwilling ears that he was tuning out. And now it has narrowed down to a single repetition of a few phonemes.

"John." Sherlock's repeating his name, his eyes and Mary's focused on John. John flinches as his surroundings sharpen out, his inner eye closing in favour of his actual ones, the presence of the moment hitting him like a gust of cold wind.

"Sorry" he mumbles, "I was thinking. Was there a question?"

"Yes. Is your phone getting any signal? We need to contact Mycroft." It's Mary that says the words and John observes, detached, what an odd feeling it is to be talking to her. It's like he's talking to the twin of the Mary he (thought he) knew, a person who looks like her in every way, but is unmistakeably not her, at all. A familiar stranger. He checks his phone. No bars.

"Nothing." John can feel Sherlock looking at him. It's the look of a man who tried to do the right thing and got punished for it. John wants to tell him it's ok, that he's not angry with him. It's true, too. He isn't. Maybe he should be, but he can't think of a reason why...He'd resolved his anger over Sherlock's involvement in the whole Mary issue, and in the whole of this – this spy-movie-gone-awry – there's really little that could be counted as Sherlock's fault. Besides, John feels as if anger aimed towards Sherlock is a cliché by now, an over-used, recycled feeling.

And yet, he can't bring himself to look at Sherlock. He can't look at Sherlock because he wants to look at him and have that moment untainted – that instant of the world finally stilling and the realisation of 'oh, it's done. We can stop now. We can start again now' pouring in like liquid and taking shape of the container it fills, a John-shaped container. There is a relishing to be claimed once all this is done, John knows, but it's still away, a few steps out of reach. Because there are explanations to be given and plot holes to be filled, ghosts to be buried and memories to be re-written. Because, right across from Sherlock and John, settled in a white leather armchair, there's Mary, sitting right there, the past and the present colliding into a deformed creature that is neither then nor now.

So, no, John can't look at Sherlock, because he is afraid that if he does the world will once again shift into something he doesn't recognise. Perhaps, if he just keeps his eyes on Mary she won't disappear this time only to crop back up as something new, something even more destructive. He's not mad at Sherlock, but he's not at peace either. Because a part of this doesn't belong to Sherlock, at all. It belongs to John and John only – the right to know, the right to finally be in the loop regarding proceeding that are in fact his life.

"Well, it seems we have time for your story, then" he says, directing his words to Mary, like passing a ball in a game of catch, only the ball is not really a ball but a grenade or a bag full of shards of glass, dangerous and intended to hurt. Mary doesn't even flinch and that cold, unrelenting air of being untouchable angers John more than anything. It's unfair that he feels so tired or raw or betrayed or played or confused. It's unfair that he feels so much and can't help it, can't stop it from showing, while Mary sits there, all cool composure and schooled features. People think love is the only feeling that can make a person feel foolish when unrequited, but that's a sad misconception. Truth is, any feeling, when gone unreturned, has the same power. People are not fans of indifference. One usually likes most to be loved, but denied that, he will take any emotion – preferably a strong one, such as hate or rage or envy – as long as it means he is on equal grounds in his sentimentality. But indifference – indifference is the surest way to make a man the weaker party, the one compromised by the unruliness of his own heart. In the power-play of being human with other humans, indifference is the ultimate trump card. And Mary seems to be the one holding it.

Apparently ignorant of (or, more likely, ignoring) John's inner struggles, she plunges into her story.

"While still in London, I was tasked with tailing Small and his pack of thugs. I did well until one night I got too close, too reckless and gave myself away."

"How?" John interrupts.

"John..." Sherlock sounds tired. Sherlock never sounds tired, John thinks. Which is why everything about this is wrong. Just a pile of wrong things, a scene out of an LSD-induced fairytale fantasy, all skewed and scary and horrifying and not nearly as fun as it's supposed to be.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes. I want to know where you screwed up."

"I can't say. It's classified." Mary seems almost spiteful. John can't really believe her. There's something off about her aloofness. Something unnatural. Forced. The sunlight spilling in from the outside is almost forceful, a bully made of photons, punching its way into the smallest spaces. And yet, the trio in the cottage is seated in the shade, just on the margins of luminescence. Not one of them makes a move to change that. The shades feel more comfortable, for some reason. It's easier to hide darkness there.

"Either way, I knew I was spotted and that it was either get killed or acclimate from that point on. I was of no use to Mycroft dead, so I did what I was trained to do. I survived by convincing them I was on their side."

John can't help but snort. Incredulity wells up and beats Sherlock to asking the obvious question.

"They are an international drug ring, I'd think them quite a bit suspicious. What on Earth could you have said to convince them of being on their side?"

He expects more vague, off-hand remarks and pleas of "classified". Which is why what happens next catches John completely by surprise. Not the surprise-birthday-party sort of surprise, either. More like 'something turned up during your routine medical check up' sort of surprise.

The cards fall, a perfect hand of indifference John fancied Mary has unexpectedly gone and lost as, for a moment, such pain flashes in Mary's eyes that John gets a sudden, overwhelming urge to stick his fingers into his ears and avoid hearing the answer he asked for. But before his inert body can sculpt his thoughts into actions, Mary speaks.

"I gave them Sherlock."

One day the world will end. The end will start with fire. Next, there will be floods. But the world can survive those. It can take the burn of the fires and hold its breath through the floods. The world can burn and it can drown, but it will not end in fire nor in water. Not really.

The world will end in the hands of men.

The world will be destroyed not by tectonic shifts, but by flickers of fingers. It will dissipate down the doomed paths of life-lines on palms and break over the harsh ridges of knuckles.

Which is quite alright, because just as it may end there, the world will also begin again in the hands of men. It is those hands that will take the leftover detritus of fires and floods and recognise in it the potential for new life, a new world sitting dormant in the bones of all the worlds that came (and died) before it.

It doesn't take much to destroy a world. But it doesn't take all that much to build a new one, either. It's a rather simple recipe – a bit of ashes, a bit of mud, a pinch of faith, a teaspoon of hope, a dollop of effort, and for a finish grate some compromise. Mix it all in a pair of hands (or preferably two) and watch. Watch a new world grow.

"What do you mean, you gave them Sherlock?" John's words are just a bit more than a growl, but before Mary can reply, Sherlock speaks up, finally joining into the conversation.

"Oh. Of course. I was wondering how they knew where to look." The ridiculous man doesn't even sound cross about the whole thing, just happy to finally have all the pieces of the puzzle. In any other setting, John would find it endearing. Now, he finds it infuriating.

"Sherlock...I want to hear it from her." he cuts in, eyes slashing through the air under an angle. Turning back to Mary, John is determined to get to the bottom of this.

"What do you mean, you gave them Sherlock?" he asks again, slowly, almost menacingly.

"They knew he was onto them. Naturally, they wanted him...neutralised."

"Naturally." John's voice gives off sarcasm the way sulphur gives of its rotten stench. Mary takes his comments in stride, letting them slide off her like droplets of water over a plastic cover stretched over a sofa to keep it from getting touched by anything. Her next words are directed at Sherlock.

"Mycroft had a whole network of people keeping an eye on you, just in case. I knew where you were hiding, and where you were likely to go." For the briefest of moments, Mary's eyes flutter towards the floor, evading anyone's gaze. When she lifts them back up again, a change has occurred, a softening around the edges, like cotton wool drawn over roughness of stone. For the first time, apart from that brief flash of pain that came with admitting of her betrayal of Sherlock's whereabouts, Mary looks at Sherlock and seems as human as any of the parties in the room. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I really am."

A flicker of understanding seems to pass between the Consulting Detective and Mary, a tacit act of forgiveness that, in John's opinion, comes to easily, given the magnitude of the transgression. Sherlock should be angry, livid, and in all right refuse to hear another word. But, as it happens to be given to every human, there is nothing about what John thinks Sherlock should feel that has any bearing on Sherlock's actual emotions, so John must settle for the next best thing. If he can't cure the foolishness of his partner, he can at least take the task of feeling the proper things onto himself, an involuntary delegation of sentiment on Sherlock's part. Sherlock may think this is ok, but John most certainly does not.

A stretch of uncomfortable silence draws on for half a minute (longer, John thinks, an age) before Mary speaks again.

"I continued to report to Mycroft, to ward off suspicion. Until Small decided to move camp. In London, at home, I knew I could pull this double-game because I was close to my sources, close to the base. But here, I was alone, cut off from any safety nets I had installed. I couldn't tell Mycroft the truth because all my reports were monitored. So I did all I could – I left breadcrumbs. I told Small it was usual for an agent to skip a report or two if they got an unexpected chance to go off the grid in order to pursue a trail. He bought it, with some persuasion. Of course, I knew it would ring an alarm and that Mycroft would think I was taken hostage. At that stage, I practically was, only my captors didn't quite know it yet.

I honestly didn't know he would send you. Either of you. It was never my intention to have you here."

There is sincerity in Mary's voice, soft but strong, like the stem of a young sapling, seemingly fragile but stubbornly resisting any test posed to it.

"You lied to me. About everything. Why should I trust you now?"

"Because I'm not lying now."

There are no further explanations offered, no heartfelt confessions of soul-tearing regret or pitiful pleas for forgiveness. Because, really, sometimes there is nothing left to say, once all the truth has been laid bare, like a virgin girl presented as sacrifice to an angry god. And it never feels as finished as it sounds, never quite final and always a bit lacking, as if there is a single word or phrase that might set it right if added, an amendment of sorts to fill the cavity of inadequacy that lies within each human interaction. But there's no fillings available to assuage the rawness of an incomplete-feeling conversation, no words that could make it more satisfying, so silence settles over them like the faint spray of the waterfall outside, or ashes from a volcano striving to preserve them in time.

A chirp shatters the stale-mate that's really a forfeit of the entire game. It comes from Sherlock's coat pocket, a signal for an incoming text. Such an innocent sound, yet it grates against eardrums like the shriek of nails down a blackboard. Ping-pang, it sings, time to move on, things won't get better than this. Finality is a terrible thing when it feel fake, unfinished. It's the longing of not getting to say goodbye to a dying friend, that irksome feeling that accompanies not getting to eat dessert.

"Guess I've got signal." Sherlock says, slightly awkwardly. "I'll just...go phone Mycroft, then." He points to the door, standing up from the sofa. John can't tell if the whole act is just a very practical coincidence or a masterful set-up prepared by Sherlock to give him some time alone with Mary. Either way, he writes a note on a mental post-it to scold Sherlock later for leaving him. Or possibly, thank him for it. Mary watches Sherlock go, before returning her gaze to John. Before John can say something, she beats him to it.

"I had been given a job. Besides, I was told it would help save your life."

"Save my life? My life wasn't in any immediate danger."

"Wasn't it?"

John knows she's right – hell, he's worked through this whole line of reasoning several days ago – but he doesn't want to acquiesce.

"That still doesn't make it a moral thing."

"Are we really going to discuss moral here?" Mary scoffs, eyebrows floating towards her short hair like helium-filled balloons cut off their stings. "Very well, then. You once did shoot an unarmed civilian, John. Please, explain the morality of that to me." Mary's tone makes it clear that she isn't in a mood for shamming. Seeing John's slightly bewildered look, she continues.

"I work for Mycroft, remember? Of course we know about the cabby."

"That was different." John coughs out, once he's found his voice again (it hid somewhere between his sense of that no, it really isn't all that different and sheer surprise at being called out for an action he'd long thought no one knew about).

"How? How was it different?" Exasperation leaks off Mary's words. "You shot a man. He had no weapon. He wasn't even particularly strong."

"He was a threat" John argues, all righteous rage and soldiers-don't-cower defensiveness.

"What? Was he going to strangle someone with the string of his cabby tag?"

"Of course not, no."

"Then why did you do it?" Mary pushes on, insistent, like a hound that has scented blood. Or a teacher who'd seen a spark in a student and is pushing him on and on, trying to light a fire. "Why did you shoot an unarmed man?"

"I did it to save Sherlock!"

"From what? There was no gun trained on him, no –"

"From himself!" John interrupts.

It isn't until the words are out that he realises he walked right into Mary's trap. Only it's a paradox, this trap, because it doesn't bring imprisonment. Rather, it brings liberation. Because, oh..., things make more sense now. There is great liberty in understanding your own confusion. John just hopes he isn't in for an 'I told you so'. The ego is a sensitive animal, easily wounded.

The victorious smirk on Mary's face would be right-down ridiculous if John's dumbstruck face of being slapped by a realisation weren't so comically exaggerated that it overshadows everything else.

"You used a bullet and he used his brother and me, but in the end you were both fighting armed enemies – the ones you knew existed within each of you. I don't think you regret what you did. And I think Sherlock doesn't, either" Mary says, her tone calm now, the hush after a storm. "I am sorry for any pain the deception has caused you, John. But do not expect me to apologise for doing my job. I'm not sorry. You are alive, that's good enough for me. It may not get me a great many point on the moral scoreboard, but I think you'll agree it's a pretty shady scoreboard, that. Besides, ask a bullet if it regrets killing, see what response you'll get. It was just doing its' job, John. And so was I. I think we're all glad at how it turned out, don't you?"

It's not sentiment, not in the way one would think. It's a job-well-done sort of professional satisfaction, really, but there's a pinch of that basic humanness to it, that simple gladness of one human being for helping to keep another human being from expiring. It's benevolent, but not cordial, friendly in that generic way that is ingrained in most people's basic settings.

Mary makes a move to get up, but there's one more thing John needs to know before he can let her leave. Because, John knows, this is the last he will be seeing of Mary. Ghosts belong in the past, and her mere presence here is probably some sort of rule-breaking on some greater cosmic scale of time-sequences and good narratives. John knows he shouldn't ask, that it will bring no good to him if he did, but the question is there, heavy, small, dark, and lovely in his chest, in the red-black hollow of his trachea, and he can't resist. One more thing, just a few more words, teasing him with the promise of closure.

"Was any of it real?" The words are out before he can shape them properly, mould them into something a bit less raw, a single fraction further away from sounding like it matters.

"Does it matter now?"

No, it doesn't. It doesn't matter, why would it? (Only it does. Of course it does. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does, ridiculously and illogically.)

"Of course it matters. You were the first person I allowed closer after what I thought was my best friend's death. So, tell me – was any of it real?" John grates the words out, wrenching them away from the safe places they try to hide in, stealthily sliding behind the screen of self-protectiveness that urges them not to reveal themselves. Not to reveal too much of that soft underbelly. Mary considers them for a moment, as if trying them on for size.

"If you're asking me whether I was on my way to falling in love with you, then the answer is no. It was a job John. And I am very good at my job. I know how to keep myself in check while doing it, because I am a professional.

But despite not being in love with you John, I do like you. You are a good man – a loyal, honest, brave man – and no matter what you think of me, I am neither ashamed nor sorry for taking the job. Because I like to think it that I helped keep you safe, and I see nothing wrong with that. We don't live in a world where morality is a black-and-white affair. Maybe there is a place or a setting in which some lucky sods who can afford such thinking live, but it's not here. I was the best solution for a very bad problem, desperate times and all...Which in no way means it was a good solution. Sometimes the best solution is a bad one, but a bad one that does least damage. Or at least does some damage that's justifiable the context of possible benefits.

I was a bullet designed to save you from yourself. Isn't that enough?"

"It's enough to make me feel like a fool for feeling anything. I should have known better, I should have-"

"You should have done and acted precisely the way you did" Mary counters, her voice softening. "Don't feel like a fool, John. There's no reason for you to, because I wasn't just a bullet. I was a bullet with your name engraved on it. I was assigned the job because I was deemed suitable. I was handpicked for it, a sniper shot if you will. You did everything right. The part of you that was a threat stood just in the right spot to get eliminated, and the rest of you liked me enough to give loving life a second chance.

That bullet you shot the cabby with, all those years ago – you might not have known it then, but it was a declaration...of loyalty or of something more, I don't know, but I know that I, all of this – that was the answer, given years later."

There is a smile in Mary's eyes now, a kind thing that lights up her expression in a way John has no heart to interpret in anyway other than as sincere. Outside, a sudden rumble of a helicopter landing ruffles the air and the grass, vibrations snaking under their feet, slithering along polished wooden floorboards.

"I guess that's my ride" Mary says, half-shouting now, trying to talk over the increasing amount of noise being generated by the craft on the other side of the door. She stands up, John following her example, and together they walk to the door. A man in protective overalls, with a body-bag slung over his shoulder passes them by, obviously on his way to collect Small's body.

They find Sherlock waiting for then on the lawn in front of the house, a black helicopter by his side. 'Mycroft works fast', John thinks. Mary starts walking towards the helicopter, when John calls out to her.

"What's going to happen with you now?"

Mary's smile is blinding, a twin of the ones she used to give John. Under the clear, bright skies, she looks like a story bound in flesh. John thinks that, maybe, in the end he hadn't gotten it all wrong. There are many things Mary turned out not to be, but there is one thing that John got right about her. For all the things she isn't, Mary most definitely is extraordinary.

"Oh, I'm going to be punished" she retorts, her smile never faltering, as if she has just announced she was going on vacation.

"Punished?"

"Oh, yes. I might have remained loyal to Mycroft, but I have done so by trading in the most valuable commodity. The one no one is allowed to ever touch. His little brother. It won't be an official punishment, but Mycroft is nothing if he isn't the master of elegant subtlety. No worries, though. I might get him to go easy on me. After all, I have a plethora of information as leverage for bargaining. Don't you worry about me."

With that, Mary steps into the helicopter, a final nod to Sherlock being dispatched instead of a good-bye, stoic and calm. The whole crew is accounted for (the living and the dead), and the helicopter whirls into life. And then Mary's off, suddenly and abruptly, the same way she'd entered John's life again, a way that seems to be her signature.

Slow, measured steps bring a certain looming figure of the world's only Consulting Detective over to John. There's a restraint to his movements, as he comes to stand next to the army doctor. John knows precisely what he wants to do – it's something along the lines of desperate clutching more suited for a teenager than a grown man, but John couldn't care less about that – but Sherlock seems to have a different thing in mind. Although John can think of a better way to employ lips and mouths at the moment, Sherlock seems set on talking.

"Mycroft would have never really let you die, you know."

He's not looking at John. Rather, he's looking out into the distance, hands posed in pockets. Sherlock's hands seem very much occupied by the business of not touching.

"Yes, he did say he would do whatever he could to keep me from harm, but that his hands are tied, Switzerland being neutral and all."

"I'm not saying there wasn't a risk. I am simply saying that you should have expected Mycroft would do all he could to keep you alive."

"Why?" John asks. It's not because he doubts Mycroft's promise, but because he is pretty sure that, given the choice between John's life and Sherlock's, Mycroft would choose Sherlock. John knows this, because given the same choice, John would agree with Mycroft's decision.

"Because he knows I would never forgive him if he did anything less" Sherlock replies, as if he's commenting on the weather. In a way, that makes it all the more meaningful, really, because it seems as unquestioningly a fact as the weather itself, that Sherlock would hold John's injury or death as the highest possible offence. It's no grand declaration. It's the simplicity of complicated things being woven into the very fabric of the state of affairs, made an integral part of the basic mechanics of life.

"But how could have he been sure I wouldn't get killed?" John asks.

"He couldn't have been. So, as you said, he played his best card to make it as unlikely an outcome as possible."

"And what would that be if not his troop of minions?"

With this, Sherlock finally turns to face John, his reply arriving on a rush of air.

"Me." After an intense moment in which he just stares at John, Sherlock continues. "Your code name – Victor Trevor. It wasn't randomly chosen. It was a message form Mycroft, for me. A two-part message. A warning."

"Who is Victor Trevor?"

"An old...friend. It's ancient history, really."

"Then why did Mycroft choose his name?"

"Because Victor was someone I...lost, partly because I didn't listen to what Mycroft told me. Mostly because I didn't know when to stop showing off. Also, because Victor was a liar.

So the message was: Listen to what Mycroft is telling me – that you were lying to me on Mycroft's command and that by believing your words I was running a risk of losing you. He couldn't be sure about Mary's loyalty, not with communication between them severed, but he could count on me to have your back. He didn't send you out here so you could get yourself killed, but he knew you would do anything you could to protect me. And I you. "

Seconds seep away as John just stands, mouth slightly agape, and stares at Sherlock, the details of all that's been going on settling down like dust.

"You two really have the most screwed up relationship, don't you?" he asks, finally recovering power of speech. Sherlock pretends to ponder on this for a moment or two, before cracking a grin.

"Yes, I suppose we do."

John wants nothing more than to melt into that grin. There's too much air between them, too much space, too much time spent apart. He wants to erase it all, and with it the memories of all things that tried to break them. But he won't. He will use them as stepping stones, as monuments dedicated to casualties that will stand to remind them of where they've been and how far they've come.

But not here. Just a bit more, that's how long they have to wait. Not here, but elsewhere, where the ground is right and the air isn't too thin. The place where everything began, and then ended, and then began again.

"Sherlock" John says, calmly, almost quietly, "let's go home."

The next chapter (last one) will either be up by Thursday evening or, in case I don't manage to finish it, next week, since I'm going away for three days, Friday to Sunday, and will be without Internet service :)