"Hold still," Mary instructed Sherlock for the third time, clearly becoming annoyed. It was as if she were trying to splint a squirmy child.

"I could if you would stop hurting it!" Sherlock sulked, gasping again when Mary pulled one of the bandages a little too tight.

"It's just a sprained finger, stop being a baby." The door to the examination room was left open and nurses passing by couldn't help but giggle at the sight of Sherlock Holmes needing a finger splint. "How did this happen anyway? You weren't doing something you told us you would take a break from, were you?"

"No, I…fell."

"You fell?"

"From a ladder."

"And the truth is…?"

"Classified."

"Right." She put the final clip in to hold the bandage and the splint together and then took a long-awaited seat in the chair next to the examination table, leaning her elbow against it. She blew out an exhausted breath as she rested her head in her propped up hand. "You're all set. Don't fiddle with it and don't get it wet, it'll smell."

Sherlock examined the splint for a moment or two before giving it a nod of approval. "Very good." Mary gave an appreciative nod watching him hop off the table. He automatically reclaimed his blazer from the chair on the far wall and looked back to his nurse as he pulled it back on. "I see the pregnancy is taking its toll on you."

"What?"

"You're exhausted. You were barely standing up for more than five minutes," he calculated, adjusting his lapels.

"Ten minutes, Sherlock," Mary corrected.

"You've only gained one pound, two at the very most, since I last saw you…"

"Nice of you to notice," she replied sarcastically.

"And your stomach is not nearly large enough to be tiring you out this much yet," he paused in his deduction, looking more closely at her eyes. "So you haven't been sleeping well lately."

Mary pushed herself up off the chair and took a stern step toward her friend. "Sherlock, being pregnant has a way of making you exhausted. Even when you get a full night sleep and eat more than enough and sit down when you need to. There's no puzzle here; my body is tired and it doesn't matter what I do. I'm always exhausted."

"Mmm…" He wasn't so keen to believe it. "You're more tired than usual." She rolled her eyes and began to clean up some of the supplies she had been working with. "You're twenty-one weeks pregnant, according to the baby books flooding yours and John's living room you should know how to manage fatigue brought on by pregnancy at this point. So there's something else."

"There's nothing else," she insisted, not looking up from her task.

"Balance of probability suggests otherwise." He took a step closer to Mary, startling her when she turned around and nearly hit her face on his chest. "John's snoring been keeping you up?"

"What? No," she lied, throwing her rubber gloves into the waste basket. "I can't even hear it from the bedroom."

Sherlock nonchalantly straightened the button on his jacket. "No, but you can hear it when he's sleeping next to you."

She looked up at him immediately, looking busted. It only lasted a second before she continued on with what she was doing. "We haven't made up if that's what you're thinking."

"It's not what I was thinking."

"Did he tell you that he's been staying in the bedroom?"

"He told me about the window. The rest was a walk in the park," he responded smugly, gearing up for his reveal. "Someone breaks into your flat, takes nothing. The obvious conclusion is they meant to send you two a message expressing that you've somehow made an enemy out of he or she or them. 'Them' is the safest bet, someone always needs to play lookout. Knowing John, he's concerned for your safety so he wants to stand watch at night, but not in the living room, that's too far away. So, it's an easy deduction, he spends his nights in the bedroom."

"Yes, for the last week and a half," Mary confirmed, leaning back against the examination table with folded arms.

"And even though he's supposed to be up all night ready to pounce like he intended, he's been falling asleep in the bed. I could tell when he stopped complaining of neck and back aches 24/7—can be quite a whiner that one. However, while he's sleeping like a baby, you're actually growing one. That means you've likely been waking up during the night uncomfortable and struggling to fall back asleep, especially with John's boisterous snoring. If you were simply tired from the pregnancy and not a lack of sleep you wouldn't be trying to cover up the bags under your eyes with extra concealer and mascara."

Mary just stared at him, not looking at all impressed. "You'd think that somewhere in all that observation you would see that I'm not exactly in the mood to be analyzed or reminded of how tired I look." Her arms fell to her sides and she moseyed over to the doorway. "Don't get into anymore fights with criminals. I don't want to get in trouble for bandaging you up. Makes me an enabler."

"I'll try," he conceded, walking with Mary into the corridor. "Is John here?"

"I think so; he was supposed to come in around 11. I'm heading down to his office now for a blood pressure check; you can come with me."

"That's alright. I'll text him later. It's not pressing." He turned to leave, but was held up.

"No, come. Please."

Sherlock faced Mary and gave a questioning look. "Why?"

She let go of a heavy sigh. "We may be sharing a bed, but that doesn't mean any other progress has been made. He never says a word to me unless it has something to do with safety or the baby's health. It'd be nice if you could talk to him while he does my pressure so I don't have to just sit there in silence."

The detective shrugged; it was no loss or gain for him. "Alright."

"Thank you." Sherlock began to make his way back down the corridor to John's office, but Mary's hand caught his before he could get too far. "Sherlock…"

"Yes?"

"Really, thank you." She wrapped him into a tight hug—well, as tight as her belly would allow. Sherlock didn't know what to do; thus far in the pregnancy, Mary had not been given to emotional outbursts so he had not had much experience in determining how to entertain them. The result ended up being something of an awkward one-armed half-hug complete with a few light pats on the back. She released him with a chuckle, and wiped away a small bit of water that had formed in her eye. "Shall we?"

Sherlock made a 'ladies first' gesture and followed her to John's office, although when they actually arrived Mary made him go in first. "John, hello."

"Hey," John replied, spinning around in his desk chair. "I didn't know you were—what the hell happened to your finger?"

"It's a sprain. Mary addressed it," he answered, throwing a thumb in Mary's direction. "She's here for you to take her blood pressure and I'm here about a—"

"How'd you sprain it?" John interrupted, ready to scold him for doing something he was sure he told him not to do.

"I fell," Sherlock lied, as he had to Mary.

"Fell?" John interrogated, to which his friend nodded. "You were in a fight, weren't you?" He reached under his desk for what he needed to take Mary's blood pressure all while still staring down Sherlock.

"I wasn't in a fight. Mrs. Hudson needed something from the attic, she asked me to get it, and I fell."

"Interesting…"

"Hardly."

"What could Mrs. Hudson possibly need from the attic?"

"Do you want to hear about a new case or not?" Sherlock tempted, knowing his friend's weak spot.

John willingly gave up trying to get the truth out of him. It was only a finger after all. "Fine." He motioned, a bit awkwardly, for Mary to come sit down by him. When she did, he wasted no time in getting the band around her arm.

"Alright," Sherlock began, sitting himself down on a file cabinet. "Twenty-two year old finishes university and proposes to his girlfriend, she accepts, everyone's happy. Three days later, he goes missing and so does the ring."

"What's interesting about that? He probably got cold feet and left." John reasoned, slipping his stethoscope beneath the armband. He pumped several times until the band had achieved maximal tightness and then gave his undivided attention to getting a read on Mary's blood pressure. A concerned look quickly spread across his face. "130 over 85, that's a bit high."

Sherlock kept on talking. "What's interesting is where he was at the time he and the ring went missing…"

"It's going to have to wait, Sherlock." John reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a second Sphygmomanometer. He then turned back to Mary. "I'll check it again."

"Why would the first reading be wrong?" Mary questioned doubtfully, but surrendered her arm anyway.

"I'm just double-checking with a larger cuff. I don't see how it could have gotten higher since the last time I checked." He did the reading again, and much to his dismay ended up with the same result. "Well then…"

Sherlock decided to weigh in on the situation. "May I suggest—"

"No." John would not have any of Sherlock's medical 'insight' right now. "I'll come by Baker Street later. Right now I need to deal with this."

"Are you telling me to leave?"

"I was trying to be subtle," John rapidly responded with the utmost sarcasm.

"Fine." The third wheel stood up and, after saying his goodbyes to Mary, made his exit, but not without a childishly pout glued fast to his lips.

The second he was out of the office, John turned his focus immediately to Mary; he was in full overprotective mode now. "So what's going on? What's different?"

"Nothing, I don't think." She looked down, racking her brain trying to pinpoint what could be the problem.

"Did you eat anything before you came in here?" Mary shook her head. "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" She shook her head 'no' again. "Did you take a sip out of someone else's coffee?" John listed several more things that could explain the higher than usual reading, but Mary's answer to all of them was 'no.' Although, the one factor his omitted seemed the most obvious and the most likely.

"It's just a tiny spike, John." She was trying to console both him and herself as she knew stressing about it would do her no good. "It could be nothing."

John gave the suggestion an extended period of thought, but didn't seem swayed by the logic. "I'll check it again tonight. See if anything's changed."

Mary just nodded and got up from the chair, leaving the office without another word. She felt like yelling in his face that the most obvious culprit behind her elevated blood pressure was the incredible stress her marriage was becoming. She was losing her patience now. She knew what she did was wrong, and she wanted nothing more than to take it all back, but for John to string her along like this for nearly four months…it was just too much. He needed time; that was fair enough. But she was sick and tired of the emotional limbo they had been living in where John would constantly worry about her, even so far as to sleep next to her in the same bed with his gun in hand and aimed at the window where an intruder could (but probably wouldn't) come in, but never actually speak to her or smile at her or act anything like he had for the entire time they had been together before the big reveal.

She thought back to the morning after their wedding. John had run to the store and picked up three early pregnancy tests—just in case one malfunctioned, they would have the other two to be sure. His hands actually shook when he gave them to her; not too much, but enough to make her giggle at him inwardly.

"Now we wait," she had told him when she reemerged from the bathroom after carefully following the box instructions. Even though they both already knew what the result would be—Sherlock was so rarely wrong in his deductions—the next three minutes lasted an eternity.

Mary sat on the bed breathing in and out slowly while John paced back and forth in front of her. Neither spoke a word, but they did exchange reassuring smiles every now and then when their nervous eyes happened to meet. At long last, the timer went off, sending a sharp wave of thrill and nausea and terror through both their stomachs. When Mary went to check the tests, John tried to find something to do with his hands, placing them in five uncomfortable positions and twiddling them at the air as if there were imaginary pianos at his hips. They were clasped on top of his head when Mary came out holding the three tests and an ear to ear grin. "He was right." Her voice broke out into a delighted laugh.

John sucked in a deep breath through his instantly agape mouth and ran his fingers hard over his scalp. "You're pregnant?"

"Yes," Mary beamed, letting the happy tears in her eyes fall into ecstatic glistens on her cheeks. "I'm pregnant."

"Oh my God," John nearly wheezed, and wrapped Mary into the tightest hug he had ever given anyone. The smile on his face was nothing less than that of his wife's, he, however, made much more of an effort to fight back the tears forming in his eyes. Sure, it was just a confirmation of what they already knew, but the affirmation was more than enough to send them both into a fit of chuckles and 'I-can't-believe-it's'.

Leaning up against the wall at the clinic, hands over her six months pregnant belly, Mary tried to go back in time to that moment. It was perfect. So far from what their lives had become.

She thought back to what followed her taking the tests, after all the giddy celebration of hysterics and jubilation. She and John laid on the bed and held each other. Just held each other. "This is crazy," she whispered to him, despite there being no reason to keep her voice down.

"Tell me about it," he murmured back, staring at the spot where his hand rested on her lower belly. "If someone had told me, before last night, that I was going to be a dad… I'd have called them mental."

Mary let out a shaky breath, nervousness setting in. "Are you sure you're happy about this, John? I know it wasn't exactly planned…"

Her husband smiled at her widely, genuinely grinned. "I couldn't be happier." He rubbed his thumb lightly against her stomach. "I mean it…Never in a million years could I have seen this coming, but I don't think I've ever been so happy in my entire life."

A grin of her own spread into rosy cheeks and she planted a kiss on his lips. "I love you." She covered his hand with hers and turned her head down to her stomach. "And I love you too."

"Mary, Mary…" A voice called her from her daydream. It was Lara's; she sounded concerned. "What's the matter?"

Rejoining her present surroundings, Mary realized there were two tear tracks streaming down her cheeks and quickly wiped both of them away, embarrassment bringing a pink blush into their place. "Oh, hello Lara. Sorry, I was just being silly for a minute."

"Are you alright?" the young girl asked with a hand comfortingly on Mary's shoulder.

"Yes, I'm fine. Hormones, that's all." She figured that excuse would always go unquestioned. It seemed to work since Lara gave her a sweet smile and mentioned something about the joys of pregnancy before bouncing away to deliver a folder to another doctor. When she was gone, Mary exhaled a sigh of relief and wiped her cheeks once more to ensure any evidence of her emotional state was taken care of. 'No more daydreaming,' she told herself, although fully aware that would be impossible.

These days, Mary often went home from work a few hours earlier than John since he had been taking mornings off—the trade being that he was up playing sentry for most of the night. So, by the time John came through the door that night it was nearly seven o'clock and he found Mary asleep on the couch with one of the baby name books draped across her stomach. Lara had told him about Mary's episode today. Of course, she hadn't meant to tattle, it just came out in conversation. Interns had very little to converse about so any little bit of news was allowed. In the middle of his contemplation of whether or not to wake her so he could ask about that, his phone buzzed against his leg.

Pulling it out of his pocket, he read: Created two-part solution to lower Mary's blood pressure. Completely safe. Come collect when convenient.

John shook his head at Sherlock and typed back: She doesn't need medication and do not give her anything you made in your bloody kitchen!

'Hm,' Sherlock inwardly remarked receiving John's reply. 'Testy, isn't he.'

"Tit," John griped to the air as he made his way into the kitchen. When he reached into one of the higher cabinets to grab a glass, he accidentally knocked a couple pans that had been balancing on the drying rack into the sink. "Shit!" John emitted, though the expletive was lost in the clash and clamor.

Mary jolted up from her sleeping position on the couch at the sudden racket. "What was that?" she loudly exclaimed from the living room.

"Uh, sorry, I hit a pan," John apologized, bringing the cookware back to the rack. He turned toward her drying his hands on a dish cloth. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"Well, you did a brilliant job," she quipped harmlessly, swinging her legs over the side of the couch and straightening herself out. "When did you get back?"

"Just now."

There wasn't much else to say. Mary nodded in acknowledgement and then headed to the bathroom. John took that time to conceive of a way to bring up what Lara had told him, which he knew was a subject Mary would absolutely not want to discuss; however, he really did have to mention it. If her blood pressure was up on the same day the intern found her crying in the hall chances were the two were not unrelated.

Still unsure of how to play this, John knocked lightly on the bathroom door. "Mary," he called through the wood. "When you're all done in there, we have to talk."

At the sink washing her makeup off, Mary's eyes shot to the door. Could this be it? Were they finally going to tackle the A.G.R.A. flash drive? She emerged immediately, to her husband's surprise. "What do you want to talk about?"

John practically jumped backward when she suddenly appeared in front of him. He could smell the freshly applied moisturizer on her skin and the spearmint mouthwash on her lips. "Let's sit…" He led her to the bed and sat next to her at the foot of it. Taking note of her on-guard expression, he decided that there would be no good way to ease into what he wanted to discuss, so he just blurted it out. "Lara told me you were upset at work today. She said you were…crying. And it was right after I took your blood pressure so whatever it was that made you so upset…Well, I'd like to know because it isn't good for you or the baby and it probably accounts for why the reading was high as it was."

All the anxious hope she previously had, for however brief a time, left her in a second. She felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. How could she be so stupid to think John was actually going to stop dragging his feet and take some decisive action in their marital mess? "That's what you wanted to talk about?" she deadpanned.

"Mmhm," he nodded, subconsciously bracing himself.

Mary just shook her head. All the shattered hope in her was soon replaced by pure anger at just how thick John was acting. Not only did he not come forth with the conversation that, after six months of relationship limbo, was more than overdue, but he had the nerve to ask what was making her so upset! "You must be kidding."

"Mary—"

"No, John," she cut him off and came quickly off the bed. "You can't be serious. You want to know what is making me so upset?! It's you! And this whole blood thing!"

"Calm down," he tried, but it was useless.

"I will not calm down! For four months I've been patient and quiet about this mess between us. Four months! Sherlock forgave me in four days!"

"Well he's not your husband, is he?!" John stood up now too, unknowingly balling his fists. "He's not the one you're having a baby with, the one you stood up with in front of all our friends and family and made a vow to. It's more complicated than that, Mary!"

"John, I never expected you to just be fine with it all…but I put my past in front of you, everything I ever hid from you, and you've never even mentioned it." She felt tears forming in her eyes and cursed them, trying her damndest to blink them away so she wouldn't appear emotional. "I walk around here with my head down; I don't know if you love me or hate me. Or if the only reason you didn't leave is because I'm pregnant. I don't even know whether or not you ever read what was on that flash drive!"

"I need time!"

"Well I need some feedback!" There was more sadness in her voice than anger now. "One day you're sitting next to me while I sleep with a gun in your hand in case someone comes through the window, and then the next you can't even be bothered to look at me when I pass you in the hallway."

John exhaled a sigh and looked down. There was no easy way out of this. "I don't do it to make you upset." He looked back up at her and his jaw hardened. "I don't want you to be hurt all the time…but you need to understand that I didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve to be lied to like that."

She could have been mistaken, but she swore she heard a crack in his voice. "I know you didn't…and I know this is what I deserve…but knowing that doesn't make it any less miserable."

A silence fell between them, mainly because there was nothing good to say at this point. John, even knowing this, decided to bring the conversation/shouting match back to its original purpose. "Well, you need to find a way to make it less miserable…for the baby. You have to keep your blood pressure down, and things like this," he motioned between them with his finger, "are not going to help that. I'm telling you this as a doctor."

Mary didn't say anything back; a strange expression came over her face. She was suddenly quite absent from the room. With contorted brows and a look of surprise, she slowly pressed a hand to her stomach on the underside of her bump.

"Mary?" John asked curiously when she didn't respond after a few seconds. "Did you hear what I said?"

She sucked in a deep breath and let it out delicately, waiting a moment. "Oh my God…" It was barely audible, practically an exhaled whisper.

"Mary…" he said again more loudly this time, carefully watching the hand on her belly move to another spot.

The smallest of smiles showed itself tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I just felt the baby kick," she said, the amazement in her eyes not at all waning.

John's expression changed now too. His eyes softened, lips parted, and just like Mary he was too overwhelmed with emotion—especially the odd convergence of anger from the fight and absolute marvel and joy from the news—to form a real smile. He involuntarily let go of a relieved breath, thankful that nothing was wrong and thrilled that she had finally felt their baby. He didn't want to say anything, but he was beginning to get nervous about the lack of movement as well. But having still been tense from preceding argument, he couldn't melt into a pile of smiles and cheers. He didn't know what to do…or say.

Mary was oblivious to the slew of emotions swirling around in his eyes, though; she just kept her hand on the spot where her baby kicked her. It was no use now, her watery eyes gave up trying to be stoic and unmoved. Finally, she looked up to see John, noticing the subtlest glint occupying his eyes too, and with some uncertainty asked, "Do you want to, um… you can if you like…"

"What?" John looked like a deer in headlights.

"Do you want to feel it?" she got out, the awkwardness of the moment really sinking in now.

"Oh, I…well, I," he stammered along, unsure of what the proper response should be. He desperately wanted to feel his baby moving. Desperately. But he couldn't help but wonder if the circumstance between them—and the general state of their marriage—allowed him that privilege. After all, this should have been a very joyous and intimate moment between husband and wife…and their relationship had hardly been any of those things since the fateful night.

To his simultaneous relief and disappointment, he didn't get the chance to stutter out an answer. An impatient fist against the door to the flat disrupted the moment with muffled yet unyielding pounds. "John! Mary!" It was Sherlock. "Open the door, it's urgent!"