John tells her the basic facts. His cheerfulness is out of keeping with the contents of the story. She makes him go back and explain again.

“I don’t understand. He contacted the police and bomb disposal ahead of time, but he didn’t tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Were they actually evacuating Parliament, then, while you were down there?”

“Of course. Though they wouldn’t have got them all out in time.”

“But he lied to you about all of that.”

“Yep.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a sociopath,” John says with a shrug.

Mary frowns. “You don’t believe that.”

John considers it. “No, I suppose I don’t. Neither does he, really. It’s just a convenient excuse.”

She thinks about it some more. “So, he made you think he didn’t know how to defuse the bomb, and then he revealed it was just a joke.”

“Some joke, I know. He may not be a sociopath, but he’s a bastard, for sure.” He shakes his head, then adds, “I think he really was expecting a much smaller bomb, though. And I think he was actually scared for a bit, before he found the switch. But he definitely let me think we were going to die for a while after he figured it out.”

Mary’s brow furrows. “Why, though? What happened while you thought you were going to die?”

John shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No. We just talked.”

She rolls her eyes. “What did you say?”

“He asked me to forgive him.”

She has a sinking feeling. “And you did?”

“Well, yeah. We were about to die.”

“So he blackmailed you into forgiveness.”

“Yeah.” John laughs. “That’s about the size of it. Christ, only Sherlock, eh?”

Mary isn’t so sanguine, herself. But she admits later that sex with John is particularly excellent after he’s just been made to think he’s about to die.

* * * 

There’s the press conference the next day, and pleasant socializing with John and Sherlock’s friends at Baker Street, after. John and Sherlock are a seamless unit once more, and everyone is congratulating John and Mary on their new engagement, and everyone is happy (almost everyone -- she feels bad for Greg, who is clearly smitten with Molly and unhappy to learn of her own recent engagement). John and Mary make promises to see everyone again soon, and they head home.

The day after, she returns to Baker Street on her own.

“You idiot,” she says conversationally, walking into 221B. Mrs. Hudson let her in downstairs, made her promise to stop by for tea soon.

Sherlock, lying in repose on the sofa with dressing gown wrapped around him and fingers steepled beneath his chin -- a habit she’s seen Mycroft employ as well, though with a more upright posture -- doesn’t look up. “You told me he would be more likely to forgive me if he thought he was about to die.”

She stands in front of him, looks him in the eye. “That’s not what I said.”

“It is the clear inference to draw from your statements. Now we’re through with that tiresome business and can move on.”

“Did you tell him any of the things you told me?”

“It was unnecessary. Thanks to our impending death, we cut to the chase, and he forgave me.”

She throws up her hands in exasperation. “Did you even think for one moment about what you’d be putting a war veteran through? A man who still has dreams about getting shot and seeing friends blown up?”

Sherlock flinches at that. He stands, walks up and over the coffee table, and begins pacing. “John doesn’t fear near-death experiences. He misses the danger.”

“That’s true, but not the whole story. Do you have no understanding of mental health in the aftermath of trauma?”

Sherlock’s mouth twists. “I am, in fact, far more intimately acquainted with post-traumatic stress disorder than I used to be.”

She blinks. “Oh?” What happened to him while he was gone?

Sherlock shrugs and stares out the window. When he doesn’t answer, she presses on, keeping her best nurse voice -- calm and all business. ”Were you wounded? Captured? Tortured?”

He nods. “Among other things.”

She swallows. “There are treatments you might want to consider.”

“I’m fine.”

“It might help if you talked about it, if nothing else. John sees a therapist, still.”

“I’m fine.”

She feels a strong urge to tell Sherlock about her own past. About the terrifying time when she was toyed with at gunpoint, and hurt in rather creative ways, by a particularly unsavory Russian associate, for instance. She can’t help but think it might get him to open up more, or maybe make him feel less alone. But she can’t, of course.

“Well,” she says. “I would think that, given that experience, you might choose not to contribute to the nightmares John already experiences.”

Sherlock looks at her, finally. “It is possible that I underestimated the drama of the moment, for both of us.”

She sighs, accepting that this is as close as she will probably get to an admission of error or an apology. “Just try not to make him think he’s going to die, or lose you again, would you? I think he’s been through enough.”

Sherlock nods. “I’ll endeavor to exhaust other alternatives first.”

She shakes her head, giving up. “Right. Want some lunch, then?”

He waves the thought away with long, dismissive fingers. “Not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” She lets herself out.

* * * 

A few days later, John is late coming home from the clinic. When he returns, he has a DVD with him.

“What’s that?” Mary asks.

“Oh, just a present from Mycroft,” John says with a huff of unamused laughter.

For half a second she panics, wondering why Mycroft sent her a message via John, and what John knows. Then she realizes it’s not for her.

“You saw him just now?”

“Yeah. He abducted me -- I guess everything is back to normal, now that Sherlock is back. He let me yell at him for a while about not letting on that Sherlock was alive.”

“Feel better now?”

“Yeah, actually. And then he gave me this.” John gestures to the DVD.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an explanation of how Sherlock did it. For some reason, Sherlock chose to explain everything -- the fall, everything -- to Anderson. Anderson!” John waves his arms in disbelieving frustration.

“He’s the arsehole in Forensics, right?”

“Yeah. Or was. Greg told me he’d left the force for health reasons. Apparently, he went a bit ‘round the bend after Sherlock’s dea-- disappearance. Had all sorts of wild conspiracy theories about how Sherlock wasn’t really dead. Not so wild, as it turns out. But I never would have seen that coming. Not from him.”

“Yeah -- I thought he hated Sherlock?”

“I thought so, too. But he started a club, of sorts, devoted to him. I had no idea -- he never bothered to invite me.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to cause you more pain,” Mary says. “Or Greg warned him off?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he just forgot about me. I was never very memorable, without Sherlock.” John shrugs good-naturedly -- nothing has seemed to bother him as much, now that Sherlock is back. “Anyway. Mycroft thought I might want to watch it.”

“Are you going to?”

John thinks about it, then shakes his head again. “No. You know, I don’t think I am. I don’t care how he did it. I forgive him; that’s what matters. I really would rather not spend any more time thinking about that time.”

She nods, sympathetic to his avoidance even if she could never be so incurious. “Well then, how about dinner? Want to check out the new Italian place ‘round the corner?” John looks guilty. “Or are you going to Baker Street again tonight?”

“Do you mind? I know I was just there last night, but Sherlock has a case --”

“It’s fine,” she says with a smile.

“I could tell him I’ll come by tomorrow instead --”

“Go,” she says, pushing him gently toward the door.

He hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“You haven’t seen your best friend in two years. Of course I’m sure.”

“Right.” He comes back for a kiss, then leaves.

One thing she has to admit -- having Sherlock back makes her work much easier. She hasn’t had to make excuses about seeing Cath in order to surveil Magnussen or research his recent activities.

First things first, though. As soon as John leaves, she pops in the DVD.

* * *

When she meets Mycroft next, she has a flash drive for him. “Here are Magnussen’s recent activities and probable contacts,” she says.

“Anything of note?” he asks.

She sighs. “Not really. If he’s been working with someone new, it’s likely through an intermediary. There’s nothing suspicious or novel about any of his recent activities. And the votes and news stories that show signs of his influence are all connections we already knew about. He’s been quieter than usual.”

“Indeed. Which can’t possibly be good,” Mycroft muses. “Miss Hawkins has revealed nothing?”

Her mouth twists. “No. Janine won’t talk about work, even when drunk.”

“He hasn’t contacted you about your cousin, yet, either, I take it.”

“Of course not. I would have told you.”

Mycroft presses his fingers together beneath his chin. “We need more data.”

“I agree.”

“We may need to become more aggressive in our fact-finding, if he doesn’t take our bait soon.” He raises his eyebrows at her. “I do hope your personal life will not interfere if I need to send you out of town for a while.”

“Not at all.”

“Good.”

Mycroft gives her a nod that she recognizes as a dismissal, but she doesn’t leave. “The story on the DVD. How much of that was true?”

He tilts his head. “What do you think?”

She shakes her head slowly. “It’s too neat. The story makes you both sound too much in control. Nothing ever goes off that smoothly.”

Mycroft smiles. “How true.”

“Tell me the real story.” Mycroft cocks an eyebrow. “Maybe I can learn something.”

When Mycroft doesn’t say anything, she asks, “How long had you and Sherlock been working to bring Moriarty down? Since ‘The Great Game?’”

He rolls his eyes. “Must you really refer to events via Doctor Watson’s blog titles?”

“It’s rather convenient.”

With a sigh, he says, “Since the events of ‘The Woman,’ then, if we must. Did Doctor Watson tell you about her, beyond what appeared on his blog?”

“Irene Adler? Yes, I’ve heard about her.” John has had rather a lot to say about her and her interactions with Sherlock -- as well as the things she said about him and Sherlock -- while in his cups.

Mycroft nods. “I’d been attempting to take down Moriarty since he first made himself known, but it was after our dealings with Miss Adler came to an end that Sherlock and I began to plan in earnest. We had a multi-pronged attack. We captured Moriarty and attempted to coerce him into revealing information about his resources and plans.”

“Attempted?”

“As we had feared, he was not not terribly forthcoming. However, we had simultaneously infiltrated his London associates, and had a mole among them. When he was recalcitrant, I didn’t press too hard. Instead, I traded select information with him, then released him.”

“Did your mole provide good intel?”

“Not as much as we’d hoped. We anticipated having a long time during which to gather information, but he went after Sherlock far earlier and more directly than we’d assumed he would.”

“So you hadn’t planned Sherlock’s downfall -- and the literal fall -- right from the start?”

“Not precisely. We knew that we would need to send Sherlock after Moriarty’s network -- we would need someone as clever as Moriarty to tear down what Moriarty had built -- and it seemed it would be to our advantage if Sherlock were believed dead at the time of the mission. But as I said, Moriarty’s exact path was not one we predicted early on.”

“You fed him the information about Sherlock, though. The information he used.”

“Indeed. We fed it to him so that he would think the Holmes brothers were defanged, under his thumb. We predicted he would use it to try to compel Sherlock not to interfere with his plans.”

She thinks of John, wrapped in Semtex. “Hold his reputation hostage, this time. And meanwhile, you could get information about him via the mole.”

Mycroft inclines his head. “Precisely. We also expected that any confrontation he had with Sherlock would be in private, as it had been before. However, Moriarty’s obsession with Sherlock -- his vendetta --” he draws the word out and crisply enunciates each consonant in what she has come to think of as a Holmesian fashion -- “was greater than we’d realized. He pursued him far sooner and more publicly than we’d planned for.”

Mary considers. “So, the rooftop plan. When did that happen?”

“The details were planned mere hours beforehand, though elements were taken from various contingency plans we’d considered in the past.”

“Did you really have thirteen precisely calculated possibilities laid out?”

He smiles. “No. That was merely good PR for both Sherlock and the British government, I’m afraid.”

“But you did take out Moriarty’s snipers?”

“Yes, though we weren’t sure we had them all, at the time.”

“And your own snipers were ready to take Moriarty out on the roof, if he hadn’t done it himself, I suppose.”

“Oh, no. You misunderstand. The plan was never to take him out. We planned to recapture him on the rooftop, and to ask him again -- less gently than before -- about his global associates, and to pass that information to Sherlock to aid in his mission.”

“Oops. That didn’t go as planned.”

“Indeed. Our mole was supposed to prevent him from taking weapons onto the rooftop, so that he would not be able to harm Sherlock. Unfortunately, Moriarty became suspicious of our mole around that time and eliminated him. But the presence of Moriarty’s gun -- and his application of it -- came as a surprise to us all.”

“No wonder the mission took longer than Sherlock expected.”

“Quite. He was flying rather blind, unfortunately.”

“Did you send other agents with him?”

“I tried. But Sherlock has always worked alone -- with a single exception -- and he refused. He said my men would only get in his way.” Mycroft sighs. “He might not have been wrong. But I did worry about him.”

Mary digests all this for a while. Finally, she asks, “Why tell Anderson parts of this?”

“I think Sherlock was rather touched by Anderson’s loyalty, and his determination to uncover the truth, despite his inferior capabilities. My brother is a bit of a romantic, no matter his professed devotion to cold reason; I believe he felt he owed him an explanation.”

“Not a true explanation, though.”

Mycroft smiles. “No.”

“What about John? Didn’t he feel he owed John the truth?”

“No. He felt he owed John cleverness. John has always shown he’s valued cleverness.”

“In this case, I think John would prefer the truth.”

Mycroft sighs, and for a long moment, she thinks he isn’t going to answer. “My brother deals with his own insecurities by constantly pushing away those who care about him -- especially Doctor Watson. He pushes them to believe the worst in him, and then watches to see if they still come back.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No-one has ever accused them of having a healthy relationship.”

Mary sighs as well. “John will always come back, though.” She’s seen it already, the return of John’s unquestioning loyalty and devotion.

Mycroft smiles tightly. “I suppose we’ll see, now that he has you.”

* * *

On Saturday morning, Sherlock shows up as they’re eating breakfast and borrows John for a case. John is gone all day. That night, he doesn’t show up for dinner, and when she calls him, it goes straight to voicemail.

She takes advantage of all the free time to scan the recent video feeds from outside Magnussen’s office and residence and catch up on other work. As she works, she thinks about John. Is he all right? Mycroft monitors his brother -- surely he would have noticed if John was seriously hurt? Surely he would have told her? She's not as sure as she would like of the latter.

She texts Janine, hoping for distraction. Drinks?

Sorry - date night with Albert. Rain check?

Sure. Have fun!

She sighs and tries to focus on her work. What if John’s not hurt, though? What if he’s too distracted to call home because he and Sherlock are -- jealousy grips her gut; she can imagine far too many possibilities. What if they’re doing -- something -- and John decides never to come home? She forces herself to draw and release a series of deep breaths. Really, the idea that they are having sex right now seems far less likely than that Sherlock has led John into danger yet again. What if he’s hurt?

She shakes her head at the interminable cycle of worry. This caring about people is intolerable.

She’s fallen asleep waiting for John when he sneaks in. He looks guilty as she stirs from her armchair. “Sorry, love.”

She blinks, disoriented. “What time is it?”

He sighs. “About half four.”

“Did you solve the case?”

He brightens. “Yeah, Sherlock was brilliant, and there was an elephant, and --” He checks himself. “Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, if you like. I’m so sorry I didn’t call.”

She shrugs, then feels the stiffness in her neck and shoulders and winces. “I’ll survive. But I think the armchair beat me up in my sleep. You owe me a backrub.“

John walks behind her and starts rubbing her shoulders, and she closes her eyes and relaxes into him. “I should have called.” He says.

“Yeah, you should.”

“Were you worried about me?”

“Yes,” she admits.

“Sorry. Sorry.” He hesitates, working on a knot in her shoulder. “I should remember that I’m going to be a married man and not go haring off for long periods of time. I’ll draw better boundaries.”

“Don’t,” she says.

“What?”

“I don’t think there should be boundaries, actually. You should spend as much with with him as you need. As much as you want. Just -- just call and check in periodically.”

“I -- all right,” he says cautiously.

“And John,” she continues, leaning into his touch but keeping her eyes closed, “There really aren’t any firm rules here. You should… you should think about what you want with Sherlock. You should tell him all the things you wish you’d said. And do whatever you both want to do.”

He freezes for a long moment, then resolves kneading. “Mary. You know I said those things about him because he was dead, and I was confused and hurt. I only love you, you know that --”

She cuts him off. “Don’t be a ninny. Of course you still love him.”

“But --”

“I love you for trying to reassure me, sweetie. And I know you love me. But I’m not asking you to pretend you don’t care about Sherlock. I’m glad you love him. I’m glad he’s back in your life, and that you’re solving cases together. And I would be shocked if you’re not still thinking about what else you might like to do with him. I have eyes -- I’m aware that he’s a ridiculously handsome man.”

“I.” She wishes he was better at rubbing shoulders while his thought process is stuttering to a confused halt.

“As long as you still want to be with me, I’m really not in the least bothered about what you do with him, you know,” she says conversationally. “I’m not worried about Sherlock, or what kind of relationship you might want with him. I am worried that you’re going to ball up your feelings inside again, that you’ll end up regretting missed opportunities. That’s really my only concern here.”

Of course it’s a lie. Of course she worries. John was happy with just Sherlock for years -- what if he realizes that he doesn’t actually need her, now that Sherlock is back? But she’s dead certain it won’t help matters at all to put limits on things. Making Sherlock forbidden is only likely to make him more tantalizing -- and fighting over John with Sherlock is the quickest way to lose him. Besides, she truly wants John to be happy -- to be whole again; she’s never seen him like this. Just, please, let her continue to be part of that happiness.

“Um. Are you saying.” John says. Then he stalls again.

She opens her eyes and forces herself to smile up at him. “I’m saying whatever you want is fine. You should tell him how you feel about him. And if you want to be boyfriends, if you want to bonk after a case, it will all be unbearably adorable and I will tease you mercilessly and demand video footage.” She winks. “I’m saying, don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

He swallows and blinks down at her a few times. Then he walks around to the front of the chair and holds his hand out. He pulls her up from the armchair and snogs her deeply. “Right now,” he breathes, “I’m not worrying about it either.” He kisses her again. “Right now all I can think is how much I want you.”

“Good,” she says with a smile. And she takes him to bed.