Stripped
part fiveThe warm mug of tea at hand hardly made up for the painful lump on his brow as Sherlock sat at the kitchen table among nipple-less baby bottles and dummies with a towel-wrapped bag of frozen peas pressed to his face. His host opened several cabinet doors in search of something--likely biscuits--with her hands shaking slightly still from adrenalin. Mary looked far more anxious than guilty, the turn of her lips and crease of her brows making her appear more and more like that of the most put upon women in the world. Sherlock rolled his eyes, stirring his tea as the milky swirls upset the sugar below. "I'd say it's fine but you haven't actually apologized."
"And why on earth would I do that?" Mary shut another cabinet door, scowling with full force this time as she popped the top off the tin and grabbed a handful of mixed shortbreads for a plate. "You break into my home, you get hit with a bat. Occupational hazard of the burglar."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I'm not a burglar."
"Well, you obviously fooled me. Just what are you doing breaking into my house?"
"I need something for the case. The old notes John and I kept on my work."
"So instead of asking me you just thought you'd break in and find them yourself?" she asked. She readjusted the peas on Sherlock's face, his own means of holding them apparently not to her high standards of swelling treatment.
She was worse than a wasp on a picnic. "I know John. Finding them would not have been difficult."
"Well, John isn't the only one who lives here. No offense, but I don't want anyone just going through our things. You sit there, keep that on your head, I'll get the notebooks," she instructed, not to be ignored nor argued with. He could hear her mutter to herself as she walked past him and up the stairs, some of the more audible phrases including 'the nerve of some people' with a few less disagreeable ones following a sigh of 'of course he'd come by when the place is a mess!'.
Obviously she didn't remember Baker Street very well. Then again, John had always done his best to make the place look nice when his lady friends came calling. The jumble of science equipment had simply been replaced by Fisher Price stacking blocks and multicolored doughnuts. John probably felt right at home in the middle of the organized chaos. As well he should. It was his home.
There was a lot more to pretend he didn't see with the lights now on on the ground floor. The newspaper by the chair in the sitting room had a stuffed doll resting on top, the one put down to hold the other and similarly deposited once it too was without use. He could practically see John sitting there, making ridiculous faces and even worse noises, playing make-believe with a child whose mind was not mature enough to even comprehend reality yet. Goos and Gaas and games of 'Where's Daddy?' played on rainbow throws laid over the carpet surrounded by the stuffed animal parade. Even without her or them present, it was easy to see what was at the center of their island universe. Even had he the joy of ignorance to the ills that came before her, it was obvious how happy they both were to have her now. One giant shaker of salt. Sherlock readjusted the peas again, feeling the cold burning through the tea towel as he stared down at his mug instead.
Mary was quick in her return. She came down the stairs with a few laundry stumbles with as many volumes as Sherlock had expected, resting them on the table beside him as she returned to grab her own tea and sit. "That's all he has here. Might be more in his laptop bag but I went ahead and left all that with him at the hospital. If what you need isn't here, you'll just have to go visit him."
Sherlock nodded, giving them a quick flip through, quite keen to get on with his reading. "Still asleep?" he asked absently, placing the stack in chronological order.
"No, he woke up a few hours ago. Greg's with him for some questioning and said he'd stick around if I needed to go home. Before you get too excited though, John really doesn't remember much. Said the last thing he clearly remembers is waiting for you in the cafe."
"Not surprising." Sherlock was having a bit of a time with his own short-term memory after the knock he'd received. "Still, I think I've got enough to go on without his aid."
"Fingers crossed." Mary said and smiled into her mug as she sipped from her brew in the seat diagonal from him. He could practically feel her smugness, uncomfortably aware of how close in quarters they were as they sat together, alone for the first time in.... ever.
"You're happy. Why are you happy?"
She shrugged, blonde hair scrunching at the shoulders. "Because here we are at last," she said, as though it had been an inevitability a long time in coming.
Sherlock scrunched his face, feeling the skin pull over his bump. "Are we due for some sort of final confrontation I wasn't aware of? I was actually quite alright with the never speaking to or seeing each other again. Might I suggest we do that instead?"
"No." She sipped her tea, reaching across to help herself to one of the biscuits she'd set for him. "I'm not your arch nemesis, Sherlock."
"No, of course not. My arch nemesis made me choose between my life and John's. You're completely different. Mind you, I used a much nicer tea service when he and I sat for a quick chat."
Mary wasn't in the least bit put off by his demeanor, plowing forward like a mindless farm animal too set in its ways to mind the cliff. "It's always been John for you, hasn't it?" she said more-so than asked.
"What, my Achilles Heel? With annoying regularity." Sherlock let the frozen vegetables rest on the table rather than his face, using flippancy to his advantage as he plotted his escape. "I should have had him microchipped for all the times he went missing. Terrible trait to have in an assistant."
"You know what I meant, Sherlock."
"And that is not a line of inquiry you want to follow, Mrs. Watson."
"You think I don't already know?" Mary wrinkled both brows, lacking the facial dexterity to raise just one in sarcastic query. She put her mug of tea down, elbows up on the table in an appalling display of table manners. "It doesn't matter to my marriage. You're not a threat to me. Maybe in the start, back when John and I were dating, maybe back then you were but you're not now. This doesn't end in 'stay away from my husband'. Quite the opposite, really. I just want to know why you're not here. House warming, Christmas, birthdays... Do you hate me so much you can't even be there for John?"
Sherlock leant back in his seat, a grim smile on his face as he laced his fingers under his chin. All the times he dreamed of telling her off, all the words he'd plotted in his head to say in just such an opportunity and now he had the unique problem of not knowing where to begin without the annoying remnants of a conscious telling him not to. She had asked. If ever John felt the need to chastise him for spewing venom, she had been the one to insist he speak. It was like a Kevlar vest, protective, bulletproof. She asked and who was he to deny her after the lovely red bump she'd given him?
But, oh, where to begin?
"I never expected you," he said at length, looking down through his lashes at her hands around her mug of tea--firm; nervous, anxious. "You were much more clever than the rest, avoiding the greatest pitfalls. You never gave him the ultimatum: you or Sherlock Holmes. The others did and of course I always won. You can't tempt a toddler away from cake with naught but a jelly bean. They might have put out but never more in the realm of adrenalin and endorphins than I did. I was always the better choice without ever having to man a defense. And then you came along. Orphan, independent, I should have recognized the threat. You told John in no uncertain terms that you had a life and if he wanted to be a part of it, then it was up to him to make time. You didn't chase him, you just set the bait and let him come to you. You knew every means of ensnaring his kind. Where the others played the damsel, you played the whore."
"Excuse me?"
"Archetypically speaking." Sherlock shrugged, not the least concerned about the possible slight. "Either way, you played for John the exact same way I did with repeatable results. You made him respect you. Love came later. And then, well, what was I to do? Tell John it was you or me? I'd seen the error of that ploy far too many times to try it myself. No, I just... waited. Watched. I lost John the moment he met you, it just took a year to realize it. Call me old fashioned but I don't really think I'm obligated to like the person who swoops in and takes what's rightfully mine."
Mary scowled, nearly speaking over him at the last. "John's not propert--"
"John wouldn't be the person he is today if it wasn't for me. And I suppose I'm obligated to say the same for myself. I don't need to be here to know he's happy. If he wasn't happy, he wouldn't be here; he'd be with me. I know everything I need to know about the state of your marriage in the vacancy of my guest room. Being here, pictures on the walls, laundry mingled in a pile, is simply rubbing it in my face."
Mary was quiet for only a moment, staring at him with intensity in her cold, blue eyes as she shook her head from side to side, losing his stare in the toss. "I have a hard time believing you could be that cold to your best friend. When you say it like that, it's like you don't care about his happiness at all. You're just looking forward to a sadness that will make things more like you had them before."
"Oh, good, I've made myself clear then."
"I don't believe you."
"Then you're not as clever as I gave you credit for." Sherlock picked up the notebooks and knocked them even on the table, pushing back in his chair to rise with his piece said and nothing more needed.
"Love isn't that selfish," Mary demanded, her hand grabbing the rooftops of the books as he tried to pull away. "If you didn't value his happiness, you would have made a scene at the wedding. If you didn't want him to be happy, he wouldn't be. You have that power. You can't make him leave me but you can take away his joy. I don't think you're angry with me at all, Sherlock. I think you're mad at yourself. Because you know, deep down, you probably could have stopped this. But you didn't. And you still don't. Because John matters more than anything else. You are happy for him. I doubt there is anything you want more than for John to be happy. You just can't accept your part."
Sherlock could not help the flinch, an involuntary movement that stole away yet another piece of what he had left. He glared at her though his face felt calm, nothing but weariness in his flesh with a still burning fire in his soul. "Does this make you feel good?" he asked, his voice rough and low. "Does it make you feel powerful?"
"No. Not in the least. Heaven help you, Sherlock Holmes, but you make him happy. You can aggrieve him like no other but you truly make him fundamentally happy. That's why I need to ask you a favor."
Sherlock hadn't expected those words, his chin cocking with curiosity as Mary took a long but shallow breath. "Be there for him. Not just when it suits you. I need you to be there when he needs you."
"Why?"
"Because you love him."
Sherlock chuckled darkly. "Which is precisely the reason I won't be. He has you, remember."
"I have cancer." Her lips pursed, teeth holding them closed, her eyes all but watering as her expression pinched around fear and worry. "It happens," she said, shrugging it off nonchalant though even the pitch of her shoulders betrayed her.
What was there to say? "John knows?"
"No, not yet. I didn't want to worry him, so he doesn't... not even about the test. But the results came back... God, the day before? I was trying to figure out how to tell him and then..." Her lips pulled into a thin smile, a half laugh, a shrug of her shoulders to round out the sentiment. "Things... never go right for me. John was the first right thing I ever wanted. That I ever got. Don't think for one second that I don't know how lucky I am. I wake up some mornings and I can't believe he's there. That he chose me and this when he had you and the world. I've never been happier. And I've never been more scared. And what happens to me happens and then that's it. But I can't... John needs people. He doesn't do well on his own. Even if he won't talk, even if he keeps it inside, if you're there... John needs you. And our family needs John."
"No."
"Not even then?" she asked, voice cracking as her strong chin trembled.
Sherlock shook his head. "No, I mean... money isn't an option. Best treatment, best hospitals, best everything. You're supposed to leave him so he can hate you, you're not supposed to die. I can't win if you die. So.. no."
A short squeak of a laugh broke through the tension, Mary's eyes finding the table long before they dared to look back up into his. "See?" she said, her smile tight but true. "You do care. It does matter to you--his happiness."
"He'd do little else for me."
"Thank you." She smiled, sniffing back tears that never fell as she stood, taking up the mugs of tea and walking them to the sink. "Well, for God's sake, don't get yourself killed out there looking for this creep. You going to need a place to hide for the night?"
Sherlock shook his head again, finding himself trapped in an awkward moment of not knowing what to say, where to look, what to do. "No, I just came for these notes," he said at last, waving them slightly for the benefit of no one. "I need to be catching the last train back to London, get in touch with my street operatives and see what they might have found."
"And you'll be safe doing all this?" she asked.
"Safe as I ever am."
"Not exactly comforting to know." Mary forced one last smile before turning towards him, leaning against the counter with both palms behind her. "If you do see John, not a word, okay? I'll tell him. He just has enough on his mind right now."
He wasn't the only one. Still, Sherlock nodded, pushing his chair in for a lack of anything more obvious to do with his hands. "No, nothing," he promised, leaning to step towards the back door then thinking better of it and heading towards the front instead.
Mary stopped him as he went, pulling on his arm to make him stand still as she stood on her tip-toes to kiss the shallow of his cheek. "Thank you, Sherlock," she whispered, letting him go but still seeing him to the door like a welcomed guest rather than an intruder.
He took the straight road back to the train station, not caring all that much at the moment about his brother's possible surveillance. His mind was far too full of distractions as it was. A free ride into town in the quiet of a luxury automobile might have helped drain away the excess thoughts that threatened to derail his business mind. He had work to do, so much work waiting with a criminal still out there, on the loose, still breathing when Sherlock had promised to make him stop. But all he could see were dolls on newspapers and bras mixed with jumpers and a tin of biscuits far too large for just one man to finish off.
He took his seat and read his notes. The rest would still be there after.