Work Text:
She had been foolish, she knew that now. Gotten comfortable. She had calculated the risks. Had thought that it would all be okay. But the past has a way of catching up with you.
The smartest man she had ever met thought he could protect her. Rosamund Mary. Mary Morstan. Mary Watson. She was beyond saving.
When you learn of the frailty of the lives around you, nothing feels real anymore. A gun is so impersonal . It had been easy to pull the trigger for a voice on the phone. Disconnect. Move on. She had lived that way for so long. Every gunshot dug her deeper, made it impossible to leave any of it behind. People know too much. People own you. Mary stopped engaging the safety on her gun. Death was only painful for the ones left behind, and Mary had no one.
And then, Tbilisi.
Suddenly, no one could own her because she no longer existed. And the freedom within that left her restless.
Mary knew of John Watson. Of course she did. But despite what Mycroft accused her of, as she was taken by a nondescript government car to an empty warehouse in the dead of night, she didn’t seek him out on purpose.
“The people that I was associated with,” Mary had hissed to him, “would have only been interested in him because of his connection to Sherlock.”
“And you went rogue over two years before they met, yes, Rosamund, I know, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have other allegiances.”
“Mycroft, I would never hurt him, I am carrying his child , I love him.”
Mycroft tapped his umbrella against the concrete. “Yes, there does seem to be a lot of that going around.”
“Pardon?”
“Loving Dr. Watson. Oh, don’t look surprised, you’re far too clever for that. Rosamund, I’m afraid my brother has made a vow he will be unable to keep.”
Mary suddenly had something very heavy on her chest. “I know.”
She didn’t sleep at all that night. She rested her hand on her stomach and felt a kick as John murmured something in his sleep.
She hadn’t lied to Mycroft. She did love him. Mary hadn’t had much experience with romance. There was a girl once, in her home country, and a boy whom she met on a mission, but both of them were fleeting. Who would love her, once they knew what she was?
But John. John was different.
They were both grieving when they met. Sometimes Mary still heard amo ringing in her ears. I love. All love led to suffering. But John changed her mind.
He really shouldn’t have , Mary sometimes thought, during the quiet spaces in the night. Amo, amo, amo.
John did love her, she knew. She looked in his eyes; no one could lie like that. He loved her, and yet it was never for the right reasons, was it?
Molly Hooper came over for drinks one evening, all bubbly and excited. What’s the name going to be? Do you know the gender? Do you plan to have any more?
Mary wished more than anything in the world that she could share that excitement, but all she felt was dread. She was a ticking bomb, had walked right into John Watson’s life and thought she could outrun the race of time. She’d seen enough bullets enter human flesh. Seen nearly as many meant especially for her. And it was merely her body protecting this baby from the outside world, from the bullets drawn to her like she was a magnet.
She had nothing to give this baby. She wasn’t even a mother yet and her mere presence was risking her child and husband’s life.
“I think we should name her Rosamund.” She rolled over in bed to face John.
“Rosamund.” He rolled the name over his tongue. The first time Mary had ever heard it from his lips. “I like it. But you know Sherlock is set on - ”
“It’s not a girl’s name,” Mary rolled her eyes in fond exasperation.
“Well he says that anything can be a girl’s names and that names are just meaningless sounds put together. I reckon he’s right.”
“Very much so.” Mary leaned over and brushed a kiss against John’s cheek. “Besides, the name doesn’t matter. This child,” she rested a hand on her stomach, “will grow up to be who they want to be and that’s something they will have to figure out for themselves.”
“Mary,” John laced his fingers through hers, “you’re going to be a great mother.”
The dread coiling in the pit of her stomach grew.
Eventually, it all led to the same place. There was no outrunning fate. Death waited for her in Samarra.
There’s only a split second, barely even a moment from when a bullet exits the barrel of a gun and meets its target. Most people wouldn’t have time to think in that moment, either frozen to the spot with fear or their reflexes too slow.
Mary didn’t like thinking about the amount of people she had killed. There was a number out there, somewhere. A.G.R.A kept their records orderly, but there was a time before them and a time after them and the official tally didn’t even come close.
So many lives. So many lives spinning on top of her fingertips, slipping through the cracks. She never stuck around to watch the aftermath. The grieving, the funerals. She was human, at least most days, and that was a pain she couldn’t bear to see. But now she would have no choice.
So was it selfish, then? To not have to see the pain in the eyes of the man she loved most in the world? After all, death is only punishment for the living.
Was she protecting them? John and Rosie, from the burden of loving a dead woman walking? The targets on their backs would go to the grave with her.
She’d put a bullet in Sherlock’s chest once and had regretted it more than anything in the world. And not just because she couldn’t bear to see her husband suffer, but because she loved Sherlock, too. Not in the same way as they both loved John, but that didn’t make the bond any less strong.
And maybe that’s what gave peace to her mind, as she lay bleeding out on the floor of an aquarium, John’s fingers pressed tightly against her wound, Sherlock’s eyes looking so wounded , beyond anything she had ever seen before. It was true, what she told John, in her last moments. Being Mary Watson was the only life worth living and she had lived it, no matter how fleeting, and it was okay to go because John. Well. John had Sherlock, didn’t he? And if it took going to hell and back to make him see that, so be it.
It is what it is.
The blue light from the tanks flooded her vision. There is no escape. Not in Baghdad, not in Samarra, not here, nor anywhere.