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It takes her far too long to learn London’s streets again, the construction sites and the cabbies who’ll let her off a fare she can’t pay, the new homeless of her network and the buildings that are no more.
To take her mind off of John, off of the night she’d pulled him from the bonfire and the bomb under London, she explores and pays off the homeless network who’d been loyal while she was gone, follows Mary to her job and is embarrassed and duly rebuked when the woman recognizes her and tells her that no, she cannot simply show up uninvited because John is in the next room and Mary has a job to do and no time to deal with his pussyfooting around her. She’s curious, an enigma, and Sherlock pulls off her ragged coat as she leaves the office, deep in thought.
* *
The pair fall into bed, three nights later, Mary looking like she could climb out of her skin and Sherlock feeling much the same. Her body is a blur in the dim light, their hands groping and touching and smoothing, and Mary kisses Sherlock’s nipples and runs her hands down her hips as if they sloped, down muscled thighs that feel right, here and now. She whispers quietly, in her soft voice, pets Sherlock’s hair and takes her in hand and guides her inside of her body, slick with arousal, warm and soft.
“Sh, that’s it, sweetheart, yes, so good, so beautiful, Sherlock,” Mary murmurs, sucking bruises along her clavicle, and Sherlock whimpers and thrusts and then they are coming, pressed close and desperate both for something more.
Later Sherlock shudders in the bathroom, arms curled around herself where she sits on the side of the tub and tries to understand why she found it so easy to betray John’s trust so quickly, and why that betrayal felt like a betrayal to herself as well.
* *
She doesn’t tell John, but during the time when the two were not speaking, Sherlock drugged Mary once. She took a sample of amniotic fluid, a sample of her own semen, and brought them to the morgue to test their DNA.
The truth was, John was no father. In fact, Sherlock was the child’s mother as much as Mary was, from one night of confusion and broken hearts, and she had unwittingly given John and Mary a cuckoo child to raise.
* *
Mary comes to Sherlock, gummy eyed and furious, and Sherlock, still wearing Magnussen’s blood, blinks up at her in vague confusion. “You knew,” she hisses, the whisper barely enough to contain her fury. “You did this, gave me this-” She gestures at her stomach, and Sherlock begins to laugh, voice croaking in his throat.
“You took from me what I had never sought to give, Mary Watson. You took freely, without regard for my health or consent, and I will not apologize for the consequences of that. In time, I’m sure John will forgive you.”
Mary looked furious, as if she was going to slap him, but then the fight went out of her in a woosh and she seemed to collapse in on herself. “You can’t tell him. He’s only just begun to trust me again, you can’t… you can’t tell him.”
Sherlock steepled his fingers beneath his chin and gave a small, brittle smile.
“You’d be amazed what I can do.”