Title: Hope for Happiness
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Challenge: Teamwork
Rating: PG
Length: 673
Summary: Mary changes her mind.

“Gosh,” said Mary, staring at the resurrected detective in awe. “You don’t know anything about human nature, do you?”

The reality of Sherlock Holmes had came as a shock to the system. The reverent, heartbroken tone John had always used to describe the man had never quite matched up with the sheer obnoxiousness of the actions he related. It was obvious why, now.

Oh, she’d been as much a fool as any of them.

“Mmm, nature? No. Human?” Sherlock paused, rueful, and Mary’s heart clenched with the soul-deep familiarity of it. “No.”

She’d been shocked when she realised where John’s speech in the restaurant was heading. She liked him—loved him—but she’d assumed from the start that he was too bruised, too deep in his grief to form a new attachment. She’d thought him a perfect cover—her own heart the only one she’d been risking. And her heart had been at risk, far more than she’d realised. As had his.

Of course she’d been wrong. John adored her, just as she adored him, and she’d been too blind to notice it, too blind to notice the pattern in the people he loved, too blind to notice why it was that the two of them had always fit so well together, until it was too late.

She’d been bracing herself, in the restaurant, to set aside her own happiness and do the right thing—to start the process of letting him down gently.  To be pleased, flattered, but to play for time and find a way to slowly, carefully extricate herself without breaking his poor fragile heart yet again. Her cover identity could only last for a limited time before she would need to ditch it without warning, or die.

Marriage simply wasn’t on the cards for retired assassins. Not with someone they loved.

But….

“I’ll talk him round,” said Mary. Clearly, Sherlock was going to need all the help he could get, if he was going to be there when John needed him. And perhaps some coaching, later, once she’d earned his trust.

“You will?”

He looked confused at the unexpected solidarity, but she didn’t blame him for that. She could see why John’s previous girlfriends had always considered Sherlock a threat.

Not Mary. Sherlock was a godsend, and she had a feeling he was going to fit right in.

“Oh yeah,” she said, grinning at him. Of course she would. It would hardly be difficult. Not with John. Quite the reverse.

“Mary!” called John, wisely having put some distance between himself and his old friend.

Mary gave Sherlock one more reassuring look before hurrying over to the taxi.

She was tired of running, tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of living in fear. Tired of waiting for her past to catch up with her.

She loved John, and he loved her. Till death do them part.

John had been so broken when they’d first met, so completely without the support he’d needed to get through his terrible loss. She liked him far too much to put him through all that again. It would have been unconscionable.

But with Sherlock back from the dead….

“Can you believe his nerve?” demanded John as the cab pulled away.

As though he hadn’t told her a hundred heartbroken stories of that man’s nerve, lost forever. As though that wasn’t precisely what had always drawn him to him in the first place. As though it wasn’t the same thing that had ultimately drawn him to her.

“I like him,” she said simply, because even setting aside everything else, she really did.

“What?”

She caught his incredulous glance—as though he couldn’t imagine anyone else ever seeing Sherlock the way he always had—and she smiled back at him, bright and full of selfish hope.

Yes, John. Yes, I’ll marry you. For as long as I possibly can.

Sherlock was back from the dead and he was everything John had ever claimed he was and more… and that meant that she could have John, without destroying him.

She shrugged at his disbelief. “I like him,” she repeated, and turned to look out the window, still smiling to herself.

Perhaps they all had a chance for happiness, now.  Even Mary Watson.