John, wake up. "Please"

Marys downfall

John felt bad, because he should have been grieving for his wife, he should have been upset. Distraught. Crying. Sobbing. But yet somehow he wasn't. And it is true that it didn't hurt as much as Sherlock but it still hurt a damn lot. Maybe it was shock and therefore pain hadn't registered. Maybe it was because he wasn't alone this time.

Sherlock didn't move away from him, he stayed at the bedside at all times, he had brought Rosie to John on several occasions and had eventually managed to get Mycroft to persuade the doctors to bring the crib next to John's bed so they were in reach of each other.

John had to do physiotherapy two ice a day to strengthen himself after spending three weeks in a coma but Sherlock tried to help the best he could.

It was honestly true in some ways that doctors made the worst patients, but in others John listened to what they said and took their advice but he would occasionally complain about the fact he could be doing this at home. And by home he meant Baker Street.

Rosie had surprised him with being able to pronounce Sherlocks name, even though 'er-lock' wasn't perfect, it made Sherlocks eyes well up to the point where his excuse had been that it was so hot his eyes were sweating which just made John chuckle quietly.

There were downtimes however, when John remembered all that Mary had been to him, all that he had lost. Rosie would grow up without a mother. She'd have her father and her godparents. But that was all. But then again, wasn't that enough?

She had all the father figures that were Sherlock, John and Lestrade and then she had a female role model being Molly. But she didn't have a mother and now  she had a single parent, a grieving man, a broken soldier.

John felt like he had lost a piece of her jigsaw that was his heart, he felt like he could never have the two people he cared about most in the world.

When Sherlock left, Mary took away some of the pain and then when Sherlock returned it had been just over a year and a half and Mary had left him forever.

John however did explain what he could with Sherlock about the crash so it could be reported and dealt with who was to blame. And as it turned out there had been an argument.

And it had all been because of trust and lies, there was no real starting point because the flaws in their relationship had been caused by rash decisions and giant leaps. Mary's disappearance and then the hatred to Sherlock finding her, the fact that she had left her newborn child with John with no clue to as whether she would return.

She hadn't left on a good note, she hadn't left on a even useful note. She had just packed up and left, changed her identity and in many senses of the word, abandoned them.

So when John had resorted to Sherlock for help and companionship to take care of his daughter it was hardly a surprise but Mary took it wrongly.

"Just replace me with old gubbins when I'm gone huh?" She had said sarcastically. John had naturally tried to defend that, Sherlock wasn't a replacement, if anything Mary was, and maybe it was harsh although in some ways she had been far worse to him. But Sherlock had come first, and Sherlock had given his life willingly to the playful hands of death to make sure John's had stayed untouched.

Sherlock had played his life like a card, he'd flashed his scarlet to the enemy all to save John's winning set, to save John from losing the game. To save John Watson. But he'd lost so much in doing so. Last time, he lost two years.

But Mary had put John in danger, but she hadn't offered her own life as an equal, so many teases to John and to Sherlock, the 'I'm better than both of you put together' smile.

She had shot Sherlock, he took that bullet and still helped her.

Sherlock 1:Mary 0

When danger had come for Sherlock and all his friends, he'd sacrificed himself, he didn't mind if it went wrong.

When danger and for Mary, she had fled, she had abandoned them, she hadn't saved them. He made them feel unwanted and left John with a child that needed feeding and caring for, but Sherlock had helped out.

Sherlock 2:Mary 0 

And this argument has lead to Mary threatening to crash the car, no one thought she actually would. Joh had sat in the back, he wanted to be with Rosie whilst Mary drove. But he never would have guessed she would tease and play with their life's like they were replaceable.

But Sherlock had been there, and maybe after all that, after almost killing Sherlock and then nearly killing John and his daughter, maybe Mary wasn't someone he would miss, she had nearly taken everything he had ever loved and cared about. She'd attempted to take things that didn't belong to her, and in the end, that was Mary's downfall.

She had taken her own life, and as Sherlock had said in a comatose dream. "Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it"

But Mary played with fire, and she was burnt in the end as would be expected, she had danced with death thinking he'd never touch her, she had offered gold to the poor thinking it would stay hers, she was a risk taker, a liar and an assassin.

It was true that although labels such as mother and wife clung to her like baggage tags on a suitcase, it wasn't truly what she contained, she was wired differently and the loss of what she had wouldn't be enough to stop her.

But when John woke himself from his agony and constant counting, he was greeted by soft mahogany curls resting next to him on the bed, his left hand wrapped warmly in larger ones, his daughter in arms reach. He couldn't help but smile, because what he had lost, was less than what he had gained.

The scoreboards that he had used to test them against each other were but a mere fragment of what they had taken and contributed to his life, and finally after another week in hospital, after knowing his wife was dead, he wasn't exactly grieving but instead moving on.