He held her until her sobs subsided and she lay limp and crumpled against him, utterly spent. She had not spoken one word since he'd arrived, breathless and worried, at her hospital bedside, but had only clung to him with a terrible desperation. His own silent tears had dampened her hair, his cheek resting on the top of her head, and he felt so entirely useless, unable to think of anything to say except the obvious ("I'm here") and the untrue ("it'll be okay"). Their child was gone. After only twelve weeks of existence, it was over. That would never be okay. John pushed his own grief deliberately aside and concentrated his attention on comforting Mary. She was the one who just nearly bled out, who suffered untold pain. She was the one whose belly was now empty. He would have time to grieve later, when she was stronger.

Her sobs had given way to shuddering breaths, and then she slowly dropped into a doze, still feeling the effect of the general anaesthesia; but still he held her, unable to let her go. He had been almost 400 miles away from her when he had received Sherlock's frantic text: "Come home at once. On our way to hospital." A thousand possible scenarios had flooded his imagination, but the most plausible one had been the truth. Miscarriage. He ought never to have left London. He ought to have been there with her. Instead, he had still been en route while she went into emergency surgery, still on his way when she awoke from recovery. He felt he had failed her completely.

The adrenaline that had surged through him the moment he read the first text from Sherlock had put his every system on red alert and kept him going all that long night—and now it was deserting him, leaving him wrung-out and shaking. Concerned that his trembling arms would disturb her much-needed rest, he lowered her onto the pillows and smoothed the damp hair from her swollen, tear-streaked face. A wave of tenderness swept through him. His strong, fearless Mary looked like a fragile child, her expression troubled even in her sleep. It infuriated him that she should be subjected to yet another tragedy. John bent and kissed her forehead, and she stirred a bit in her sleep.

"John?" she whispered.

"I'm here," he assured her gently, stroking her hair.

Her lips pulled up slightly into the trembling smile. "Okay," she sighed, and went back to sleep.

He watched her until he was satisfied that she would remain asleep for a while, and then he stalked from the room to the nearest family waiting area on the floor. Yes, Sherlock was still there, slumped in one of those torturous plastic chairs, focused on a point in the air midway across the room. The detective slowly turned his gaze to his friend's face.

"Is she all right?" he asked tentatively.

"She's asleep," John replied. "She's not all right. I'm not all right." He paced around the room, the rage that had been building up in him for hours now boiling to the surface. This was a safe place to vent; Sherlock was a safe person to vent upon. John had an intense need to vent.

"You're angry," Sherlock observed helpfully, getting him started.

"Damn it, yeah, I'm bloody furious," John agreed through gritted teeth.

Sherlock hesitated to continue, watching John intently. "But, not . . . not at me," he concluded, some relief in his tone.

John stopped his relentless motion to stare at his friend. "At you? Why the hell would I be angry with you? You've never been anything but kind to Mary. You're even polite to her most of the time. You probably saved her life, getting her here so quickly."

"I thought I was negligent, not having seen the symptoms earlier. I should have brought her here sooner." Sherlock shook his head repentantly. "You would have done so."

John sighed. "It wouldn't have mattered. The result would have been the same. You were there for her tonight when she needed you. That's a hell of a lot more than I managed to do. That's more than most of the people in her life have managed to do."

"You're angry with yourself," Sherlock stated. "But there's no need to be. You arrived in record time."

"Thanks to Mycroft's intervention. Never thought I'd be saying that!" John muttered bitterly. "I should never have left. Harry could just as easily have moved to Dublin without my help." He started in on his pacing again. "We've been living in a fantasy-world, these past few weeks. In the back of my mind, I knew it all along, but I didn't want to think about it. And she's been living in denial ever since she found out about the baby." John's voice broke and he had to stop speaking, but his pacing increased in intensity.

Sherlock's eyes followed him around the room for a while. "You are referring to the internal damage she apparently suffered as an adolescent," he concluded.

John stopped and turned on him. "How do you know about that?"

The detective shrugged. "I perused her medical files while we were waiting for you to arrive. She has an extensive medical record. Broken bones, internal injuries, quite a long hospital stay at age sixteen."

A chair flew across the room and crashed into the wall. John looked from his now painful foot to the bent ruin of plastic and chrome ruefully. "Sorry."

"No, you're not."

"No, I'm not." John resumed pacing frenetically, his fists clenched in fury.

"She's never spoken to you about what happened?" Sherlock prompted, as gently as he was capable of speaking.

"Never," John rasped in frustration. "All she's ever told me about her past is that her mother died when she was four, and her father sent her off to be passed around among distant relatives and dubious friends until he disappeared himself. I've only guessed at what must have happened to her during that time, based on her behaviour and medical files. It's obvious that she suffered neglect and abuse throughout her childhood, and was brutalized and raped when she was sixteen. But she's never mentioned it to me. Not even a hint. I don't. . . ." he stopped moving, stopped talking, took some deep breaths to gain control of himself. "I don't know why."

Sherlock looked puzzled. "Why did you never ask?"

John sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Don't think I haven't wanted to. But I won't try to pry it out of her. That would be needlessly cruel, just to satisfy my own need to know. If she can't talk about it, I won't try to force her to. She'll tell me what she wants me to know when she's ready." Pacing again, he kicked over another chair. "The bastard who hurt her has effectively hurt her again, and cost the life of our child. If I ever find out . . . ." A third chair paid the price of his impotent rage.

"Perhaps this is why Mary hasn't told you about it. She may not wish to be married to a convicted felon and spend her life visiting you in prison," Sherlock remarked dryly, and John laughed mirthlessly.

He sank into the chair next to his friend and buried his face in his hands. "I never even looked at her medical records before she got pregnant. But the obstetrician pointed it out to me, said it was such a miracle that she was able to conceive at all. I knew, in the back of my mind, that he was trying to warn me that she wasn't likely to be able to carry to term. I didn't want to know that. We wanted to believe it could happen, that we could have this . . . ." He trailed off and went silent. Sherlock sat awkwardly and tapped his steepled fingers to his lips thoughtfully. To his credit, he remained silent, too.

Pulling a long breath, John sat up in his chair and stared into space. "I swore when I married her I'd do everything in my power to protect her from being hurt. I've failed her so many times," he grieved.

"That was an unrealistic promise," Sherlock informed him. "You set yourself up for failure. No one can avoid all harm in this dangerous world, no matter how vigilant."

John sighed. "She's had far more than her fair share of harm," he said bitterly. "Why can't I spare her more?"

"Did she ask you to?" Sherlock prompted wisely.

John laughed grimly. "No, of course not. She didn't need to. I'd give my life to keep her safe. I'd do anything to spare her more grief."

"Perhaps protection is not what she wants from you," the detective suggested. John stared at him, at a loss. "Perhaps she has everything she needs from you already," Sherlock continued.

"And what might that be?" John wondered softly, calmer.

"You," Sherlock said.