Brain functions were… malfunctioning. No other term could apply, would apply.

Hearing his name had never felt this much like an insult-no like a trap-no, an accusation-no, a relief, no a revelation! Words failed him. Brain failed him. John stared at him.

The worst part of this all was how blatantly obvious it had been the whole time. How, when he'd stood at the doorway spying on John and his daughter - oh my God my daughter - every signal had been firing in his brain telling him to question everything. What had happened to that mantra? What had fallen out in the process of making room for new information, of deleting superfluous case files of men who had conceived, conceived like a woman!, and therefore couldn't possibly understand the most basic of human functions- the need to be close to your own flesh and blood?

What?

Flesh and blood? The consequences of flesh, and blood pumping through his veins, something else pumping into John, like laudenum arresting the quality of his posture. It was there, huddled to the ground at her father's feet, shaking with tremors. Hands tied, roped behind her back like the folded wings of a moth.

And John, as fish-mouthed as Sherlock, slowly starting to shake his head in disbelief. If anything, John should have guessed what this was all about and not said anything at all. John should have trusted that Sherlock would have saved him, no matter what. Even if…

"Enjoy your party."

It had been an electrified current between them, stopped dead by the switch flicking on, by the light behind him turning on and finding so many angry things left flickering on the floor under their feet. Their push and pull, the words said and unsaid… The only words he had needed to hear, all this time, were "Sherlock, Dolores is your daughter" and then they wouldn't be standing there, feet planted only a yard a part but seperated by glass and lies. Moriarty wouldn't have been able to etch this innocuous, yet ominous phrase so carefully devised as a test. He wouldn't be standing contemplating these words, these truths he couldn't deny, stock still, frozen even- terrified of moving and breaking the concentration of a brain gone haywire.

And yet it was her that did it. She was the one who got up and forced him to look away from John's quivering eyelids.

"Dad?" she said, and they both turned their head to look at her.

She could sense Sherlock looking at her. Her senses were keen, they were Holmesian, after all. She turned, and her tear stained face lit like a fuse.

"Uncle Sherl-" she breathed, tongue stopping and little mouth unsure. Then, like the chemicals reacting in his birthday night sky, she shouted:

"Daddy!"

His locked knees buckled and he fell against the glass, palms touching, fingers caressing it as though the ringlets which lay beyond were his. They were his! How she smiled though she cried, how he smiled through the barrier! The edge of the letter "D" in the message seemed like only a flaw in the glass, and temporarily he forgot which other emotions he should be feeling other than outright devotion.

But then she coughed.

She coughed a little, then a lot. And from above her John joined her, in a chorus of gagging and frightened whimpers. He fell hard to his knees, and the impact made him cry out. Dolores ran back to him, whispering "Dad" between their choking.

No! No, no - Sherlock slammed his fist against the thick glass, brain turned back on and pulsing with absolute rage and information. His head flipped back and forth, his gaze alighting upon cracks and corners in front of him. The gas was coming in from another side of the locked room. There was no door to it on this side, only the one he'd come from, one conveniently left open by Moriarty. The ceiling and floor inside the room was painted black- Sherlock knew that this color could hide flaws in its surface, little latches that could be opened and reveal another setting, where John and HIS DAUGHTER had been placed against their will.

Sherlock left that room, running at a velocity inhuman to those without children, scanning literally every corner in the hallway outside. They were on the ground floor of an abandoned office building, and his first thought was to ascend the stairs at the end of the hall and find the ceiling entrance, but when he opened the door to the stairwell it had been filled with cement. Of course the elevator was sealed shut, too. He ran to the room adjacent to the one he'd found before.

On the wall the mirror room shared with it, giant letters:

THIS.

The next room:

ISN'T.

The one after that. He didn't need to look to know that it was empty and what it said. But still, spared himself the regret of not looking:

OVER.

A shaking hand flew to his face. He re-entered the room with a view, and found his family oh god this was his family dying on the floor of a locked room.

The ultimate puzzle, isn't it Sherlock?

This was what the situation said to him. This was Moriarty's voice, now actually silent on the intercom but loud and clear in his head. Good luck figuring out how to save them, while you're still processing how you feel about them!

Grey eyes dashed back and forth. Frantic. Oh no, his brain hadn't really been functioning properly after all. He couldn't find the solution. His heart was pounding, THINK Holmes… But he couldn't think. He couldn't process, he couldn't observe.

He could only feel.

And as if on cue, the tawny voice that caused him endless pain and pleasure cried out:

"Sherlock!"

He felt his body vibrate against the glass. He pounded his fists in rhythm with his heart. Kicking and scraping and trying to use the etching to his advantage. He alternated sides, punched the glass, his knuckles aching and the skin bleeding. Why hadn't he brought a gun? Why hadn't he stopped to think before he ran after John, on the path Moriarty had near but guaranteed he'd follow! He'd been running after him this whole time, years after meeting him and stopping to smell his gunsmoke palms as they raked against his cheek, and then decided "no, this isn't for me." You can't decide a thing like that, it's not something you choose-

Move!

A firecracker.

And the glass shattered.

John awoke to the sound of an IV drip. The familiar little tune, drip drop drip drop, had induced enough headaches in his life to last a lifetime. How many times had he been through this, lying back and helpless while other doctors imagined they knew what was best for him?

He sounded like Sherlock… Sherlock!

And he sat up, the heart rate on the monitor escalating. Thankfully, there was no one there to pat him down, tell him "shh" "it's alright" "relax" when none of that was true. His daughter, Amy… where was she?!

Yes, the room was empty except for him. His wrists were sore and his back ached. He carefully removed the needle from his arm and squeezed it together to stop any bleeding, and swung his legs over the bed. He wore a usually ugly hospital gown, his dirtied and torn tuxedo lying in a chair across the room. He had half expected Sherlock to be curled up in it. He could picture it: legs folded to his chest, hands wrapping around his thin ankles, and his mop of dark hair peeking out from above his knees. He wouldn't be sleeping, only thinking. Possibly too caught up in his thoughts to notice John was awake.

John couldn't really remember all the details after he'd said the man's name in the mirror room. He knew Sherlock had seen, heard the truth from beyond the glass, but the gas that had collapsed him also took away his memories. God his bloody memories! They were so unreliable, so relentlessly gapped and rewritten! What was the truth, really? Had he dreamed this all up? Was it a nightmare, or a dream? Did he have a daughter, that he'd given birth too and that Sherlock should have bloody well known was his all along?

He hung his head in his hands, steadying his breathing with army techniques and this temporary amnesia he attributed to that toxic gas.

But even the drip drop drip drop of the now defunct IV, nor the hustle and bustle outside his room as doctors and nurses stitched lives back together, could mask the twinkling sound of a child's laughter.

His child's laughter.

Flinging the flimsy coverlet off his legs entirely, he raced to the door, only stopping himself long enough to sheepishly grab the robe hanging from the back of the door to cover his behind. He followed that laughter out into the hall, where he walked calmly and briskly as though he was allowed to be up and about.

Two rooms down from his lay the cause of his beating heart… and his daughter, too.

He sat next to her, not folded up in the corner chair like he'd imagined, but pulled right up to the edge of the bed, where his fingers drummed excitedly at the base of his keyboard. His deep voice rattled off words John himself had written, and from which he read off the laptop screen.

"'I suspect if he came back and found me and our landlady lying here with our throats cut, he'd just see it as an intellectual exercise. 'Fantastic' he'd exclaim, rubbing his hands together. 'But the door was locked so how did they kill each other?'' Good god, your father is even slower than I remember."

And the voice was uncannily John's, right down to the way he imitated himself- the way the doctor might do if they were in the midst of an argument.

"What's the first thing you would think to look for, Dolores?"

His girl was sitting on her knees, bouncing up and down a little as Sherlock read a story certainly not meant for children. "Signs that the lock had been tampered with!"

Sherlock reached out and patted Amelia's soft curls, unburdened by a hair bow and flowing over her eyes, just like her father.

"Excellent, my girl."

Their girl, John corrected the both of them.

He heard a little hitch of breath and a voice cry out, "Dad!"

She leapt from the bed like a spring loaded pistol, shooting into his arms as he showered her with a million and one kisses. "Darling, Amy, oh God… I'm so sorry. For everything. I'm sorry. Were you frightened?"

The girl shook her head against his knees. "Only for a little while. When I saw Daddy in the other room I wasn't scared anymore. I knew he'd save us!"

John looked up, breath caught at the very natural way she said "Daddy," as though she'd been calling him that all her life. And Sherlock seemed a little taken aback by it too, standing and pausing at the end of the bed. Though slowly, there was a smile as he stared protectively on.

"Have you been a good girl while I was-"

"Out cold? Drooling onto your pillow? Snoring so loudly your startled neighbor went into cardiac arrest? Twice?"

Amy sputtered into laughter and sank down, holding her little tummy and looking up with bright eyes at her bereaved father.

"That's not funny, either of you. That was some bloody poisonous gas!"

Sherlock moved forward in his own laughter and pulled Dolores-wait did he just call her that?- by her arms, like a little monkey. He deposited her, bouncing, back onto her bed and pushed her playfully. John was laughing too, despite the insults.

"Stay put, daughter. Adults must discuss."

Yes, more words like that Sherlock. Daughter. My girl. Anything to distract from the word discuss.

"Are you guys gonna fight again?" she said suddenly, laughter dissipating.

Sherlock stopped just short of fingers wrapping completely around John's forearm. Gently, lovingly. He turned to look at their child with a genuine, beaming face.

"No. I don't think we will."

They left her snug with her ladybug plush and walked in silence back to John's room. It wasn't three seconds after John closed the door behind them that Sherlock had pulled him round and pinned him to the wall and abruptly kissed him.

John's heart fluttered, then pounded, then nearly stopped at the quality of this kiss. It was urgent, needy, and oh god yes finally. It was a kiss that said "thank god you're alive."

It felt like there would be a lot of those kisses, in the days and months and years to come.

He pulled back just as quickly as he'd smashed into him, and they both breathed heavily against each other's smiling faces. Only, Sherlock's dropped as he shifted closer, his posture changing from protective to accusational.

"Listen to me, Dr. John Watson. I've deduced all probable reasons why you have kept this secret from me, and I'm going to tell you right now I don't give a lick about any one of them. Now you and that girl are going to stay with me in our flat so I can train my daughter the proper way to hold a violin and the improper way to test the molds growing underneath Mrs. Hudson's bathroom sink and you're going to marry me so I can keep an eye on you and because that's what I was bloody well going to ask you before you got kidnapped. Stupidly. So now you have no choice."

John was laughing. Happily, this made Sherlock's face twist into a scowl.

"What now?"

"N-nothing. I just remembered that night I came home and there was catsup all over the walls."

"... That isn't relevant, but if you must know, Dolores and I were hypothesizing the best way to utilize household items as blinding weapons should an intruder enter the flat without our being-"

"I just still can't believe you never figured it out."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Of course we did. We discovered that we'd rather have the intruder shot in the leg by a baby than inconvenienced by a little condiment on his trousers. She was too small at a time to find a good aim for his eyes."

"Right, because that's what I meant."

"Though of course the trigger mechanism would have been too complex for her at the time, so I resolved to teach her again in a few years, though now I think would be the best time considering all that's happened-"

So John kissed him again to shut him up. When his lips departed, Sherlock simply continued. Unfazed and uninterested.

"And another thing- Dolores is moving into your room because you are moving into mine. I can't have her stranded down below when just anyone could grab her. And that's also space being put to waste as a silly little bedroom when she could have her own laboratory. I love her but I can't have her continuing to use the kitchen for her experiments while mine are in progress, it disrupts the entire ecosystem! And-"

"I love you, Sherlock."

John kissed him lightly, and he finally - finally - paused to take a breathe.

"Against my better judgement, and several years of contemplating the dangers of the emotion, I admit that I love you, too. John Watson."

They leaned their heads together, John threading his hands through Sherlock's hair, the other doing the same.

"Though don't make me say it too often. I'll develop a reputation for being soft."

"Okay, Mr. Seventh Time's the Charm."

AN: *insert I bet you weren't expecting THIS yzma gif*

Hahaha. Well. Here we are. I'm alive. This story is finished. Six years later and I finally decide, "you know what? I may not be in the fandom anymore but I can damn sure still write Johnlock like a mofo". Six years and a terrible Fourth Season later, and you have closure. I have closure.

Don't be angry with me, please. We all lost the love for this after a while (though six years is, admittedly, a long time). I wasn't confident enough then, but you know what? I started this fic in high school, and I graduated college in December. I realized how much I have grown, as a person and as a writer, that I returned to this fic to allow myself to forgive. Myself I mean. For not finishing it.

Okay this AN is more of a mess than I wanted it to be. Well, I'm glad you guys who waited with baited breath can finally let it out. Thanks for sticking by me and always hoping I would continue. You guys deserved it.

I want to dedicate this epilogue to one of my best friends in the whole world, intothemist99, who though no longer on , messaged me when I advertised the rp forum Rewritten City during the course of the fic, took up Greg Lestrade and changed my life. The characters you see in my current profile pic are ours- Sebastian and Andrew. I have watched this beautiful girl grow from the angsty, BRILLIANT teen writer I met because of this fic into the kindest, most adventurous, and most beloved woman, one of my most cherished people, who this past November I went to her hometown to see marry the love of her life. Without this fic, I wouldn't have met you, Gabby. This stupid, crazy m-preg fic for a fandom we're not even a part of anymore, and I had to finish it for that reason, among others. Thank you for being my friend.

That's it everyone. Unfortunately, I am no longer in the Sherlock fandom, so my other fics (including the popular Come Home, I know) will never be finished. I do encourage you, however, to follow me on my new account, "therosenpants", if you love my writing and want to read more, no matter the fandom (or if you also are a Phantom of the Opera fan, which is what I'll be writing!).

Thanks for this ride, and see you on the other side!

(btw: in case you were wondering, this was ALWAYS going to be the last chapter of this fic, even when I had muse for it, so don't worry about missing anything. There was going to be a sequel about Dolores, and if anyone wants to contact me about writing it, I can give you all the details so this little family lives on!)