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Chapter Text

London

6^th January 2016

“I’m Sherlock Holmes, I wear the damn hat.”

The January air was a welcome slap in the face. Sherlock and John Watson fell into step and a silence that was companionable if on the heavy side. Grief, it transpired – for Sherlock had to acknowledge that he was minimally experienced in that field – did not divide when shared, but rather it increased in strength when simultaneously experienced through the eyes of someone about whom you cared. Blindly, he was following where Mary lead – he could not do otherwise - but he didn’t truly believe the intended destination had yet been reached.

Thirteen minutes later, they arrived on Seymour Street.

“I mean what I said, Sherlock.” It was the first time John had spoken since they left Baker Street. Sherlock was grateful, as this was clearly the topic most prominent in his friend’s mind, that John hadn’t spent the entire journey berating him. Sherlock needed time to think.

“Pick up the phone, or I’ll do it for you,” he gave Sherlock a meaningful look.

“That won’t be necessary.”

The red-framed windows of Gail’s Bakery were in front of them. Before she looked up, Sherlock saw Molly, noticed her reflexively fiddling with the strap of her bag where it sat in front of her on the table. From out of the shroud of over-stimulation and exhaustion came thoughts he did not bid:

Trademark show of nerves.

Imposter Syndrome.

Ridiculous.

Piles of cakes and glazed pastries glinted under copper down-lighters in the window. Sherlock had never understood the perfunctory ritual of eating certain things on certain days no matter their apparent significance. Smacked too much of sentiment. But he couldn’t deny the appeal of food at that moment - day of his birth or no – he was suddenly ravenous, his empty stomach making itself heard. Attending to the malnutrition was as good a place to begin his recovery as any.

Molly stood as they approached the table. John kissed her on the cheek in greeting and she raised her hand and smiled in Sherlock’s direction. “Hi. You look dreadful – no, I mean – well. You do look dreadful. Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you, Molly.”

“Capricorn. Should have known.”

John went to join the queue to order. Sherlock dropped his weight into a chair and closed his eyes, momentarily overtaken by nausea and dizziness. The cafe was busy, noise and smells filled the air and threatened to overload his fraught senses. He pressed his fingers to his temples, feeling the faint trace of sweat which was chill to his touch.

John looking at him with concern.

Mary.

That frustrating, diverting text alert.

You moron!

Lips painted scarlet.

Get yourself a piece of that.

We were just talking about you.

“Sorry?” Molly’s voice broke his train of thought. If it could even be called that at present. Shoal of thought, perhaps. Maelstrom of thought.

“Sorry? Sorry what?” He rubbed his eyes to make them focus. They felt as though they had received a thorough dunking in hot tea.

“You said you were just talking about me?” she said.

“Did I?”

“Yes. Did you mean you and John? Did he say Rosie’s nappy fell of last week?”

“What?”

Molly rubbed her inner right elbow with her left hand, discreetly. Her cheeks were flushed. Sherlock watched her as she spoke again. “When I looked after Rosie last week I ended up in such a flap changing her before John picked her up – I couldn’t find that hippo thing she has – and she was crying and honestly I don’t know how she manages to get the poo onto so many different parts of herself…”

“What?”

“I sent her home with her romper only half buttoned up and I bet her nappy was on wonky – was John upset?” Molly looked at Sherlock, eyes wide and worried. Underlined with dark circles, not unlike when he last saw her.

A man sat on the table next to them laughed loudly, banging his hand on the polished surface.

City.

Self-made.

Insecure.

Veganuary. Won’t persist.

Why was Molly looking at him? “Er… sorry,” he indicated his temple. “Exact details of conversation are proving hard to retain at present.”

“That’ll be the heroin.”

“Or lack of it.”

“Yes.”

Molly looked down at the table, her pale lips pressed together. Sherlock felt an odd twisting in his middle, somewhere behind his diaphragm and his ears still rang with the noise around them. He shook his head fractionally and applied himself to filtering out other people so he could concentrate on her. “Molly. I’m afraid when we have spoken recently I have been very rude to you and also somewhat incapacitated.”

“My dream patient.”

“I hardly think…”

“You made me glad I chose pathology.”

“Ah.” His turn to look down. “I want to thank you, for helping me and for turning up at the time and place I specified without asking why and for…”

“Not slapping you in the face?” the corner of her mouth twitched as if to smile.

“Oh no, that always seems to be of some use, in the end. Might have been for the best if you had.”

“Always glad to be of service. Nice to be included in yet another brilliant plot.”

Sherlock heard the subtle change in her tone. Molly pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I never exclude you,” he told her. “I rely on... your assistance.”

He found that he couldn’t quite read the look she gave him then, but her smile suddenly seemed not to reach her eyes. She was leaning towards him fractionally, demonstrating careful attendance and possibly also that she found the room a little loud. Her collarbones were pronounced above the neckline of her green vest, worn under a floral cardigan.

“You’re brilliant,” he heard himself say. “Always. Lovely. Even despite…”

There was a pause.

“Despite what?”

“Er… I’m not sure.” Fog shrouded whatever link he had made or had been about to make. He almost growled with an intense frustration which arose from nowhere. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“I’m not convinced sugar is going to hit the spot,” Molly sounded tired.

“That’s why I chose to forego your suggestion of ginger cake in favour of coffee-walnut with a triple-espresso on the side.”

“I told John to get the ginger anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“And listen, Sherlock,” he looked at her. “Not that I’m not grateful or anything, but maybe save the outpouring of sentiment for when you’ve finished the withdrawal rations. You’ll find women like it better sober.”

Molly’s eyes widened suddenly. Or maybe not suddenly. How long ago had she last injected – spoken! Spoken. He heard a rushing.

Sentiment?!

“Sentiment?! Sorry. That was loud.” He knew because John was looking at him from the counter. He cleared his throat. “Molly, you’re missing the point.”

Now Molly was smiling. Bright and really, objectively, quite nice to look at. “There’s a point?”

“Yes, yes – of course. There always is… love!”

Her smile vanished. “Sorry?”

“Love, Molly. That’s what me and John were discussing before we came to meet you.”

“You two are sweet. I think the bromance gossip is what I miss the most since Mary died.”

The fog cleared with startling speed. Mary’s name hung in the chilly, crystalline air left behind. Sherlock shivered, glanced at John. “Molly, it’s become important to me to express… my regard for… those I feel close to.”

“Okay.”

“I am concerned the opportunity to speak my… mind… might be gone, before I know it.”

“What do you mean? You’re in recovery.”

“Yes but you’re not.”

Where did that come from?

Molly was staring at him, perfectly still. Sherlock blinked a few times and rubbed his temple.

Your loss would break my heart.

“What did you say?”

“To lose you would be a terrible thing…” he tried to make himself understood.

Molly shook her head, angled her body away, smiling again but in yet another maddeningly different way. God he wished this damned headache would abate.

“Oh don’t worry, nice compliant female pathologists are queuing up to assist you,” she said.

“Love, Molly,” Sherlock swallowed, felt a flush rising, burning up under her gaze. He laughed. It sounded false. He wasn’t entirely sure where he had intended to take this line of conversation, only that it was important. Or had been, some moments ago. “Impossible to discuss love without the conversation inevitably turning to loss. The two seem to me to be inextricably linked.” He began to feel frantic, felt the threat of the tremor which had only left him in the previous 24 hours. He took a breath to try to explain himself...

“Sherlock.”

Her hand on top of his on the table stopped him. For a blissful moment his brain stopped racing and he felt peace. Molly was speaking, stumbling over words he couldn’t quite make out because his attention was focussed entirely upon her skin. The pads of her fingers were, if not hardened, then certainly toughened enough as to be a constant reminder of her skill and ability with her hands. The cafe around them seemed to melt away and for a split second what he had been searching for came to within his grasp in its orbit, as he looked at the only other person in the world. It slipped past him just as quickly. His stomach sank. Fighting his groggy confusion, he retreated to what he knew and focussed his brain to observing her, willing understanding to come.

Her nails were bitten, almost to the quick, some areas of skin around the beds had also been worried at. This observation caused a disconcerting spike of something in his middle. Furthermore, the skin over her pulse-point, glimpsed when she altered the placement of her hand to cradle his, had a pale – almost blue – pallor. Now she was looking down at the table again.

Elbow held awkwardly.

Shoulder tension.

Inflamed skin around the eye area. Heavier than usual application of make-up.

Weight loss.

Stood over him in the back of the ambulance, plotting on a chart, brow creasing.

Turning away, her hand to her face, a sharp breath.

I’m worried about you, Molly, you seem stressed.

His eyes landed on her inner elbow. The fabric of her cardigan was characteristically decorative, but too thin for the time of year, worn over only a vest. Unusually minimal layering for Molly. Under the fabric, a misshapen lump. He lifted his thumb a fraction, slid it over the tips of her fingers where they rested on his.

“When do you expect the results?”

“What?” She froze. She stared into his eyes, he became aware of having parted his lips to match her heightened breathing pattern. Then he watched her shake herself, clear her throat. “I don’t know what you mean – have you even been listening to anything I’ve just been saying? I was saying I don’t think I want to be...”

Sherlock’s eyes were drawn to her neck, the exposed skin, and a tiny pin-prick of red.

“Biopsy.”

“Sherlock.” He couldn’t fail to mistake the warning in her voice and quickly returned his focus to her face.

“I want to be here for you,” she was saying. “I am here for you, you’ve very ill. But I don’t need the games whether you’re grateful or not and I really don’t need your scrutiny. I don’t... want it.”

She made to pull her hand away from his, he caught her fingers gently but firmly in his own. A pause held them both. He looked right at her, straight into her eyes, willing his own to convey to her what his moronic brain remained incapable of.

“What do you need?”

She exhaled in response, her lips a thin line. Sherlock saw the many lamps in the cafe reflect suddenly brighter in her eyes and he felt bereft. Slowly, Molly shook her head.

“Cake!”

Molly whipped her hand from the table and his hold just in time for John to ceremoniously crash a laden tray of cakes and drinks between them.

Chapter Text

Sherrinford.

Some weeks later.

“Only it isn’t a name.”

Mycroft’s words washed over Sherlock as he took in the engraving on the brass nameplate affixed to the coffin lid. He felt a sickening inevitability in his gut. He closed his eyes and turned away, returning to the coffin, placing his hands upon it.

“So it’s for somebody who loves somebody,” this from John.

“It’s for somebody who loves Sherlock. This is all about you,” Mycroft injected his words with the quiet venom that was his weapon of choice. “Everything here.”

Thus far, only David had saved anyone. He had saved John Watson from a life of horror and regret. Or at least he had intended to. Sherlock had only saved himself, everyone else had been disposed of with absolutely no regard for his efforts whether they pleased his sister or no and a crushing fear for the two men in the room with him encircled his chest like an iron band.

“So who loves you? I’m assuming it’s not a long list,” Mycroft shot.

Sherlock wanted to reach for his phone, even though he knew full well that he didn’t have it. Wanted to check if she had replied to the text he sent her from the quayside, to scan her social media to reassure himself she was at home. Or work. Anywhere away from this hell which would place her too far away for even the terrifyingly vast reaches of Eurus’ net. He felt a pang of terror.

She is NOT here.

“Irene Adler,” John’s natural conclusion.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look at the coffin. Unmarried, practical about death, alone.”

Alone.

Now the east wind was coming for…

“Molly,” John realised.

“Molly Hooper,” Sherlock confirmed.

When she appeared on the CCTV screen Sherlock walked towards her.

“Make her say it.” It was obvious to Eurus and Sherlock. Most likely it was obvious to Mycroft. Not to John. Sherlock and his siblings, all three of them, were a blight on the lives of the good people they had come to know. If he survived this day, John really was a soldier; he would shoulder the burden of what he had experienced and carry it for the rest of his life with his head held high.

But what Sherlock was about to put Molly Hooper through… the prospect was despicable. It was not that he doubted her strength, far from it. But only a true villain would strike when a person’s defences were at their lowest. Latent fears he had suppressed since noticing that Molly

was ill, potentially very ill if his deductions were accurate, spiked his gut.

He forced his mind to clear; steeled himself, raised the walls. Listened to Eurus’ conditions and focussed on the game.

“TICK TOCK TICK TOCK”

How long does she have?

“What’s she doing? But why isn’t she answering her phone? Yes but it’s me calling,” doubt seeped in as he watched her ignoring him.

Your currency is weakening.

When the answer-phone clicked into life Sherlock turned away, trying to disperse the building tension, to no avail. His eyes lifted to the camera in the corner of the room, asking for another chance.

“Okay, okay. Just one more time,” Eurus drawled.

Come on now - Game face.

John cares for Molly so much. Mary does too. And Rosie.

Grief does not divide.

Lemon tea. Honey.

Nausea.

Throat pain.

Dear God – please!

Sherlock put his head in his hands. Whipped it back up at the sound of her voice.

“Hello, Sherlock. Is this urgent? Because I’m not having a good day.”

She’s been crying...

Concentrate!

“Molly I just want you to do something very easy for me and not ask why,” he said.

“Oh God. Is this one of your stupid games.”

“No, it’s not a game…”

Pull her heart strings.

“… I need you to help me.”

“Look, I’m not at the lab.” Sherlock heard the softening in her voice.

“It’s not about that.”

“Well quickly then.”

He felt himself at the edge of a precipice, raging waters below. There was no time, but he longed to give her what he could.

“Sherlock! What is it, what do you want?”

“TICK TOCK TICK TOCK”

“Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.”

“What words?” That nervous smile in her voice.

“I – love - you.”

A weighty pause.

“Leave me alone.”

Panic obliterated the squirming sensation in Sherlock’s centre and he reached for her with his hands. “Molly, no – please – no! Don’t hang up! Do not hang up!”

He heard his sister warn him and he took the deepest breath he could force down his windpipe. Molly was still on the line and on the attack and Sherlock was proud of her for refusing to let him go without making sure he knew who was in the wrong. Even though it quickly became clear that this was hurting her every bit as much as he feared it would.

“Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making fun of me?”

“Please, I swear, you just have to listen to me,” his heart was racing, desperation surged.

Calm down. Eurus will tell you to…

“Softer, Sherlock.” He flicked his eyes to the corner of the room, then back.

Just a client.

Just a case.

“Molly, this is for a case. It’s… it’s a sort of experiment.”

“I’m not an experiment, Sherlock.”

“I know you’re not an experiment, you’re my friend. We’re friends, ” he threw the word away, found it distasteful as he looked at her - saw her, perhaps for the first time, as a whole life separate from his own. “But… please… just say those words for me.”

“Please don’t do this. Just… just… don’t do it,” she pleaded with him.

“It’s very important,” Sherlock felt giddy. “I can’t say why...”

… I am incapable….

“...but I promise you it is.”

“I can’t say that, I can’t… I can’t say that to you.” Molly said.

Get a grip!

The Game.

“Of course you can,” he felt sick with the mocking sound of his own voice. “Why can’t you?”

“You know why.”

The one person who, unlike me, learned to see through your bullshit years ago.

No! Not now!

Molly - for us to survive I have to be this...

If I show her, she will kill us both.

“No I don’t know why,”

Molly sniffed and sighed. Sherlock felt before he heard the weight of Molly’s next words. Her backbone. The inevitability of him, to her.

“Of course you do.”

Sherlock closed his eyes. Time was when a bit of gentle, entertaining back and forth between him and Molly would have seen her give him what he wanted with a smile on her face, the bonus being that his interaction with her above the necessary would make it more likely that she acquiesce to his requests in future. Time was when Sherlock didn’t understand that that wasn’t how friendship worked; there was no place for manipulation – for games – if you wanted to gain from the relationship in any way aside from the material. If you desired the other person not to turn their back on you. Now, he knew her well and he also knew he was privileged to say so. She knew him better, though; she saw right through him. They were past playing.

“Please just say it.”

“I can’t. Not to you,” Molly’s voice wavered.

I need you to.

“Why?” Sherlock asked, he had to know, so he could fix it, quickly.

“Because… because it’s tr…”

Oh God…

“Because it’s true, Sherlock.”

I’ m sorry.

“It’s always been true.”

Despite my indifference, ignorance, dismissal, cruelty.

A heavy, deadly calm fell over Sherlock; a focussed anticipation. “Well, if it’s true, just say it anyway,”

I want to hear it...

Molly laughed, Sherlock pictured her smile. “You bastard.”

A given.

“Say it anyway,” he persisted.

“You say it.“  Sherlock froze. “Go on. You say it first.” A new power in her voice now; her own Game.

Sherlock sensed Mycroft move behind him, hoped he wouldn’t dare speak. Sherlock blinked several times, cornered, fighting the urge to run, fighting the urge to lash out in desperate self-preservation.

“What?” He spat.

“Say it. Say it like you mean it.”

Go to Hell, Sherlock, Go right in and make it look like you mean it.

Will it save her, Mary?

Sherlock looked to the camera. “Final 30 seconds,” came his sister’s voice. He closed his eyes, closed out the world.

You can just say it, even if she can’t.

A case.

An experiment.

No sentiment.

“I…”

You’re not sentimental about her.

“… love you.”

Sherlock felt another sharp twist behind his diaphragm.

If I wasn’t everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?

What do you need?

You.

You.

You.

He should know by now he could never close down when it came to this woman. She was always there. She appeared - he sought her out - when he needed her, whether that was in the physical world or the one inside his own head. He didn’t need her for what she could do, he needed what she could do because it was her. Sherlock opened his eyes and looked straight at Molly, saw her eyes as clearly in his mind as if he were looking into her face.

“I love you.”

It slammed into him, his senses flaring as if in the wake of a gunshot, the imploding of solid walls, a sudden and sharp drop. A jolt of pure energy which he felt resolve into absolute peace. Surety. Certainty. He was powerful and in control, safe in her hands. Like salvation.

Seconds passed.

“Molly?.. Molly, please.” He heard his voice falter, longed with every fibre to reach over the uncross-able distance. All of this be damned, he wanted to hear her say it, not Eurus, not his brother, not even John, Just him and her.

“I love you.”

Her voice was little more than a whisper but it’s mark would be indelible.

Relief was a palpable force in the room. Sherlock reeled, tipping his head back and then into his hands once more. He doubled over, his breath heaved out of him. There was a fire in his veins as he straightened.

“Sherlock, however hard that was…” Mycroft began.

No! Not any more.

“Eurus I won. I won,” Sherlock spoke over his brother.

Tell me she’s safe!

The little red LED taunted him with the superiority of silence.

Focus! Process later.

I have to get out of this hell.

We have to keep moving.

“Come on, play fair. The girl on the plane, I need to talk to her. I won! I saved Molly Hooper!”

“Saved her? From what?”

His sister’s face appeared before him. As she laid before him the intricacies of her ploy it was as though he could feel the strength leaving him. Hadn’t Eurus told him that she wanted to see how his mind worked, how he ticked? Well, he’d just given her everything. His sister’s taunting words pierced his armour like knives and he fought back against the pressure growing around him as she spoke. He’d been tricked. He didn’t know what was real, he was too trusting – even of someone he believed to be incapable of honesty. He was an idiot.

“Look what you did to her...” Eurus pushed.

Sherlock turned away. Molly had no context to what had just happened.

I’m not an experiment, Sherlock.

“… look what you did to yourself.”

He deserved what he got – Molly had escaped Moriarty’s clutches purely because Sherlock had never given any indication that he was capable of returning her feelings and Moriarty had thrown her to Eurus for the same reason. Now, Sherlock had shown his hand.

“All those complicated little emotions, I lost count.” How could Eurus - how could they all - be so cold, so unworthy. Sherlock felt his finger on the trigger.

Your life is not your own.

“Emotional context, Sherlock...” Eurus deigned to explain it to him and he knew that she knew, that she had observed as easily as she had read his composition, and she was choosing to disregard and objectify him, “...it destroys you every time. Now please, pull yourself together, the next one isn’t going to be so easy. I need you at peak efficiency. In your own time.”

Another door slid open. Though he was vaguely aware of Mycroft moving onwards, John with him, Sherlock felt an overpowering reluctance to follow. Eurus and Moriarty were silent, but this chamber was full of another voice; it rang with it.

Molly.

Sherlock abandoned the pistol on the coffin stand and retrieved the lid from where it rested against the far wall. His eyes were drawn to the inscription, but he didn’t need to read the words because Molly spoke them. That was all he could hear. It felt vitally important to cover the casket. He placed the lid carefully over the empty interior. Reluctant to release his hold, he spread his hand over the blonde wood, covered the heart of its spectral occupant and, despite his great effort, agonising emotion rose with astonishing speed and voracity.

The engraving morphed: Molly Hooper.

It was like a kick to the gut. His own naval-gazing, self-absorbed moment of realisation made no difference. He hadn’t saved her. The real threat to her life was entirely out of his control and even though he had observed the danger, he had remained wrapped in his own melodrama, pushed her down the list in the arrogant assumption that he would get to her before it was too late.

Oh, Mary. Not again, please...

Death waited just out of his field of vision and it was too monstrous a beast for him to slay. He could not protect the people he loved. There was a higher power at work and he was insignificant.

I love you.

He wasn’t worthy of those words, should never sully them with his breath. Molly embodied them. When she spoke, he felt. When she was there he had substance. He had everything. But now she would never be there again. He had used her, in the worst possible way; as a pawn in a game and, ultimately, for nothing. He’d humiliated her, belittled her and reduced the most wondrous thing about her to a bargaining tool; a plaything tossed between him and his sister. Blood began to rush in his ears and breathing was painful.

She is going to die...

He had just ensured that the next time he would see her would be when she was laid in this casket.

His chest was going to burst open and spray the room in his blood. His vision was drenched in red.

“Sherlock,” John spoke from the threshold of a future which did not exist.

“No. No...”

Chapter Text

London.

In that moment…

Hundreds of miles away, a teapot shattered on a kitchen floor and a heart with it.

Molly Hooper stifled the noise which came from the very depths of her with her hand but nothing could possibly hold back the feeling, like a pack of wild dogs tearing at her heart and her pride. She was going to die alone. When she looked sad, there would be no one there to notice. And why? Because she was easy to need but impossible to love.

She was an experiment; she served a fleeting purpose before being passed over. Alternatively a way to get to Sherlock or a way for Sherlock to get to whatever was just beyond her. Even when she had poured herself into escaping the cycle, she had only created a parody, a screaming self-portrait of a desperate woman who was defined entirely by one man. She had long since stopped counting the times when she wished her heart had chosen anyone but Sherlock but she chalked up every instance which proved she was an idiot for having done so. Self-loathing roiled in her stomach.

She had wanted so badly to hurt him, throw it back at him and make him feel the deep embarrassment that would come with having to say something he considered so beneath him.

“I… love you.”

An unstoppable wave of anguish broke over her as she heard his voice in her mind and she bent double on the floor, her eyes streaming. However hard she still clutched every word he had ever said to her heart, however carefully she searched between them for scraps of hope, how she felt about him would be forever tainted by the knowledge that he had told her he loved her, but only because she had told him to.

“I love you.”

So sincere… it had been real and something… something minute in his tone, or maybe the panicky way he had begged her not to hang up. Molly wondered - had it really been just another game?

“Oh God!” She dug her nails into her face in rage. Sherlock had eviscerated her and here she was searching for any small reward be might have thrown her. Like a mouse in a lab.

What did he do after telling you he loved you, Molly? Hung up, that’s what. Not so much as a thank you, not so much as another word. He probably went back to his keyboard or microscope or bloody Twitter, blithely carried on with his sainted existence, saving lives left, right and centre with no thought for the hearts he obliterates on the way.

Molly pulled herself to standing, slowly. She ached all over. Without a backward glance at the mess of broken china she walked out of the room.

Chapter Text

Sherrinford.

In that moment...

John Watson watched his friend unfasten the button of his suit jacket and, recognising the sign, felt his adrenaline rise ready for battle. But this wasn’t going to be one in which he could partake.

“No. No...” John heard Sherlock drag in a breath.

Then he watched as his friend raised and brought crashing down his balled fist onto the lid of the casket, smashing clean through it. With a roar that was animal, Sherlock rained a pure and unbridled fury upon the coffin, lifting and slamming it onto the stand, obliterating it, reducing it to matchwood and ripped satin.

John wouldn’t have believed it were possible for his own heart to break any further, but it did then. Witnessing the raw agony his best friend was enduring as he lost all control. He’d had no idea. Once again, he had failed to observe.

Sherlock let out a final howl of gut-wrenching pain before falling to the cold floor of the cell, breathing hard and shaking from head to foot.

John needed several breaths to master himself. He wondered whether Mycroft might step forward but really he knew he wouldn’t. A vision flashed across his mind.

“This is family.”

“That’s why he stays!”

John cleared his throat, straightened his back, picked up the pistol from where it lay discarded among the devastation and went to his friend.

Chapter Text

Walterston, Warwickshire

In the middle of that night.

Sherlock stood shivering on the doorstep thinking of Christmas. There merest glimpse of this house and he thought of Christmas. Felt warm. Tonight he couldn’t muster the strength to condemn his own nostalgic thoughts, too dwarfed was he by the enormity of what he had discovered. Feeling as he did and cloaked by the privacy of the moment, he afforded himself the opportunity to welcome the sensation of peace the sight of his parents’ home arose in him.

He heard the deadbolt slide back, the heavy old lock clunk and the door opened just wide enough for his Mother’s eye to peer out at him. “Sherlock?”

She flung the door open. Dressed in a nightgown with her robe gathered hastily about her and her hair as bafflingly tidy, even though she had clearly been asleep moments before, as he remembered it in childhood. Sherlock had the unruly curls of his Father’s youth, Mycroft their Mother’s innate neatness.

Sherlock’s heart constricted at the thought of his brother. Such a night of revelations he could never have predicted.

“Why on Earth didn’t you use the side-door, the key is where it always is, silly boy...” His Mother shepherded him into the hallway. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” She switched on a lamp on the hall-stand, hardly pausing in her gentle berating of him until she looked up at his face in the light.

“Good Lord, Sherlock – what ever’s the matter?”

Sherlock took a breath. Prepared to blast apart the final standing pillar of his previous life.

“I found Victor Trevor, Mum.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I found him…” a lump rose in his throat, his chest tightened. “It… it took too long, I’m sorry.” He passed a hand over his aching eyes.

“Come and sit down.” She lead him to the sitting room where a faint glow came from the embers of a fire in the grate. His Mother deposited him on the settee and turned to light another lamp.

The softness and familiar scent of the room was abhorrent. Sherlock was in a new world. One of concrete and glass, steel and impenetrable stone. Blackened timber. Deep water. Sherlock squirmed in he seat, glad of the fact his clothes were still soaking wet and cold to keep him from indulging in comfort and keeping uppermost in his mind the pain the people for whom he cared most had endured. He could smell the burnt joists above his sister’s room. Feel the slippery wet stone wall of the well and John’s arm around his shoulders. Help had arrived quickly once it had been called for and thank heaven. How long had it taken help to come for his sister? A lifetime. For his first friend, Victor Trevor, it never came.

“What has happened?”

“Victor Trevor, the boy – my friend – who went missing at Musgrave – I found his remains tonight,” he answered his Mother.

“Oh my good Lord.”

“He is being taken care of by Scotland Yard. I have Inspector Lestrade’s word that his family will receive the support they deserve and that Re… that Victor will be released to them for burial as soon as possible. There won’t be an enquiry.”

“What do you mean?”

Sherlock looked into his Mother’s face, saw the anguish – fear - just below the surface. “I know what happened, Mum.”

“Oh, Sherlock...”

“I know about my sister. I know about Eurus, Mum…”

A wave crashed over him and swept away his energy, leaving him wasted. Lights danced in front of his eyes and chills ran across his skin. His heart boomed, out of rhythm. He reached for his Mother, whose tears now ran freely. She pulled him to her, he lay his forehead against her shoulder like a child, desperate for reassurance.

“I won’t forget again, Mum – I promise. I’m so... so very sorry… I won’t forget her.”

“Darling boy.”

Violently shaken, Sherlock felt close to passing out. Concerned he might cry whilst perversely willing himself to. His eyes remained dry, though. His heart was bound by a stricken grief that refused to rise up as resolutely as it had refused to stay down just hours before.

Numbness. Was he cold now? Did he not feel pain now? No, no – he could certainly feel it. But was this it, the turning point, the linchpin in his existence where he was no longer affected by it, no longer afraid?

A flash of pure red.

He screwed his eyes shut to obliterate the livid face looming at the forefront of his mind.

“You’re soaking…” His Mother was sitting him up, pushing the coat off his shoulders. The room was warm but he felt perished without his coat. The room was also spinning.

“There was water. Rising… too deep. Couldn’t get to him… in time…”

“Sherlock, lay down – now – on your side...”

__________

Cocoa.

A steaming mug thrust under his nose. He took it carefully. “A quarter brandy?” he enquired.

“Oh at least.”

Sherlock watched his Mother sit herself beside him on the settee. Pale dawn light was seeping under the curtains. A fire was lit in the grate. He had washed and dried and had on a pair of his Father’s pyjamas. Green tartan. “I gave these pyjamas to Dad six Christmases ago.”

“Yes?”

“They’re barely worn.”

“Your Father doesn’t wear pyjamas.”

“Neither do I.”

“You’re very alike.”

“Unless in company.”

“Not always, then. Perhaps barely at all.”

Sherlock met her eye. Felt scrutinised. Fought the childish urge to fire off a smart retort. Instead he smiled, so did his Mother.

“Like I said, you’re just like your Father,” she said. “He says I snore – I mean, really!”

Love isn’t perfect.

Sherlock sipped his drink to push down the rising tightness in his chest, listened intently to his memory of Molly Hooper speaking, grateful she remained with him in his mind at least; more than grateful. The feeling was bitter-sweet.

You’d know?

Better than you, yes.

Do go on then, Doctor.

Love isn’t linear. It’s not an achievement where you get a certificate and a carriage clock twenty years down the line for never making a mistake again. It’s taking the rough with the smooth, learning – always – persevering through the uncomfortable things

because the person matters more.

Molly caught and quickly broke eye contact between them.

And I don’t know that because I’m a doctor, Sherlock. I know because I’ve felt it. I feel it.

Sherlock sighed, Molly’s image dispelling although the essence of her lingered; a constant reminder, nudging him forwards by degrees. The space behind his diaphragm coiled. He had so much to do; the time for distractions was past and he was still here for a reason.

He rested the mug on his leg. “Why have we never spoken about Eurus, Mum?”

He watched his Mother breathe in deeply and sigh it out, her shoulders slumping. Her face became momentarily unreadable. Her gaze was focused upon the fire, in a lost time.

“What you need to understand, Sherlock, is that luring poor little Victor away and setting fire to that house were just a small part of what Eurus did to you. I swear from the day she could focus, she only ever had her eyes trained on you.”

Sherlock watched her expression soften. “You were a wonderful big brother. You couldn’t do enough to help. Unlike Mycroft. As you might imagine, he found being a sibling something of a bother, but not you. Eurus was your shadow and you not only tolerated her but brought her along.”

Now her expression clouded as she paused. Like the eye of a hurricane, a heavy foreboding held the room. “She thrived on your attention. Any kind of attention would suffice.”

Sherlock was aware of his own quickening heart rate as he listened.

“She wanted to make you laugh, she wanted to make you cry. Wanted you to know everything but she had to be the teacher. She wanted to make you better so she hurt you herself.” His Mother’s fingers worried at the fringing of the blanket over her knees. “She hurt herself out of curiosity. She hurt others simply because she could. The first time she killed she was four years old. A rat she laid a trap for herself. She told us she knew the rat had a litter because she had seen the nest, so she killed their Mother to see what would happen to them.”

She took another unsteady breath.

“Cruelty. A commonplace trait among the gifted who are too foolish to realise that superiority that comes from the suppression of others is no advantage at all.”

You’re a very stupid little boy.

Ordinary.

Emotional context, it floors you every time.

Idiot!

Fools.

You lower the IQ of the whole street.

It’s not your strong suit.

I suggest you avoid all attempts at a relationship in future.

If it’s true just say it anyway.

Sherlock closed his eyes.

“I was ashamed, Sherlock.”

Opening them again he looked straight into his Mother’s.

“Ashamed that I didn’t protect your friend, that I didn’t prevent Eurus setting the fire – prevent her trying to kill us all even though I knew what she was capable of. But above all… I am ashamed to this day that I didn’t help you come to terms with what happened in a truthful way. I stood by and watched you find a way to cope yourself. As you grew, I thought who am I to bring the horror of it all crashing down on you when you were the one out of all of us who learned to move on.”

Tears welled in her eyes, she wiped one away as it spilled. Sherlock sat forward and took her hand. This powerhouse of a woman, genius, the genetic spring from which all his and his siblings’ intellectual capabilities flowed.

She had poured love on them all. Never – never – had she belittled or taunted them, pushed or colluded. Instead she had precisely and invisibly scaffolded them as they navigated life as disturbingly unique individuals. If anything could be noted about his and his brother’s upbringing, it was that Mycroft and their Mother often clashed, Mycroft pushing back against the attention, where Sherlock quietly welcomed it and, he had to concede, he had been able to get away with murder. Perhaps now he had a better understanding of why. But their Mother had adored them. She had done her best.

“There is no blame in this, Mum,” Sherlock said. “And if there were, it would not lie with you.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” she took his face in her hands, her lips pressed tightly together and tears still falling.

The living room door creaked open and Sherlock watched his Father enter the room. Dressed and ready for the day as the grandfather clock in the hall behind him chimed 6 o’clock, he smiled warmly at the pair.

“Good morning, dear. Hello, my boy. I take it you’ve come about Eurus.”

Sherlock was rendered speechless. His brain attempted to race away to hypothesising, but exhaustion quickly put paid to that, and all it came up with was the awareness of a headache.

“How on Earth did you know that?” His Mother was as incredulous as he.

“Elementary, as my dear family are so fond of saying. This is our youngest son’s first visit within 6 months of the last since he flew the nest. The pair of you have evidently spent the better part of the night alternatively talking and weeping. Not to mention the tell-tale bottle of cognac minus its cork quietly evaporating fifty percent of its value on the drinks cabinet...”

“It could be Mycroft,” Sherlock pointed out.

“If it were Mycroft, dear boy, then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would have been at the door moments after you, if not before.”

“I’ve only just arrived.”

“In my best pyjamas?” The old man raised his eyebrows at his son. Then he sighed, put his hands into the pockets of his fair-isle cardigan and came to sit opposite them.

“Edward Fletcher was just on the telephone. Scotland Yard at Musgrave overnight, helicopters and all sorts. Another bunch of rowdy twerps up to mischief wouldn’t have my boy haring up here in the middle of the night, now would it?”

Sherlock’s Father sat forward in the seat, clasped his hands in front of him. Sherlock held his breath.

“Silliness aside, Sherlock, tell me – please – tell us; is Eurus alive?”

Sherlock heard his Mother’s sharp intake of breath over the ringing in his ears. He took hold of her hand where it sat between them and held it tightly. Holding too his Father’s gaze, he replied;

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

London.

Later that day.

Grabbing just a few necessities from Baker Street had been straightforward enough, though not entirely without difficulty. A security detail had clearly been placed on the flat and the windows boarded up. Mrs Hudson had embraced Sherlock when he entered the hallway, for some moments. He hadn’t minded. When she finally released him she handed him a pair of handcuffs.

“Ah. Thank you,” he said as he pocketed them.

“I am sorry about the boot, that day, Sherlock.”

“Not to worry. All for the best.”

“Yes, I hope so.”

He’d gone upstairs, cast his eye over the desolation that had previously been the living room. Objects, books and papers lay strewn among splinters of wood, lumps of plaster, brick dust and glass. Both his armchair and John’s were upturned. There was a lot of work to do.

Sherlock was about to turn towards the bedroom when he stopped. He picked his way among the debris to the bookcase behind where his chair usually sat. On the bottom shelf had been many tightly packed old volumes of this or that, less commonly referred to since the advent of Google, but to which – it pained him to admit – he was somewhat… loyal. Only one leather-bound spine remained in place, the rest lay scattered beneath. He removed it carefully, revealing a concealed, reinforced compartment where the pages ought to have been. Inside was a small rectangular photograph album, the cover of which was not ageing leather, but a fresh, forest green and royal blue tartan, the set shot through with yellow and red. He picked it out of its nook and took it with him to his room.

He packed very few things; fresh clothing in the main and one or two other essentials. As he was about to leave the room, he noticed the garment-carrier hung on the back of the door. He unzipped it, finding within one of his several Belstaff Miltons. There was a tag pinned carefully to the lining, and the bag smelled faintly of expensive detergent. He pulled the coat out, brought the fabric to his nose and inhaled.

Eurus.

‘Faith’ had apparently returned this coat via his usual dry-cleaners. Sadly, it had arrived after he had found the note she had planted, otherwise it might have helped him to be sure he had spent that evening in company. As it was, he had assumed, as she knew he would have, that this was garment-bag had appeared as part of the housekeeping duties which Mrs Hudson most definitely did not undertake at any point, ever. He had paid it no mind.

The coat hadn’t been cleaned, though. The fabric smelled of rain, faintly of exhaust fumes, vinegar and – most prominently – his sister.

Sherlock shrugged off the example he had been wearing and laid it on the bed. He swung on the other, picked up his holdall and strode from the room.

Twenty minutes later, as evening and light rain were falling over the city, the cab pulled up outside John Watson’s flat. John answered the door, stepped aside to allow Sherlock to enter, closed it, indicated the sitting area and walked out of the room, returning moments later with two tumblers of whiskey.

“Family,” John held up his glass towards him.

“Family,” Sherlock tapped his against it.

“Who’d fucking have them?”

Sherlock almost spat his whiskey out and it took John some moments to force back the giggles sufficiently enough to take a drink.

Another measure followed. Rosie disturbed and John brought her through. The room was cocoon-like and warm, but Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to relax. Deference to Mary saw to that, in a way it had from the beginning. He’d removed his coat and jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and he forced himself not to pace, but he remained standing, ostensibly taking an interest in the books on the bookshelf, artwork on the walls. Of course these things did interest him; he still believed he lacked the arrogance to ignore detail, not least when it came to attempting to generate a feeling of closeness to a very dear friend whom he missed terribly.

Behind him John sat on the sofa gently shushing Rosie back to sleep on his chest. Sherlock’s eyelids felt leaden, his eyes dry and sore. He rubbed them and pinched the bridge of his nose while he worked out how long it had been since he last slept. With the exception of a fitful hour in his parent’s front room, and another couple at the hands of a tranquilliser, he had been awake for almost 36 hours, his exhaustion exacerbated in no small part by the miles they had travelled, the mental exertion, the physical stress and emotional… recalibration? He ran his hand down his face. He did not have the words to fully describe the ordeal they had endured, so he was beyond grateful that John had condensed their conversation into a succinct and apt toast and then largely left Sherlock to his thoughts in companionable silence. He should have realised, though, that there would be one aspect of what happened that John did want to discuss. It was ever thus.

“You meant it, didn’t you?”

Sherlock sighed. Meant what? was on the tip of his tongue but he was tired.

“I don’t think I understood. Before,” he said instead.

“You did,” John replied. Sherlock turned to his friend. “You once told me there was no wonder I fell in love with Mary because I was addicted to danger.”

“She was more than that, though,” Sherlock said.

“I know,” John rubbed his cheek against Rosie’s head, his eyes focussed somewhere distant for a moment. “I thought if you could fall in love, and frankly, I wasn’t sure if it was possible, that you’d do the same; fall for someone who slotted neatly into your vision of yourself.”

Sherlock listened intently.

“Clever,” John offered. “Cunning, control issues. Posh.”

Sherlock smiled in spite of himself, sipped the whiskey.

“But I was wrong,” John continued.

“No.”

“Oh but I was. That stuff, it’s not you. You’re…”

Now Sherlock felt a jolt of apprehension as he prepared to hear the worst of himself. It was always worse still coming from John. His best friend having seen what he had seen of Sherlock and his family over the last few days - having witnessed Sherlock descend to the seventh circle of hell not long before - he braced himself for what he was about to hear.

“What? What am I, John?”

John stood carefully, took a step towards Sherlock.

“You’re a big old softy, that’s what.”

Sherlock half coughed, half laughed.

“Why am I your best friend?” John asked. “You said it yourself – I’m a romantic.”

“You’re also a crack shot.”

“True. But so are you.”

“Passable, but you’re the marksman.”

“No – I mean you’re a bloody romantic, too. I just don’t think you realised how important… love... was to you until Sherrinford.”

Sherlock regarded John in the quiet which descended then. John’s perception filled every gap in his own. “I didn’t understand, before,” he repeated.

“But you do now.”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Well. You sounded sure. I think you need to talk to Molly. If that’s possible.”

“I want to.”

John picked up Sherlock’s phone from the coffee table and held it out to him.

“Get the hell on with it.”

Chapter Text

London

An hour later.

Molly collided with a solid, dark mass on her front step. With her hood up and her head down against the chilly rain she had been focussed on getting to the corner shop and back as quickly as possible, so she hadn’t seen the poor soul she nearly sent flying. On instinct she grabbed the person’s arm as they staggered backwards.

“Oh, blimey – I’m so…”

Realising it was Sherlock she stopped dead. Their eyes met and Molly registered exhaustion in his and felt a swooping in her tummy. This made her instantly furious and she dropped her hand from his arm. He was still looking at her.

“Forgive me,” he said while righting his stance, his voice low.

Molly noticed his hands at his side. The one not holding an overnight bag fidgeted uncomfortably. Hold on – overnight bag?! Molly let out a tight, strangled sound that might have been a laugh and shook her head, the pitiful figure he was casting only enraging her more. Telling him and his bloody bag where to go was seriously tempting, but not enough.

She slammed her hand into the front of his coat, he raised his to catch the keys as they fell.

“You’re going to explain,” Molly fought to keep her voice steady. “And then...”

Sherlock lifted his gaze from the key to her.

“And then?” The corners of his mouth were down-turned, weariness in his pale features.

“I don’t know.” She pushed past him and stormed down the path to the street.

__________

Molly crashed the cutlery drawer shut without meaning to, clattering forks and spoons into the mugs on the side and almost knocking over a Pot Noodle. Her heart was racing. She braced her arms against the edge of the worktop and took a calming breath, her eyes closed.

Get a grip, woman, she told herself.

Everywhere she turned there were people telling her she was strong. Her GP, the consultant, the Macmillan nurse, every sodding pamphlet she’d had foist upon her. Why, then, did she feel as though all this supposed strength was seeping from her day by day? Every day since the diagnosis (if she was honest with herself, even before then) she could tell she was weakening, wasting, closing down. She was trying her best to be everything her friends needed her to be – to be there and to be their strength – and the fight was there in her head, but it was getting to the point that her heart wasn’t in it.

Could she really do what she intended to?

She blew out a long breath as quietly as she could, knowing he was leaning on the cupboards behind her and nothing got past him. The frantic bubbling of the water in the kettle grew louder, rain hammered on the windows behind the lowered blinds.

His hand came to rest on top of hers where it was balled into a fist on the surface. Molly’s eyes flew open and fixed on his knuckles, his wrist, his long pale fingers enclosing hers, warm and solid and real. She could feel him stood so close, could smell the rain on his coat.

“Molly...”

“No.”

She pulled her hand from under his and span around to face him. Fire rose in her and a thousand jumbled images and words flashed across her mind in a reddish haze, manifesting in a terrible urge in her right arm. She had to force herself not to raise it. She lifted her eyes to his face instead, fully expecting to see the condescending mock-confusion written there and relying on it to infuriate her further. If she couldn’t summon her own strength, she’d take it from him – see how he liked it.

“I don’t want to know whose life you saved by breaking my heart...” Molly heard her voice waver, so she paused and swallowed.

“I didn’t save anyone,” Sherlock said.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, her stomach turned. She gestured to herself exaggeratedly. “Oh no! Do I have blood on my hands now?”

“What? No.”

Molly stepped forward and Sherlock backed away, his right hand flexed towards her but remained at his side. He was trying to stay calm.

“Does the experiment still offer validity, then? Or were you hoping for a second attempt?” she snapped.

“Molly, please...” Sherlock placed himself with the corner of the counter between him and her, his hand on the surface.

“Where would you like me?” Molly continued, casting around herself. “Do we need to do it on the phone? Does it matter that the conditions have altered, given that your test subject doesn’t feel the same as she did in the first experiment?”

Tears stung her eyes as the lie left her lips, her throat felt as if it had scalded to say it.

Sherlock’s face fell. He looked wretched. Molly waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He turned around and walked over to the armchair, took hold of the handle of his bag. While his back was turned Molly hid her face in her hands, pressing her fingers into his eye sockets. Every carefully worded home-truth she had rehearsed and re-rehearsed in every waking moment – and often in her nightmares – dropped from her mind, pushed out by this roaring emotion.

“Your hands could not be cleaner, Molly.” She looked at him when he spoke. “You are the one who saved a life. More than one.”

In his hands, Sherlock held the photograph album she had given him six Christmases before. The sight of it prompted another traitorous response from her body.

“Don’t, Sherlock. Please – don’t.”

“I’m not...”

“Yes you are!” Molly banged her hands down on the worktop. “It won’t work this time – I’m not just some silly girl...”

“I know you’re not.”

The calmer he made his voice the worse Molly felt. “Do you even know you’re doing it?” she fired.

“Doing what?”

“Manipulating me. Everyone! Do you plan it out? Of course you do. You need time to get the right props together.” She gestured to the album, as she did she noticed his thumb was inserted between two of the pages. He was looking at the floor again, seeming to have abandoned whatever ploy he had been about to yank her heartstrings with. Whatever it was, Molly didn’t care.

“I understood very little, I fear.” he said, flicking his eyes up to meet hers and away again.

The suit, the polished shoes, the hair – and that damned coat. He was a presence, a force of nature. Statuesque in every way. Impenetrable. Stood there waiting for his chance to explain how what he had done to her was justifiable, that she had made an invaluable contribution to his bloody work. No one else could have helped him; the spotlight was on her. Molly felt her blood boil.

“You want me to help you understand?” Molly asked him.

“Yes.” He held her gaze this time.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay...”

__________

The expression on Molly’s face was quite unlike her. There was a skittish excitement about her movements that unnerved Sherlock as he watched her walk around the counter and come to stand in front of him. Close enough that he could feel the gentle warmth of her. Here the twist behind his diaphragm, his nerves on edge. He watched her breathing through parted, pale lips.

“Take off the coat,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Take off your coat.”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying with her command, depositing the heavy tweed on the armchair.

“Stand on the rug – in the middle,” she pointed behind him.

“Why?”

“Now.”

They moved together. He took the few steps needed to stand in the centre of the living room space, his feet on the woven rug. Molly went to the wall by the doorway. Sherlock sent her a questioning look. This decisive action was so at odds with the anger he had witnessed inhibiting her and robbing her of her composure moments before. Her brown eyes bored into his for a moment before she flicked the switch and they were both plunged into darkness.

The most complete and total darkness Sherlock had ever experienced in London.

Graveyard shifts.

She needs to sleep when convenient.

The window dressings allow her to close out the real world,

create a virtual night-time.

Why here, in her living room?

Another unsettling twist in his middle. Sherlock shook his head. He widened his eyes and scanned left to right, tuning into his remaining senses to try to build up a mental map of…

“Shut up!”

Molly’s voice was a whip-crack and Sherlock startled. Recovering as quickly as he could he replied, “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking,” Molly snapped. “It’s annoying.”

She was moving, out of his reach - he could hear her footsteps. In any similar situation he might move himself, seek the security of a wall or piece of furniture, but instinct told him to stay where he was. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Do you know what you are, Sherlock Holmes?”

For the second time that day he prepared himself to have his many and varied faults laid before him. He willed himself to be indifferent, to treat the assault as if it were coming from an inconsequential source, to believe that it would cause him no injury. In reality, he dreaded Molly’s next words as much as he had John’s. He also suspected whatever the former had to say would not buoy him as the latter had.

“I...” he went to speak.

“I said shut up.”

Sherlock closed his mouth. Molly was still moving – prowling. He felt exposed in the dark space. Intimidated.

Touché, Molly.

His confidence would usually rise in a situation like this – his faith in himself his best armour. A prickling, hot sensation did surface, but this time he felt no less vulnerable.

“You’re a child,” Molly hissed. “A boy who never grew up. Still clinging to the apron strings of his impressive Mother and terrified of falling into the shadow of any other female. Best to pretend we don’t exist, you’ve deduced...” she infused the word with such venom, “… and if we can’t be avoided then casual manipulation for your own ends is about as much interaction as you can stand.”

Sherlock blinked several times as he absorbed the barrage of words and tried to process them. He was appalled that this was how she saw him. Deeply saddened that she clearly perceived the catastrophic stalling in his emotional development, that he had given that away along with his reluctance to form social bonds. Devastated that she thought he derided women, considered them beneath him or that any woman in his life had been responsible for his failings. These were categoric untruths and, his wonderful Mother aside, the woman radiating hatred towards him now had proven every suspicion he’d ever formed about the infinite capabilities of women. She was still teaching him even at this very moment. He hung his head as Molly continued, though, too overcome with a curiosity that was akin to self-harm to try to stop her.

“Your role models must have been so weak and your formative attachments so flawed that you had to come up with the excuse of having sociopathic tendencies to explain away your incapabilities and – bonus! - make sure no-one tries to get close to you because, let’s face it, who wants the unrequited workload of trying to befriend the un-brefriendable?”

The room dissolved.

Two small boys were running through long grass towards a small copse of trees.

Avast ye, landlubber!

The boys giggled and stumbled as they chased along their path.

I’ll cut you to ribbons!

They were approaching the stone surround of an old well in the shade of the trees.

He saw down into it’s depths.

Heard the echoing drips.

Smelled the dank, mossy stone.

How deep is it?

He felt a wooziness, the dark of the well rising up to meet him.

Will – don’t fall!

He felt the tug of a hand in his and he turned to Victor,

his face was ruddy and smiling.

Chuck a stone in and count how long until you hear the splash. Don’t jump in yourself,

you plonker!

Victor laughed then and he saw him turn and run off into the woodland,

beckoning him to follow…

“No… no...”

Sherlock’s consciousness returned to Molly’s room but his disorientation was total in the blackness.

Child.

Poor role models.

Un-befriendable.

“… not true...”

Sherlock pressed his fingers to his temples, hearing his voice strained and quite unlike his own. A surge of desperation rose within him – he had to make her understand, he wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own. Molly was moving faster than before, he became aware of her position for a fleeting moment and thought he could track where in her prowling circle she was, so he focussed on that to centre himself.

“Oh, so he’s not entirely an idiot,” Molly’s voice came from somewhere entirely unexpected and her tone of derision was cutting. Sherlock fought not to become frantic.

“He realises calling himself a sociopath is bollocks.”

Sherlock winced as if she had spat at him.

“When actually, your social inelegance, frenetic movement, capacity for remembering to the smallest detail and need to acquire knowledge to the point of obsession all point to a high-functioning condition on the Autistic Spectrum. Although no evidence is more compelling than your tendency to speak your mind, in which you have unerring faith, regardless of who’s entire world you tear down with that impossible vocabulary and cut-glass accent!”

Sherlock’s ears rang in the silence which followed this outburst. That bitter feeling swirled in his gut. A part of him bristled and he clung to that – did Molly think she was the first to hurl The A Word at him? But as fast as the thought crossed his mind, so his anger was doused. There instead was still the hot, roiling something, creeping up his spine, clouding his reason and dulling him.

“You use.”

He jumped violently, her breath on his neck. The next time she spoke he made himself dizzy whipping his head around to locate her.

“You’re a user. You treat women like the tools of your trade, while we serve a purpose.”

“No,” he reached towards where he thought she was.

“The woman – the one who died – what did she do for you, Sherlock? How useful was she?”

Sherlock pressed his eyes closed and willed the room to stop spinning, tried with all his strength to master himself – he needed her to listen.

“This is the part where you speak,” the tone of Molly’s voice was alien. “And don’t be boring.”

Sherlock dragged in a deep breath. This wasn’t what he wanted to discuss, but he couldn’t ignore her plea for answers. He had to hope they would be rewarded with a chance. “Irene Adler wasn’t useful, she was a distraction.”

He heard the tone of frustration in his voice.

Softer, Sherlock.

“Oh well,” Molly laughed unnaturally. “If only I’d known that all it took to get Sherlock Holmes into bed was to distract him I could have spent all these years jumping out of broom cupboards or streaking naked across the lab waving my arms above my head!”

“Molly...”

Sherlock sensed the rising mania in her voice. He wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her, reassure her. Beg her. His heart pounded against his ribcage.

“After all...” Molly continued at speed, “… she made the biggest impression on you any woman ever has by taking her clothes off. Christ! It would be such a laughable cliché is if wasn’t such a gigantic disappointment!”

Her vitriol was physically shocking and Sherlock staggered as a scorching flare of emotion ripped through him.

Shame.

His eyes widened. He felt for the first time the heat rising in the skin of his own neck and face. Shame. He was deeply, truthfully, irreparably ashamed. Naming this beast inside him gave it a license to wrap it’s talons around his heart, tearing at what was left of it and causing him such agony that he cried out, wrapped his arms around his chest to hold himself together.

He was standing tall and proud.

Before him - a dancing parade of characters like auditionees,

ready to prostrate themselves at his feet for the judging.

He circled, out of their reach.

He filtered or dismissed their little speeches – only an occasional word or phrase

igniting his interest, even then rarely more than fleetingly.

Thieves and liars, idiots, killers and the last-chancers took their place in his circus ring

and he smiled down on their inadequacy,

his collar turned up against the east wind.

A sharp stinging in his cheek sent him spinning.

He returned his focus to the centre of the ring to see John Watson, seated, doing the pose.

What pose?

The pose with the legs crossed at the knee, hands clasped in your lap.

I don’t do that.

Yes you do – when you’re diagnosing me.

You know what I’m going to say anyway.

No I don’t – and that’s why I find the pose so annoying.

No, I know you.

One hundred percent.

John turned in the chair, when he turned back it was Lestrade looking up at him,

holding up his camera phone, a smirk upon his face.

Then Mrs Hudson, pointing a gun at his chest.

Then Mycroft, so clearly suppressing the urge to call him stupid

behind wounded eyes.

Then her.

And her.

And her and her - every time she turned her face

she turned back again and her eyes bored into him...

Oh, God!

His knees made contact with the floor and he covered his mouth with his hands. He pushed downwards and downwards against the rising tide but it was greater than him and he crumpled under it’s weight, poisonous shame coursing through his veins and causing his tears to scald his skin.

The water was rising up his torso,

cold and suffocating as he held his friend’s exhausted frame

and fought to keep both their heads above water.

He put his hand down at his side, feeling himself about to fall, and his fingers made contact with a smooth surface.

Opening his eyes he saw his hand splayed over the wood of the coffin.

Her name shone in the cold, blue-green, shimmering light.

And still the water rose.

Sherlock squeezed his eyes closed and heard a strange, strangled sound come from his throat. This was it. He was about to drown. A blazing turned his vision blood-red and then white, making him shield his eyes with his forearm where he half lay on the floor.

A pair of strong arms took hold of him, pulled him up and into their embrace and he grabbed on for dear life. He buried his face in Molly’s shoulder and felt her hands sure and steadying across his shoulder blades. She didn’t speak now, not with her voice. She smoothed her hand across the material covering his back, swaying her body gently and him with it. He clung to her - she was the only thing holding him up. Exposed and raw, he could barely breathe past the squeezing tightness in his chest. So this was how he would die. Held by the one person he owed understanding, the words he needed her to hear robbed by the pain, while his unworthy heart gave out.

He wept. He was a pathetic fool and deserved no better than such a fate but – by God and all the angels – he would die, alone, unseen, somewhere barren and hard, rather than be the reason this woman ever felt pain again.

“This is how it feels,” Molly’s voice was a thousand fragments that peppered his skin and sent another chilling wave of shame chasing up and down his spine.

“I know. I know, now.”

Sherlock held Molly as tightly as he could, wanting to put her back together with his bare hands.

“I promise you,” he pulled back from her, gripped her shoulders, his heart beating wildly as if to convince him he wasn’t dying, that he had time left. “I swear to you, I will never again use you or treat you as an experiment.”

He watched Molly’s eyes close, tears spilling from their corners. He took his hands away, horribly aware of the damage he could unwittingly cause her. Emotion swamped him again.

“What happened, Sherlock?”

“Oh, God...” the words broke up, he couldn’t look at her. “You don’t know me.”

She gently lifted his chin to make him. “I do. And I’m here.”

Sherlock listened to her shallow, quickened breath, searched the depths of her shining eyes. She was here. His chance could soon be gone, but it was not gone yet.

“I wanted to hurt you,” she swallowed, her expression twisted. “But something or someone has beaten me to it. Tell me, please.”

Her request was like a distant flare; a hope of redemption. A twist behind his diaphragm. Some small control over that terrible beast. He blew out a long breath, swallowed and sniffed.

He looked around him, finding the photograph album laid partly covered by his overcoat on the chair. He went to collect it and brought it back to sit with Molly on the floor, opened it to the page nearest the back. He carefully removed the photograph of a fine red-setter, stood on point against a background of long grass. He cleared his throat.

“This one,” he offered it to Molly. “Did it come from Mycroft?”

“Yes,” Molly confirmed, taking it, turning it over. She coughed, rubbed her eyes. “He was very difficult about it all.”

Sherlock removed another photograph, this one showing a room full of lights and people – a party – with his Mother central in the frame and leaning down, planting a kiss on Mycroft’s cheek to his obvious chagrin. Sherlock was stood beside him, grinning at the camera. In his hand was a small, blue toy aeroplane.

He turned this image over and held it next to the one in Molly’s hand, comparing the reverse sides. The one in his hand was an off-white colour with the logo of the printing shop watermarked in repeating diagonal lines, visible in the light coming from the lamp Molly had lit on the side table. The one in Molly’s hand was unmarked and bright white.

I monitored you. I was looking after you.

“It’s not a very good fake,” Sherlock said, wiping under his eyes. “But then, this is what I wanted to see. Even if I’d had the slightest suspicion, I would have chosen not to pursue the truth.”

“I don’t understand,” Molly said quietly.

He carefully took the printed image from her, placed it and the one he held between the pages of the album and laid that to one side. He looked at Molly’s hand where it lay on her thigh. Some sense of composure had returned to him in these last few, quieter, moments, but uncertainty remained prominent in his mind. His reason told him he didn’t deserve to seek comfort from her, reminded him that offering it to her would only thinly disguise his selfishness. But his mind showed him an image of taking her hand and the feeling this arose in him was so heavenly that he could not bear to do otherwise.

He placed his fingers carefully over the back of her hand. Relief swept over him as she moved to allow him to curl his fingers around hers. Then, she looked at his face.

“Molly - may I explain?”

She nodded.

They sat together on the floor, side by side, with their backs against the settee, bathed in the candle-like warm glow of the lamp. Molly held his hand in both of hers. They held hands. And he began to talk.

__________

Silent tears slipped down Molly’s face all the time Sherlock was speaking. He passed her the handkerchief from his jacket pocket. As he did, the thought crossed Molly’s mind that he would probably be more comfortable if he took the jacket off. She would also be more comfortable if she took off the boots she had put on to go to the shop. But neither of them seemed willing to let go of the other’s hand to do either of these things. The feel of his fingers between hers, the warmth of his palm and the way he held her hand tightly, his thumb linking into her other one as well. She was transfixed by the solid reality of him, right there next to her. The more he told her, the more amazed she became that he was even still alive, let alone somehow by her side and holding her hand. Her heart ached, every time the feeling grew stronger fresh tears surfaced.

This poor, poor man. Molly had thought she had it all worked out. In all likelihood some of what she had said to him, accused him of, tonight had been close to the truth and while she felt sick to think of what she had done to him, felt numbness inside rather then the satisfaction she had hoped for, she still believed honesty held the greatest value and that she had acted and spoken with it. Stood-up for herself and held him to account. The horror of Sherlock’s reality, though, far exceeded her imagination.

She thought back to that winter when she had got in touch with Sherlock’s parents and his brother to ask for photographs to put in an album for him. The only gift she could think that might be something he didn’t have. It hadn’t been an easy experience at any stage of the process. Sherlock’s Father had answered the phone (Molly had felt guilty using the in-case-of-emergency number Sherlock had given her, but not as guilty as curious) and he had been so lovely. But a little scatterbrained and reluctant to ask his wife if she could help with the task as she was ‘very busy with something or other’. She’d sat with her phone on loud-speaker listening to Radio 4 in the background at the other end for almost ten minutes. When a packet of photographs landed on her doormat a week later Molly had poured over every one. She tried to gather evidence that his genius Mother – according to Google – had been cold or cruel, that his dim Father had been neglectful or absent. Something had caused their sons to become infuriatingly, tragically distant from their true feelings and she wanted to find it in show-offish parties, strained family picnics and forced poses. She hated to admit it, but she found none of these things nor anything else to give her clues. The only strangeness she encountered came from Mycroft himself, whose dismissal of her and her request was entirely expected based on what little Sherlock had told her about him and how hard it had been to get as far as the inbox of his secretary’s secretary. The fact he sent her anything at all came as a shock, the photo itself was unfathomable. She’d included it purely because she imagined Sherlock might find some comfort in it in the way she hoped he would all of the other images of his seemingly happy childhood. Of course she also harboured other hopes for the giving of that gift, but they had been all but trampled, reduced to a lingering confusion to go with the ghost of his lips on her cheek.

She’d felt no closer to understanding his family or Sherlock himself. Now, having heard the heart-wrenching story from it’s awful beginning and as far as the horror of Eurus murdering five people in front of him, she realised no amount of research could have brought her anywhere near the truth. If she had asked him outright she would have taken his word as gospel and even he, the master of cold, hard fact, had managed to bury the truth in the depths of his psyche, deeper even than the unfathomable reaches of his mind palace.

The human brain was no mystery to her, but the mind probably always would be.

She stroked his knuckles, watched Sherlock watching her.

“Eurus forced John, Mycroft and me to play her games,” his nose wrinkled as if in disgust and he shook his head a little. “We believed that if we did she would spare innocent lives. Twice she showed us that she would willingly and with no remorse go back on her word.”

He looked up at her. “When it became apparent she had set her sights on you I could not take the risk that she wouldn’t call my bluff on that third occasion if I refused to do as she bid me. She told me only hearing those words from your lips would stop her. I believed I was saving your life.”

“Why me?”

“James Moriarty told her about you. About... us.  I thought Eurus wanted me to show her my capacity for cruelty, my willingness to solve a case regardless of the heart I would break in the process. At the same time laying bare my weakness, my inability to distance myself from the work, my head from my heart, to tell what was real from what was trickery...”

“Oh, Sherlock.”

“What I didn’t understand straight away was that she also wanted – perhaps only wanted – was for me to show her my capacity for love,” he held Molly’s gaze. “Because if I showed her that I was capable of love, in all it’s forms, that I already knew it, that my heart could respond to another, she would know that I would save her despite everything she had done.”

Molly felt her heart-rate climb, a light-headedness came and went, she squeezed his hand tighter and he laid his other over hers.

“You saved my life, Molly.” he said. “When you made me reckon with myself you gave me the greatest worth. And that chance to save my sister.”

She dare not hope, tried to push down the flighty feeling in her tummy. “How? How did I do that?” she heard her voice shaking.

“You asked me to say what I was forcing you to admit. You made me admit what I thought I was merely asking you to say. You made me understand.”

Molly held her breath. Sherlock hadn’t so much as offered to touch her apart from holding her hands while they had sat there. But his eyes told her he wanted to be closer, his focus and his body were directed towards her and she had mirrored him. Their brows were only inches apart when he said it.

“I do love you, Molly.”

It was little more than a whisper but he was so close she could have understood his words from the feel of his breath on her skin. Such a quiet, gentle moment but the power of it was overwhelming, visceral. Molly tipped forward to touch her forehead to his for stability. And just to be touching. It was a sweet relief, like a gigantic weight being lifted from her.

“I love you,” he told her again.

She laid her cheek against his, her lips at his jawline. He smelled divine, the heat of his skin was overpowering. Molly wanted more. The weight she had carried around with her these last months – longer, since she had first laid eyes on this man – dropped away leaving a gaping vacuum inside her. With indecent speed, desire rushed in to fill it and she felt an unbridled desperation for him.

“Kiss me,” she breathed into the corner of his mouth, hearing her own wantonness. There was no room for embarrassment now, though, she was acting entirely on an instinct which had waited a hell of a long time to be allowed to take over. He loved his friends, truly, he’d made her cry with the strength of it, but she had to know he wasn’t talking about that same kind of love now. She swayed into him as he shifted, opened her eyes longing to see desire in his.

His irises were a wide, stormy sea, the pupils dilated and there was a sinfully beautiful colour high over his cheekbones. There was a pause.

“I… I don’t think I know how to just kiss you,” he admitted, his voice deep and loaded with a forced control that made Molly’s stomach drop despite what he was saying. “I promised you I wouldn’t use you as an experiment again. I’m afraid I might do that now.”

She laid her hand on his cheek. He sighed, his eyes rolling closed. Slowly, he turned his lips into her palm and kissed her there, pressing her hand to his face with his own. Molly felt confidence ripple through her and take over. She touched her lips to his cheek, the corner of his eye, his furrowed brow. He sighed again and Molly heard it snag on his vocal cords, the delicious sound of his heart battling to get past his reason.

“Don’t think.” she said in between kisses, closing her eyes so she could better feel the revelation of his skin under her lips.

Pulling her hand from his face he turned sharply and caught her mouth with his. Molly’s heart burst. Softness and warmth, fire and pure energy. Her simplest and most wishful fantasies made real. Her instruction had opened a door for him – a floodgate – nobody kissed like this to find out what it was like; kisses like this only happened when nothing else would do.

Perhaps they should only ever have communicated non-verbally. Perhaps their most truthful exchanges had been. Help, deeds, actions, shared glances, pointed looks, cups of coffee. The occasional hard slap.

Molly fought to keep a giddy smile from breaking the mood. Chasing up the euphoria was that liquid want, so she used her hands to tell him. She splayed her palms over his collarbones, frustrated by the layers of fabric between her and him. She pushed her thumbs inside the open collar of his shirt, resting them purposefully on his pulse-points. She could feel there the physical effect she was having on him and her stomach plummeted as another beautiful, barely-there sound in his throat let her know he knew exactly what she was doing . She parted her lips, deepened the kiss, accompanied by a dragging in of breath through his nose. With the very tip of her tongue, she touched his lower lip.

Their eyes opened and she smiled against his mouth. She watched his eyes flick fractionally from side to side, burning with the desire she had always wanted to see but even more powerfully beautiful in the flesh than she could have ever dreamed. They were both still for a moment; on the threshold of a new world.

Molly imagined Sherlock thought she was the experienced one in this situation. What he didn’t realise was that, until now, she had never experienced even the possibility of something beyond the physical or comfortable – of fulfilment. For Sherlock, acting on lust, she believed, wasn’t new. That wasn’t new for her either, but he didn’t see that they were on equal footing despite their very different experiences of relationships. Neither of them wanted to repeat past mistakes, neither wanted to make new ones. Each of them could claim to have hurt the other. That wasn’t going to hold her back. Could she take him with her?

“You can’t know, Sherlock.” His eyes focussed dead on hers and she knew she’d hit home. “I don’t know, either.” She picked up his hand in hers and laid it flat to her chest, over her heart. “But I feel.”

Sherlock looked at his hand on her front. The faintest smile appeared on his lips. He looked up at her through dark lashes and Molly thought he must have felt the skip in her heartbeat. Then he lifted both his hands and slowly took her face in between them, so carefully – like she were some precious thing. He leant forward, softly kissed her forehead, the corner of her eye, the tip of her nose, her cheekbone.

“Molly Hooper,” he said.

Chapter Text

London

Later that night.

Sherlock awoke with his lower back and neck aching. He tensed for a moment, didn’t immediately recognise his surroundings. He looked down and it all came back to him. Molly was asleep against his chest, his arm was curled around her back and her legs were tangled with his.

They were both sat on the living room floor, him leaning on the settee, her on him. Her breathing was deep and regular. Sherlock felt utterly peaceful, his own heart-rate steady; he realised this was the first time he had awoken in a calm state for quite some time. He yawned, tipping his head back onto the cushions. He looked at the clock on the wall – 1:00am. Molly stirred, Sherlock wrapped his arms around her, kissed the top of her head and then rested his cheek there until she sighed and stilled.

A prickling sensation made itself known in his gut. Not unlike how he had felt holding Rosie those first few times.

Don’t worry, Mary had said.

Don’t think, Molly said.

He closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the to the blissful state of acting on intuition now as he had then. He’d always believed in doing so, always trusted it in his work. He knew, though, that there was no small task ahead of him to equate this side of himself, a part he had tried his damnedest to bury, with his life outside of this refuge. Doubt which was a swirling, toxic mist hovered at the edges of his mind.

Sherlock sighed, shifted himself somewhat awkwardly, so that he could loop his arm under Molly’s knees. Carefully, and with some difficulty owing to their position, he lifted her, stood and laid her down on the settee. He removed her boots and covered her with a blanket. He placed his hand on her back as she turned onto her side, sighed and settled again. They were both exhausted; jaded by their separate battles.

He went to use the bathroom, looking quickly away when he caught his reflection in the mirror above the sink. The glance was long enough to prompt the thought that if Molly could look at him in the state he was in, that he had been in since Mary died – let alone after what he had put her through - and still listen to him, still touch him… kiss him… well, it defied logic or explanation. Certainly at this hour. He scrubbed his hands over his face, massaged the ache in his temples.

He returned to the living room. Molly still slept soundly where he had placed her. He took off his shoes and jacket, put them with his coat. Then he sat back down on the floor and laid his head on top of his arms on the settee next to Molly’s head. He took in the peacefulness of her features, his heart aching. Then he slept.

__________

Molly woke with a start, realising she was crying again. She looked around – she was on her settee, a lamp still lit. She rubbed her hands over her face, scrubbed away tears, then jumped as she felt something move beside her.

Sherlock was laid fast asleep on his folded arms next to her, leant in what must have been a terribly uncomfortable position. In her sleep addled, anxious state it still took another moment to remember what had happened. When she did, a fresh wave of tears came over her she bit her knuckle to stop herself making a noise. She looked at him again – how could it possibly be real? He sighed in his sleep as she shifted carefully to face him. He hummed dozily. As gently as she could, she slid her fingers into his dark curls. Despite what had happened between them that night it still felt illicit. Her tummy felt fluttery but her heart ached, her chest tight with a panicky discomfort. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and blew it out for as long as she could. Breathed in, and out, focussed on the silk feel of his hair and just how amazing it was to finally do something she had imagined doing – and imagined never doing – so many times before. She pressed her lips to his head then, needing to be closer.

He moved again. She pulled back, pulled her hand away, watched as he raised his head, blinked several times and screwed up his face against the light.

“Sorry – I didn’t mean to wake you,” Molly said, tucking her hands under the cushion that was her pillow, shrinking into herself.

Sherlock focussed on her face and as his features relaxed a look came over them that Molly had never seen before in him or anyone. The angle of his face, the relaxed but serious set of his beautiful mouth, heavy eyelids, those incredible eyes luminescent – yet the look in them was dark, private, just for her. She was the only person who mattered. She was the only other person in the world.

He raised his hand and wiped away her tears with gentle fingertips. He didn’t speak, but kept his eyes on hers. He held out his hand then and she placed hers into it. He pulled her gently up to sitting as he stood. Then he sat where she had been laid and held his arms open to her. Molly arranged herself with her legs over his and rested her head against his shoulder and neck, his hand coming to cradle her face. He had opened the second button of his shirt and rolled up the sleeves to his elbow. The scent of his skin surrounded her. Worries about pushing him or adding any more shock to his already ravaged system disappeared from Molly’s mind as she reacted to his embrace. She slid her hand up his front and rested in on the exposed skin below his SC joints. Slowly, she spread her fingers, pushing them under the fabric. His chest rose and fell as he sighed and he rested his cheek on her head, his arm curling tighter around her back.

Molly cursed herself again – for the thousandth time – for the tears which were unstoppable. Sherlock held her tight, as she had him.

Chapter Text

London.

The following day.

Sherlock arrived at his brother’s office after his parents. An assistant looked somewhat frightened as he scuttled past, clearly relieved his domestic-showdown facilitating duties were discharged now that the final attendee had arrived.

Sherlock let himself into the room, the three occupants looking at him as one. His Mother continued to speak, turning back to her eldest son seemingly without breaking her train of thought. Her voice was barely raised but Sherlock still felt the urge to sink into his coat.

Mycroft was seated, as was their Father.

Sherlock removed his coat and hung it on the stand, found himself at momentary loss as to where to place himself in this setting.

His Mother was still speaking. “I’m not asking how you did it, idiot boy. I’m asking how could you.”

Sherlock saw his Father glance at her. Sherlock had spoken to him on the phone as he and his Mother had been making their way to London. Evidently this had not had the desired effect. Sherlock caught his brother’s eye. Pictured the young boy, caught with his hand in the sweetie jar. Only this time, attrition might take longer and come at a far higher personal price.

Sherlock leant back on the door frame with his arms folded across him, opposite his brother. He felt bone-weary and he suspected he wasn’t alone. Scoured from the inside out and longing for the balm which was, for him, Molly’s presence. For his brother?

Sherlock observed Mycroft’s hand, his clenched fingers, barely leaving his face. He was presenting his best defence but he knew it was weakened.

“… she remains our daughter,” their Father was now stood, leaning over Mycroft’s desk.

“And my sister,” Mycroft confirmed.

Caring isn’t an advantage, Sherlock.

No, Mycroft. In that case we must learn to live with our limitations.

“Then you should have done better,” their Mother’s voice was hard with grief.

“He did his best,” Sherlock spoke for the first time, looking at his brother.

Moriarty.

Of course I forgive you.

Mycroft exhaled slowly. Sherlock had been surprised to find that the new understanding he had acquired gave him not the towering sense of superiority he was accustomed to, but rather a quiet sense of – if not strength - then purpose. A mutual reliance which wasn’t a burden. Their parents were now talking of visiting Eurus. Sherlock straightened.

“She won’t talk,” Mycroft argued carefully, resignation in his voice and his features. “She won’t communicate with anyone in any way...”

In any way.

“… she has passed beyond our view.”

True every linguistic exchange they had shared with their sister had been laced with danger. Despite his sorrow, Sherlock felt relief that his parents would not endure that.

“There are no words that can reach her now,” Mycroft concluded.

I am lost, help me brother.

Save my life before my doom.

I am lost, without your love.

Save my soul.

Seek my room.

If you need anything – anything at all – you can have me.

Friends protect people.

I’m here, Eurus. I’m, just an idiot, but I’m on the ground. I can bring you home.

Home.

Not 221B Baker Street. John, Mary, Rosie, Mrs Hudson.

Not Scotland Yard. Greg.

Not Bart’s. Not her flat. Molly.

Not Musgrave Hall. Not the cottage. Not this room. Not Sherrinford.

Mycroft. Their Mother. Their Father. Him. And Eurus.

Not words. Music.

“Sherlock?”

He looked up as his Mother spoke.

“Well? You were always the grown up. What do we do now?”

This time he didn’t look at Mycroft. As his Mother’s words sank in he realised that he would never again feel belittled by his brother. Their competition – their game – had been entirely in their heads. He, Sherlock, was neither inferior nor infallible. Neither was Mycroft omniscient nor heartless. They each had their roles to play. They were only human.

Sherlock stood up from the wall and stepped towards the desk, his plan already formulated.

Chapter Text

London.

The next day.

The pre-dawn London light was cool and clear, but Sherlock knew a sea-fret would be building.

4:15am

He replaced his watch on the bedside table. Molly’s bedroom had the same total blackout window treatment as the main living area, but she purposefully left them slightly raised knowing that he preferred to set his body-clock by the London sky. Small gestures carried such weight. Very recently, this realisation compounded. There seemed to be unending cause for his contrition.

He stretched his legs under the sheets, looked, as he often did, at the impressionistic painting of a shoreline on the wall opposite the bed. Ran his fingers over the patchwork of the bedspread.

Molly Hooper’s bedroom.

I won’t use you any more.

He made to walk the few steps down the carpeted hall to the spare room.

It’s not using me, Sherlock.

Take advantage, then. I will not allow myself to do that again.

Molly took a step towards him, laid her hand on his chest.

Sherlock. Maybe I’d like to take advantage of you.

He raised an eyebrow. In confusion. She rewarded him with a knowing look, took his hand and pulled his sorry, pyjama-clad arse into her bed.

She had meant she wanted him to hold her. Truth be told, he had felt relief, for two reasons. Chiefly, because he had discovered that to have her pressed against him and – dear Lord – to have her skin upon his gave him the deepest sense of calm he had ever experienced. Of course she had lain her hands on him for medical purposes, and occasionally for educational ones, but on those occasions he had attributed his reaction to his confidence in her abilities.

Moron indeed, John.

Secondly, though, and to his shame, he was relieved that she hadn’t expected him to have sex with her. Not because he had no desire to - quite the opposite. He was, truthfully, intimidated by the strength of his physical want of her and the speed with which it arose in him when they held one another. Like a floodgate being opened, his mind seemed to be gathering up every last detail he had ever noticed about her face and her body and fusing these with the highly reactive emotions pumping unregulated around his system. He could not deny being powerfully excited by it. Compelled.

But he’d felt similarly before, about another woman.

Irene Adler had fit perfectly into his vision of himself. The master manipulator, the ethereal criminal, never truly in the wrong but about as far from ordinary as it was possible to be. She’d provided the perfect distraction, a way to satisfy his burning curiosity with the added sublime poetry of their intellectual similarity and shared passion for the dangerously illicit. She set the stage by saving his life, their balletic performance culminating in his returning of the favour and in their singular night together. He had watched her walk away, back to her own life, sure in the knowledge that they had both exploited the fact of their connection for their own purposes; they needed the possibility of one another, but not necessarily each other. He didn’t regret her - he’d learnt.

Arousal may be chemical, lust the instinctual result, but he could not lie to himself and pretend that he did not understand the danger of entangling the heart with the base needs. Could no longer hide from the fact that Irene Adler felt for him more deeply than he had been capable of in return and yet this knowledge had failed to alter his course of action.

Love is a dangerous disadvantage.

In a criminal, yes. In a Consulting Detective, perhaps. In him, no. Not now.

Love was real and pure and true and devoid of rhetoric or metaphor or theatre. He must not make these same mistakes with Molly. The crashing realisations he had endured in the previous days had shaken him to the core, torn that perfectly constructed self-image to shreds and scattered it to the wind. He looked at Molly Hooper and saw a way to rebuild, but he was terrified. How did he disassociate sex with what it had represented to him his whole adult life and instead enact it out of love? How without using her to find the answer?

So to simply lie next to her through the night was a blessing, and he counted it, patiently.

Sherlock looked at Molly now. Her face restful, her hair would have been a pre-Raphaelite tumble across the pillow if it weren’t for the fact that the simple tangle of it was far more beautiful in it’s reality than that. He looked over her face, her neck, her shoulders, her skin, her flesh, her veins, searching for how he could help her, for what help she needed. All he could see was her loveliness. Her hand lay next to his face on the pillow, the fingers curled and relaxed in sleep. He brushed his lips over her finger tips, instinctively. The action took him a little by surprise.

Molly began to stir and reached for him. Moved her hand over the flesh of his bare shoulder, down his chest and onto his ribcage. As if she had been seeking it out, her fingers lingered over the scar-tissue left by the bullet wound and subsequent surgery. Sherlock smiled. Even half asleep she still examined him.

She moved then, nestled her warm cheek on his front, him shifting to accommodate her, stroking her auburn hair from her face and pressing his lips to her head.

“I have to go,” he said against her hair.

“No… you don’t have to.”

He hummed. “The helicopter will already be on it’s way.”

“Get the next one.”

He chuckled. “They’re not Hackney cabs.”

“They bloody are to your family.”

Sherlock smiled, wrapped Molly in his arms, filed away every sensation to the last tingling nerve of the feel of her body against his, kissed her again.

“It will be okay, Sherlock. You’re doing the right thing.”

He hadn’t admitted to himself that he was nervous until she said that.

Chapter Text

Sherrinford

The following day.

“Our sister has not lost her abilities, Sherlock,” Mycroft handed him the pass card.

Sherlock considered his brother’s analogy. “I believe she may have gained some,” he replied.

Mycroft pushed his hands into his pockets, exhaling and thinning his lips, still analysing Sherlock.

“Tread carefully,” he warned.

__________

Two notes. Two strokes of the bow across two strings, and his sister had seen into his soul. Sherlock was impressed and fascinated and intimidated and made vulnerable and compelled and heartened by the woman sat on the other side of the glass, facing away from him. Away from the world. As he checked the tuning of the instrument in his hands, he wondered at Eurus’ profession that music only held beauty in correctness, accuracy. She had perceived Sherlock’s most intimate experience, the closest he had ever come to allowing his body to overtake his mind in adulthood (up to that date) in just two notes of a melody she had never seen written.

They both of them, Mycroft too, were living by rules which they were all secretly desperate to break. The difference, Sherlock realised, between him and his siblings, was that he tended to allow his deviations to be witnessed.

The melody in his mind had come to him as he travelled away from his sister, away from Musgrave and towards his parent’s new home. Stilted and stalling and sometimes flowing it had penetrated his consciousness in the few days hence as he thought back over what had gone between his sister and him, what it had taken to find the light within her. When he had collected his violin and other necessities from the destruction that was 221B, he had brought a few sheets of manuscript paper, thinking to capture the piece, concerned his mental capacity might be so adversely affected by the emotion he was struggling to control, that it might slip from his memory. In the end, he hadn’t needed to write it down at all. Besides, correctness didn’t come into it. In this instance, transcending right and wrong – good and evil – was the very essence.

He played the first few bars before pausing. Looked up at his sister’s back. She didn’t flinch. He continued, picturing her face in his mind and how she had clung to him, the desperation in her features as she had told him where John was, how to stop the water, her words rushing and feverish. The lost, sorry little girl in her voice.

Eurus stood. Sherlock froze.

She turned around, staring at him, her lips parted. He wished he could know exactly what she was thinking, but he felt he had a good enough idea.

Who you really are, Eurus.

Chapter Text

London.

A day later.

Molly flopped down onto her sofa, a carton of Singapore rice on her lap, exhausted from a long day at work on little sleep. She had slept better when Sherlock had been with her, but even the quite unbelievable fact of his presence hadn’t been enough for her mind to fully relax and she’d woken up anxious or tearful a couple of times. Last night, alone again, it had been even worse. She sighed, plonked the carton down on the table. She wasn’t hungry. There wasn’t room in her stomach for food between the nervous fluttering and sinking dread underneath. It was a roller-coaster of blissful highs and terrifying lows which made her feel permanently sick.

She pulled her phone out from under her and opened the message thread to Sherlock. With nothing new to pour over, her thumb flicked the screen downwards several times and she began reading over their previous conversations. She smiled to herself, might she break this habit now she had him? A stab in her gut made her shift uncomfortably – did she have him?

Her eyes landed on a message from not long after Mary’s funeral.

13.12.16

Me: You forgot your coat. Shall I drop it over to Baker Street? Mxxx

Sherlock: No.

Sherlock: I will need you to conduct a medical examination:

05:01:17

12:30

3 Iris Avenue, SE10

Please bring ambulance and coat then. SH

Me: OK. Are you OK? Mxxx

Sherlock: Don’t get attached.

It would only drown you. SH

05.01.17

Me: I’m at Caedwaller’s. What can I do?

Seeing this message reminded her, and she switched to another thread containing just one message:

[Unknown]: It’s me.

They said you’re here.

Thank you.

Please wait.

You may be needed.

Molly thought back to that strange time. That December evening when he forgot his coat. Sherlock had rung the doorbell late in the evening – nothing strange about that. He had looked peaky and dishevelled which was unlike him but then if he felt anything like she did – though, she hoped, not ill – she could hardly talk.

She had been distracted, her Mother’s words from their phone conversation reverberating around her head, her tone one of cold indifference when she had confirmed that Molly’s list of symptoms matched to a tee those her Dad had suffered with at the beginning. Molly had felt as though she was at the top of a slippery slope; she had lost Mary, she suspected Sherlock was about to lose John and without the anchor of his love Sherlock would probably drift away from them all for good. Poor, darling Rosie would go from having five adoring grown-ups in her bonkers but brilliant urban family to three, possibly two if the distance grew between John and Baker Street – and where would that leave Molly? Propping up the ex-best friend of the man she loved as he spiralled into oblivion, with Rosie the only person who might notice if she suddenly disappeared. It was all down hill from here.

It hadn’t come as a surprise to her that he’d had a favour to ask – would she take the box of things he had brought with him to John’s flat? Bits and bobs John must have left behind when he moved out of Baker Street, Sherlock had said. Molly had glanced inside and couldn’t see much that was worth taking to one’s new marital home – an old alarm clock, some CDs, a walking stick he clearly didn’t need. But then, how would she know? It had twisted her insides when Sherlock said he was just clearing out, tying up loose ends; he was clearly getting the message. Perhaps literally – maybe John had asked for the last of his things in that note?

She’d been too tired, too full up of upset and anxiety that night to worry about it. Her sore throat had been fairly distracting too, her eyes equally dry and painful.

Sherlock had dashed through to use the loo and dashed back out of the front door straight after, throwing a cursory ‘bye’ over to where she had been placing the box out of the way on the far side of the living room. Still, so far so ordinary. Spotting his coat on the hook on the back of the bathroom door hadn’t concerned her either. There was often an item or two of his about the place; enough to keep her on her toes on the increasingly rare occasion she brought someone back.

But as she had settled down early for bed – she’d been on Rosie duty the following day – the niggle she’d had since he left surfaced. He hadn’t pulled her up on looking rough, hadn’t asked if she’d got a cold, if she was taking the maximum dosage of analgesics. He hadn’t pointed out that her hair was ready for cutting or that her nails were bitten too far down or her slippers weren’t the colour she usually wore on Saturdays. And that really was strange.

She hadn’t heard from him after that, hadn’t so much as laid eyes on him until she turned up at the address he had given her having not the faintest idea what to expect. She thought Sherlock would answer the door of the unassuming house in the quiet street lined with family homes and enlighten her – as much as he ever did. So when John had opened it, Molly had been completely thrown. Her surprise turned to shock when she laid eyes on Sherlock and had compounded into cold dread when John told her Sherlock was using drugs. She had hoped beyond hope to find no such evidence, as had happened before, hoped to give him a talking to for being selfish and reckless and dragging them all into another one of his games when they were all feeling as shit as he was. What she had actually found on examining him had broken her heart, she’d not been able to look at him let alone speak, had to wait until she’d had some fresh air and time to turn her grief into anger.

All she could think about was Rosie. Soon, she might only have had her Dad and it wouldn’t be because he and Sherlock were being wilfully distant.

Molly had been worse than useless at work the rest of that day. The six o’clock news had been on the screens in the concourse as she marched past at home-time and she’d stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what had happened. She didn’t even think, she ran straight for the taxi rank and barked at the driver to get her across town as fast as possible.

Several hours of waiting in a chilly corridor followed, her stomach churning with panic and rumbling with hunger. Of course, no one would tell her anything. Late into the night, through the glass panels of the door near to where she was sitting, she saw John, She’d jumped up and ran over to him, calling out his name.

“Molly? Oh God, I’m so sorry – I didn’t even think...” he said.

“I saw on the telly. Is he okay?”

“You know as well as I do he isn’t. Better than me, in fact.” John rubbed the back of his head.

“But what happened here? I have a friend who works in the psych-med department and she’s mentioned some… odd stuff.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” John said, shaking his head. He passed his had over his face and Molly saw his bruised, bloody knuckles.

“Oh God,” she said. “Is he all right?”

“He needs to get out of here, at any rate. They’re discharging him.”

Molly felt relieved. “Bet that was an internal battle for someone.”

“Can you imagine?” John smiled ruefully, catching Molly’s eye.

“Has Harry got Rosie?” Molly asked.

“Yes. I should get back,” John looked at his watch, biting his lip.

“You go. I’ll make sure he gets home okay. And I’ll check the flat over,” Molly offered.

“His brother will have seen to that. The place will be cleaner than it’s ever been.”

“Sherlock will hate that.”

“Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson. Can you stay… at the flat?”

A disturbing set of images flashed across Molly’s mind and she felt herself flush. “Um… yes. Yes. I suppose so. I’m in at 6am tomorrow, though, I swapped a shift.”

“I’ll come over then with Rosie, we’ll work something out after that.”

Had Sherlock and John made up, then? Molly wondered. God, she hoped so. Sherlock needed John; they needed each other and would only need each other more as time went on.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” John pulled his phone from his pocket.

“He knows I’m here. He asked me to wait – said I might be needed,” Molly quite suddenly felt absolutely exhausted, emotion perilously close to the surface. “What did he mean, John? I don’t get it. I’m so tired...”

John took hold of the tops of her arms, rubbed them. She pressed her fingers to her eyes.

“I’m sorry Molly,” he said. “We’ve both been learning on you too much since… Mary,” he shushed her with a look when she went to protest. “We’re both idiots, that’s about the only thing I’m sure of just now. That and Sherlock having taken his Mystic Meg crap a bit far.”

“What?” she’d asked, none the wiser.

“Never mind. Look, I’ll take him home.”

“No! No. It’s fine, I’m fine,” Molly smiled as naturally as she could. “You go home to Rosie. Give her a kiss from me.”

“Will do,” John said after scrutinising her for another moment. “After today I’m going to struggle to let her out of my sight until I regain my trust in the healthcare sector.”

Molly hadn’t fully understood what John meant – what had happened – until later. Thinking now of how far Sherlock had almost gone for John’s sake was like a blow to her chest. The lengths he would go to to protect his friends was incredible, endlessly endearing, and it boiled Molly’s blood.

“The one person he thought didn’t matter to me, was the one person who mattered the most.”

Sherlock had spent years holding Molly at arms length. Granted he never let her go, but he never let her in either, not even close. Not until now. But still Molly worried whether he would choose to keep open this channel to his true feelings long enough to come to terms with them. And not just where she was concerned, although of course she longed down to her foundations to keep him, all of him, everything she had ever wanted. If by some miracle, for Molly did not underestimate the challenges ahead of them both, he stayed at her side, what scheme could she expect his over-protectiveness to come up with next?

She put her aching head in her hands. By protecting her he blocked her, smothered her, de-valued her. If he really believed she was capable, trusted her, he needed to let her prove herself – step up and be at his side. She reopened her texts to Sherlock.

Sherlock: Don’t get attached.

It would only drown you. SH

Fear of drowning didn’t hold Molly back; she was already in as deep as was humanly possible with this man, she had been for years, and she was still here.

She scrolled to the end of the messages and opened the text bar.

Me: Are you back in London? Mxxx

Barely a moment…

Sherlock: Just.

Are you OK? SH

Me: Stay with me?

Sherlock: On my way.

Chapter Text

London

A few days later.

Sherlock stood at Molly’s bedroom door. She looked up and smiled at him.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked, holding out the one in his hand.

“No thank you – just a hot water, please.”

“Oh. Ah...” he said as he took in what she was doing.

Molly watched a cloud pass over his expression, extinguishing the clarity which had been there a moment before.

“I am sorry, Molly”, he said.

“What for?”

“You’re having an operation tomorrow, and the days leading up to it have been entirely taken over by me.”

“It’s okay,” Molly waved away his apology.

“No – it isn’t.” Sherlock came over to where she was standing over her small suitcase, laid open and half packed on the bed. He put the wine glass on the dresser and took her hand. “I’m here for you, Molly – whatever you need, just say.”

“You.”

Molly smiled as she looked into his eyes.

“I haven’t been here. I’ve been distracted…” he worried.

“With good reason...” Molly said. “It’s a balance, Sherlock – we both have our battles. Our dragons to slay.”

A short breath huffed out of him as if in surprise and he shook his head a little. Molly was feeling weaker by the minute, but Sherlock was looking at her now like she was a marvel.

“I know you can, Molly Hooper.”

She leant into his hand as he cradled the side of her face, tears springing to her eyes and the knots in her stomach tightening. Hating herself for her stupid selfishness. Over a week since she had crashed into him on her doorstep, since she had torn him apart and he had told her each and every despicable wrong he had suffered at the hands of his sister. He’d come back to Molly every day he had been on the mainland and she had been desperate to show him that she wouldn’t interfere or hold him back. She’d listened as he criticised his brother’s plans for Eurus’ security, worried about his Mum and Dad, poured over the deeds of his ancestral home, documents and plans which meant little to her. The concept of that place churned her stomach, but she buried her concerns so she could support him, give him what peace of mind she could. She updated John when Sherlock didn’t, fielded John’s enquiries about the future of the flat in Baker Street after overhearing a strained phone conversation between Sherlock and Mrs Hudson which Sherlock had clearly found painful. She removed herself to other rooms or waited for him to seem lost in thought before she took medication or spoke on the phone to her surgeon. She tried not to wake him in the night, however tempting it was to have him wipe away her tears, however deep the comfort was when he held her. She resisted, but it was hard. It always had been.

Molly hadn’t set out to push what was left of her family away. But she knew she had. The gutting sorrow that had ripped her apart when her Dad died infected her whole world and sent her bolting for the anonymity of London, night shifts and communing with the dead. She’d found her place. Unseen, inconsequential, free to keep relationships shallow and manageable and her family and all the heart-wrenching memories, resentments and expectations that came with them at arms length. She ended things that got too close, punished herself for chasing things she ought to want but didn’t. She even poured her heart and soul in to loving a man who would never love her back. And all the time, what had her stupid, weak and broken heart craved?

Closeness.

Molly dropped her head down, hot tears falling to the floor.

“You just don’t have to do it alone,” Sherlock crouched to look into her eyes, chasing her lowered gaze and not letting her escape.

She cried then, he pulled her against his chest and held her together while she broke apart. A great torrent of pure fear poured from her – only the second time she had given in to it and her mind supplied her with the sound of shattering china to remind her. She clung to Sherlock’s back and he gathered her up even closer.

“What do I do?” His voice was thin and breaking, which made Molly cry even harder.

“I don’t know...” she spluttered. “I don’t know.”

He held her for a long moment, then Molly felt his chest expand sharply as he inhaled. “It’s okay,” he said with more strength. “We will figure it out.”

“Oh God!” Molly cried in frustration, pressing her face into the fabric of Sherlock’s shirt, the solidity of his muscle – his presence. She dragged in a breath through her nose and tried with everything she had to get a hold of herself.

“I wish Mary was here,” she said.

“Mary?”

Sherlock sounded so shocked that Molly laughed. She pulled back just enough to be able to look at him without leaving the safety of his arms.

“She was the only person I told. The only person I talked to about most things,” Including you, she omitted. “She was my coping strategy.”

“Coping strategy?” Sherlock repeated.

“Yes. Like John is to you.”

“John? John Watson?”

At this Molly laughed properly which only seemed to deepen the creases in Sherlock’s brow. “Yes John Watson – who the bloody hell do you think I meant?”

“John’s my best friend, not my ‘coping strategy’ as you call it. If by that you mean the person who helps you in your darkest hours - when no-one else can – for me, that’s you, Molly.”

“What?”

“You know, my brother always said I could have been a philosopher – so how about this for an existential musing?” Sherlock said, his eyes alight. “Your damned coping strategy shot me, and who saved my life?”

“Mary did – she called the ambulance.”

“Nope. It was you. You slapped me - again – thank you for that – and told me to fall on my back, preventing me from haemorrhaging – you warned me about controlling the shock – which did hurt, by the way, right again...”

“Sherlock, you utter loony, what on Earth are you on about – I wasn’t there!”

Sherlock fixed his eyes on hers.

“Oh, but you were...” he pointed to his temple. “In here.”

Molly smiled in wonder, felt emotion rising again, but this time she felt stronger in the face of it. Sherlock leant forward and kissed her. When he broke away, she wiped her hand under her nose.

“Sorry...” she said, giggling self-consciously as he brought his knuckle to his cheek to remove whatever fluid she had covered him in.

She flushed. He smiled - the effect was staggeringly beautiful and Molly felt a great expanding feeling in her chest which helped immensely. They let go of each other and Molly took a couple of tissues from the box on the dresser. Blowing her nose, she watched Sherlock, his hands on his hips.

“Tell me. Please,” he said.

Molly took a deep breath. “Thyroid cancer. Partially metastasised in the lymph nodes.”

“Lobectomy?”

“Full thyroidectomy,” she confirmed

Sherlock pressed his lips together, she heard his exhale through his nose. “Radiotherapy?”

“More than likely.”

He paused. “Your Father?”

“Complications, but yes,”

Sherlock came to her and rubbed her upper arms before holding them, strong but so gentle. “One step at a time,” he said. “Is there any point my offering to get you private treatment?”

“None whatsoever,” Molly replied.

“Didn’t think so.”

“Sorry, Mr Moneybags – I’m NHS through and through.”

Chapter Text

Sherrinford

Three days later.

Eurus waited again for Sherlock to begin playing before she turned to him. This time, though, she held her violin in her hands. Ready. He paused pointedly, fixing his eyes on her. Watched as she placed the violin under her chin and played the opening bars back to him, lilting and delicate but sure. He began again, picking up from the end of the refrain she had played, wondering whether she might continue or fill in another gap if he paused.

She played along with him, though, and Sherlock’s sore heart compressed and then swelled as he tuned in to the duet. She had composed the harmony to his melody, it soared over and swooped below his own composition and rounded it, deepened it and transformed it entirely.

Had she practised in his absence? Poured over a sheet of manuscript by lamplight? Did she balance her pencil on the desk, or hold it in her teeth as he sometimes did? Did she use ink rather than graphite – she was in every way less hesitant than he. Or was she composing in that very moment, was this her first performance of this harmony, an improvisation which was guaranteed to be note-perfect and demand to be repeated.

He had no idea the answers to his questions and it didn’t matter at all in that moment. He looked at his sister and observed only her emotion, perceived only his own.

Thank you, Eurus.

The exquisite music surrounded and soothed him. At that very moment, hundreds of miles away, Molly was lying in a sedated sleep, a two-inch long wound in her throat sutured and bruising. She had endured a long surgery, minor but not insignificant complications including potential nerve damage to her vocal chords. To think he might never again hear her voice. He would willingly sacrifice any faculty of his own for her to just be all right. Wrenching himself from her side was physical agony. He closed his eyes and lost himself within the music, beginning again when the piece reached it’s conclusion, Eurus not missing a beat in joining him.

A door slid open before him.

He stepped through, his gun arm braced, finger on the trigger.

There, upon the stand, was the coffin, undisturbed and waiting.

His heart raced, he looked towards the screen on the wall, the camera at the roofline.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

Turning, he saw Eurus beside him.

She reached for his hand and removed the gun from it.

She looked into his eyes, lifted her hand and waved it downwards in front of his face.

As it moved, he saw the room beyond was empty. No screen, no camera. No coffin.

Eurus took his hand and lead him, the walls of the chamber falling away

and their feet treading upon the grassy cliff-edge.

He watched as Eurus released him, pulled back her arm and hurled the gun

into the raging sea below.

She looked at him and smiled.

Took his hand again and pulled him away from the cliff.

Chapter Text

London

A few days later

Sherlock was existing between two worlds. There was a strong argument which said he always had. Walking the fine line between the real world and the one in his head, blurring that line when necessary. Building a life on the entangling of danger and sport – two spheres colliding in The Game.

He took a deep breath and steeled his nerves. Reached out his hand and took up the bottle containing a single pill. He held it up to the light, contemplating the implications, the consequences of what lie within. An innocuous little bit of nothing on the one hand, an unexploded bomb on the other.

In his other hand, he picked up the glass of water he had just poured and took them through to Molly’s bedroom.

She was laid on her back in bed, propped up on several pillows. The headaches and pains in her neck and shoulders came and went in such a maddeningly irregular scheme that they were finding it almost impossible to make her comfortable enough to rest. She had her forearm rested over her eyes.

“I am dreading this,” she said, the fear in her brittle, still recovering voice needling Sherlock’s gut.

“The sooner you take it, the sooner it will be over,” he said, placing the glass down by her bedside and unlocking the bottle cap, leaving it closed in his hand.

“Is that the best you can come up with?” she asked, still hidden beneath her arm.

“Worrying only means you suffer twice? I’m afraid platitudes are hardly my strong suit,” he replied, bending to kiss her forehead.

Molly uncovered her eyes and grabbed the lapel of his coat, preventing him from straightening. She offered her lips up towards him and he could not help but oblige. Taking her head carefully in his hands he tipped into the sweet, delicious cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins his system was flooded with upon their lips meeting.

Kissing had, in his minimal and somewhat flawed prior experience, been largely about power play. He knew the consuming nature of wanting to be kissed, the thrilling power of someone else needing him to kiss them. But this was something else. Kissing Molly was an uncomplicated joy – any selfish personal gratification, feelings akin to addiction, were purified by the knowledge that the sharing of pleasure served the greater purpose of strengthening their bond. The intensity of feeling in his very centre heightened now by any manifestation of her being; the warmth of her skin, the pulse beneath it, her breath, the movement of her muscles - the very fact of her survival - his body reacted in a way which was primal.

In addition, he absolutely adored what it did to her...

Sherlock’s racing thoughts, his rationalisations, blurred and buzzed at the edges as her mouth moved against his. Molly’s very essence pulled his mind down towards a state of relinquishing control, of surrender to sensation and emotion, but she did so gently. He could feel himself wanting her to pull harder.

When their lips parted he rested his brow on hers for a moment. He placed the bottle carefully on her front even though every nerve in his body was screaming to hurl it away, as far from her as possible. Molly steadied it with her hand.

“Good luck.”

Sherlock pulled back at her words, studied her face for a long moment.

Aside from his scheduled visit to his sister he had only left Molly’s side in the previous week when he had been prevented from following her into theatre. He had focussed down, largely ignored his phone. Never had he practised such a volume of meditative techniques to quiet his mind as in the last few days and nights. But today, he had to acknowledge the outside world, and not just the parts of it he had chosen to engage with recently; his family, their home. His old life, other life – his real life? – beckoned.

Molly looked down at the radioactive iodine capsule in it’s bottle. She was about to ingest a controlled poison; a compound so potent it would be – from the official, medical perspective - dangerous for him to remain with her while it was in her system. The thought of what she would endure at the hands of it was hateful to Sherlock – far exceeding his own fear of exposure if he acted on his instinct and stayed with her. He’d faced worse chemical threats, and they hadn’t mattered. But Molly was insistent. He respected her independence, her capability. And by now he also knew a gentle push when he felt one, thanks to his infuriating but evermore indispensable friends.

He was at war with himself, grappling with worlds of his own making, She was at war with a very real enemy, and here was this angel – this warrior – wishing him luck.

“I don’t believe in luck, Dr Hooper,” he said, kissing her again briefly. “But I do believe in you.”

Molly let out a small hum of amusement as he reluctantly stood and walked around the bed to collect his bag. “You should get that on a t-shirt,” she said, smiling tightly.

“I could get Anderson to send you one from his range. Then we’d be a set.”

Molly seemed to consider his statement. He waited.

“I think we’ve always been a set, in a way. Mismatched, but still a pair.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “In our way.”

They looked at one another, Sherlock’s heart ached. That now familiar twist behind his diaphragm alerted him to the strength of a connection which, Molly was quite right, wasn’t really new.

“It’s quite scary, really,” Molly’s voice was full of forced bravery, a front of light-heartedness Sherlock saw through like a glass.

“It is,” he said, feeling a prickling chill in his spine, on the backs of his arms and neck. “One step at a time,” he repeated again.

Molly nodded, returning her gaze to the bottle. She raised it to him as if in a toast and he tipped a nod in response. Then Sherlock turned on his heel, turned up his collar and set off for Baker Street.

Chapter Text

Baker Street

Half an hour later

Sherlock got out of the taxi as it stopped outside 221B. As he did, John Watson approached the black door.

“Hello,” Sherlock said.

“All right?” John said. “Molly text.”

“So did I,” Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

“She got there first,” John said. “Thought you might like the...”

“Company,” Sherlock said, just as John said; “...help.”

John’s mouth quirked at one side. “And the company.”

“Always,” Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back, considered the paving slabs.

“Molly wanted to let me know she started the treatment today,” John said.

Sherlock felt a rush of nerves. “I see.”

John walked up to him and grasped Sherlock’s upper arm in his hand. “She’s tough, Sherlock.”

“Thank goodness,” he replied with feeling.

“Hmm,” John considered him, then dropped his hand. “She’s going to need to be.”

“She always has been,” Sherlock said instinctively. He considered these two statements. His fear and the data. Opposing worlds.

John pulled his keys from his coat pocket and inclined his head towards the door. Sherlock gestured for him to go ahead. As he stepped over the threshold, Sherlock’s eye was drawn to the knocker. It was crooked as ever, pleasingly so, yet his stomach still coiled as his brother came to mind. His family.

Not yet. But soon.

Having hung his coat and jacket on the hooks, Sherlock followed John up the stairs, pausing at the doorway to the living room, the destruction beyond like a mountain before them. Sherlock rolled up his sleeves before stepping into the room. It was overwhelming, a sensory overload. He turned deliberately in the opposite direction to John. His head felt crowded, and his body drained of the energy required for this task and lacking the determination or willingness to summon it.

He heard John take a few steps into the room towards the fireplace, so he turned and followed him. Sherlock bent and picked a magnifying glass from the floor, the glint of the lens having caught his eye. Lying a foot or so away was the bison scull. As he stood with it and turned to John his friend offered up the old comms headset and clamped them back into place. John threw the wire between the horns and Sherlock hooked the scull under his arm so he could right his armchair which, thankfully, seemed also to have survived relatively unscathed. He looked around the room, cinders and dust disturbed by the movements of the two men whirling in the shafts of light pushing through the boards over the windows. Beneath his feet Sherlock could feel the crunch and grind of glass, the screen doors to the adjoining room had also been obliterated by the blast. He moved between them to the kitchen, finding it blackened with soot and scattered with the remnants of broken equipment. The table, however, still stood. Sherlock swept the detritus from its surface to the floor. John’s head appeared at the archway as Sherlock placed the scull and glass down on the table, feeling like at least he had made something of a start.

“Let’s identify the important things to salvage,” Sherlock said to John, his hands on his hips, once again surveying with some dismay the mess littering every square inch around them.

“Good opportunity for a clear out,” John agreed.

“Hmm,” A thought occurred to Sherlock and he moved back into the living room, squinting into the gloom around the fireplace grate until he found the Leatherman. He turned to where the desk had stood and after a moments rifling found what remained of his laptop. The screen was bent backwards and ruined by the large chunk of plaster which had fallen onto it, half of the keys melted together. He used the blade to pry open the CD drive and carefully removed the contents. He cast around and chose the least damaged book he could find and placed the disk carefully between the pages, before adding this to the collection on the kitchen table, the knife on top. Sherlock could sense John watching him, he caught his eye briefly. Wondered again what normal was now.

It is what it is.

John cleared his throat. “Coffee?” he asked, thumbing towards the door. Sherlock nodded.

__________

Me: Are you OK? SH

Sherlock laid in bed that evening, the window of his room open to help dispel lingering scent of smoke. It wasn’t the right kind, but he felt the craving nonetheless. He looked up at the blackened paintwork above the door.

See, brother dear, I have learnt the value of closing doors.

Sherlock sighed. If he really had been able to foresee what had been about to happen the last time Mycroft had been at Baker Street, Sherlock would have done much more than make the irregular decision to place his violin in the bedroom. Intuition might have served him well in that instance, but his skills in attenuating to data strands he had no conscious awareness of was somewhat outstripped. A few weeks compared to a few decades. Sherlock plucked at the strings of the violin where it lay on his chest, his fingers picking out a quiet tune absent-mindedly.

Eurus wanted you to know everything, but she had to be the one to teach you.

His Mother had been right, more so than any of them could have possibly imagined. Eurus hadn’t only given Sherlock a lifelong skill and passion, as a child she had handed him the tools with which to heal her own soul in the aftermath of the destruction she would wreak upon it and the world as an adult . She had known she would put herself beyond anyone’s reach but his. B eyond any form of self-expression, any form of engagement but through music .

Play with me, Sherlock…

It struck him then, as he lay in the gloom, quite alone in the building, that Eurus wasn’t the only person he knew who had ensured their legacy by their own hand. Moriarty too had left a roadmap for his influence after his death. So had Mary. Anger flared in Sherlock’s chest and he pushed the violin away onto the bed next to him, covering his eyes with his hands. Christ! Of the three people in his mind – three killers – he would never have chosen to be guiding Eurus back to as normal a life as was possible for her, he would sacrifice her for Mary – he would sacrifice himself for Mary if that would bring her back...

He sat up and bent double over his knees, crushing down the rising guilt , gritting his teeth against anguish.

“Oh God, Mary – I’m sorry - I wouldn’t! I would... but I promise I won’t give up, I promise...”

H is life had been worth everything to his darling friend - more than her own. The fact of his survival was assured, as far as she had been concerned, despite the fact that he was a disturbed, heartless no-body – a murderer – where hers was not, and she had made a conscious choice to mark his life as worthy. Indispensable. She knew he had work to do.

He dragged in a breath through his nose, sitting up sharply .

What are you here for ?

The screen of his phone lit up the room as a message arrived. He sighed, his shoulders slumping. He reached for the device.

Molly Hooper: Sorry, I was being sick.

TMI, I know. Sorry. Mxxx

He started typing out a reply, but was interrupted by another message coming though, this time from John. He opened that one quickly, finding a buffering circle over a blurred image. He huffed in frustration and was about to switch threads when the image downloaded and there was Rosie, pyjama clad and grinning, his deerstalker on her head, falling over one eye. He recognised the rug in the living room down the hall in the background. The caption read: Forgot about this, took it when you were asleep back in Jan. Watch your coat-tails, mate . J

Sherlock smiled, passed a hand over his face and sighed. He forwarded the image to Molly, deleting the text he had half written and rewriting:

Me: For the raising of spirits. SH

Molly Hooper: Oh my goodness <3 <3 <3

Molly Hooper: Is it awful? Mxxx

Which bit? Sherlock thought. His phone buzzed in his hand.

Molly Hooper: Stupid question.

Of course it’s awful. It’s all awful.

Will you be all right? Mxxx

Me: Be more selfish.

Take prochlorperazine.

I need my CS on top form ASAP. SH

Molly Hooper: Could be a while. Mxxx

Me: I know.

Will wait. SH

__________

Sherlock flopped down into the leather armchair. A cloud of mingled brick and plaster dust and ash rose around him. Over the four days he had spent at the flat, progress had been slow and he was weary of it. Today Mrs Hudson had ‘roped in’ several waifs and strays, usually under the casual employ of the cafe downstairs, and Sherlock now fully understood why it could take an age to receive even the simplest of orders. Speedy’s, indeed. At that moment, they were ineffectually pushing brooms around the living room, mainly shifting debris from one location to another, never allowing an opportunity to pause in their endeavour for a good chin-wag to pass them by.

Still, their presence was filterable enough. John’s, however, was like a splinter, an exposed nail which snagged Sherlock’s conscience every time he observed his friend move himself from one position to another, as unsure in this environment, which had been his home and remained the home of a friend, as Sherlock felt in John’s flat. It was not a welcome realisation; rather it compounded Sherlock’s unease.

Sherlock pulled his phone from his pocket, looked at the most recent exchange between Molly and himself.

Me: How are you feeling? SH

Molly Hooper: Like shit. Going to sleep

That had been 45 minutes previously. He didn’t want to disturb her. He touched the corner of the screen to his lips, considering the room in front of him. He eyed the dining chair a few feet away. Visions of a thousand lost souls slipped across his mind, each one sitting there, or on the settee, laid on the floor. Now these surfaces only served to hold up yet more shards and fragments. The lost souls hung in the space and the sense of hiatus was equally palpable.

Sherlock returned his focus to his phone, a heavy discomfort in his middle. He opened the text thread to Lestrade. The last message Sherlock had sent had been in reply to an enquiry after his health a fortnight previously.

Me: I’m fine.

Thank you. SH

Lestrade (G?): You know where to find me.

Sherlock pictured the Inspector running round London, juggling cases and coffees and scrubbing a hand over the back of his head. Trawling the archives like some ancient cleric because he didn’t have what was needed at his fingertips. Sherlock tried to make this image summon a reaction in himself, closed his eyes to better see Lestrade in his mind, the expression on his face somewhere between vacancy and confusion; pitiable, disgustingly endearing. The merest tingle of annoyance, anticipation, motivation of any kind would suffice. But it didn’t come. And Lestrade clearly wasn’t going to make the first move; his message made it quite clear the ball was in Sherlock’s court. He shifted in the chair, trying to dispel the squirming in his gut, his nose wrinkling in involuntary distaste as his own reticence.

John had moved to the window, newly re-glazed. “Mrs Hudson is fielding clients,” he remarked.

“And journalists, no doubt”, Sherlock replied.

“Well, things won’t get back to normal – whatever the bloody hell that is – with us arsing about...” John stood in Sherlock’s eye-line for a moment. Sherlock kept his eyes on the little screen in his hands, arranging his face to deep concentration even though in reality he was just scrolling through his timeline, unseeing.

“Right,” John said. He gestured for one of the lackies to hand over his broom, barked at the man to get a bin-bag and began to attack the floorspace.

John was the decisive action to Sherlock’s pensive observation. That much clearly hadn’t altered. But everything else had.

Rosie only had one parent. Mary’s death had placed an inestimable value upon John’s life as well as his own. Pain flared in Sherlock’s chest and he had to close his eyes. The meaning of risk, the balancing of it against reward now conformed to a new, as yet untested formula, and Sherlock could no longer escape the glaring truth of the vital importance of ones formative experiences. Ones attachments and loyalties, responsibilities and duties. He massaged his temples; the mere prospect of unpicking the knots within made them throb. And that was without letting Molly into the room in his head where this was all happening. Holing-up at Baker Street at least gave him respite from trying to bring order to the chaos of life outside. But the guilt this admission arose in him was every bit as inhibiting as he ever feared it would be, only doubling when he considered how unworthy he was of feeling anxiety or anguish when he was, at least, healthy.

He re-opened the message app, tapped Molly’s name…

“Everything okay?” Sherlock snapped his head up when John spoke. “Is it Molly? Is she all right?”

“What? Oh – yes, I think so. She said she was going to try to sleep.”

“This is day four, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going over later?”

“I’d… better carry on here...” Sherlock gestured around loosely.

“Carry on what, sitting?”

The hairs on the back of Sherlock’s neck stood on end, sensing trouble. He watched John, his heart rate climbing still higher. John took several breaths, his hands gripping the broom handle. But then John closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. Sherlock saw resignation in his face when he looked back up at him.

“Look, Sherlock, just… keep going, okay? Nothing to be gained by wallowing. It won’t do you any good, it won’t do your family any good, it won’t do Molly one bit of good and it would make Mary spit tacks to see us stuck here with our heads up our own backsides!”

Sherlock stood. “Delightfully put.”

“True, though,” John sighed. He leant the broom on the door-frame. “I’m going to collect Rosie.”

“Okay,” Sherlock said.

“Text me when you’re on your way here tomorrow. Or whenever - all right?” A pointed look.

“Will do. Thanks, John.”

This received a tight smile by way of reply before John headed for the stairs.

Sherlock cleared his throat and turned to the boys from the cafe. “Thanks, gents – let’s leave it there for today...” as they gathered up their things he added, “… there is a tab in my name at the Barley Mow, please allow me to repay your kindness with a pie and a pint, or whatever is your pleasure.”

The three men nodded, one even smiled, then they too were gone. Sherlock cast his gaze around the familiar but so altered room for the thousandth time, longing for answers.

Home.

His internal fog dissipated and he turned his back on the room. He headed to the bedroom and put together what he needed before he too made his way down the seventeen treads. At the front door, Mrs Hudson called to him from hers.

“Making progress, dear?”

Sherlock turned to her. “Some.”

“Good lad.”

He winked and closed the door behind him.

__________

“They’ll get there, Mary,” Martha said to the empty hallway, a sad smile on her lips.

Chapter Text

The Thames Embankment

Two days later.

Little orangey orbs danced on the surface of the rippling water, the moon hidden behind thick clouds making the ornate lamps lining the pavement by the riverside the only source of light. They’d listened to Big Ben chime 11pm not long before but despite her exhaustion, Molly wasn’t ready to go home. Sherlock’s arm was around her shoulders, holding her to his side, his other across her front. She felt enclosed, wrapped in care. Molly’s arm was threaded around his waist under his coat. His skin was deliciously warm under his shirt, even though the night air was cold. A good coat was a necessity, he had told her as he held up the olive green padded parka from the impossibly posh Belstaff bag he had appeared with that afternoon. She had to admit all her others would pale in comparison to this one from now on. She snuggled down into it, the fur-trimmed hood (“NOT real fur, Molly – Lord knows Toby only tolerates me as it is.”) protecting her face and neck from the chill. Sherlock clearly read this as her snuggling closer to him and she was very happy with his misinterpretation, as it resulted in him pressing his lips to the top of her head and she would never tire of that if he did it every second for a million years.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

Molly hummed in response and nodded. She didn’t want to admit her throat was agony or let him hear it; she was dosed up already and she wanted to stay here with him just a bit longer. It might be dark, there might have been no-one else around, but they were outside in their city, in public, visible, real and he was holding her. He’d just kissed her. She smiled into the fabric of her coat.

Sherlock took a deep breath and blew it out. She knew he was happiest here in London, that it was his comfort and a companion; perhaps his greatest friend of all. But she also knew he was lost. Watching him in the last little while, pacing and trying not to pace, distracting himself and focussing his energy on anything other than addressing the gaping holes in his self-image, his concept of who he was and what he was meant to do, had been equally frustrating and heartbreaking for Molly. They’d had something to focus on – her operation and treatment – but the convenience of that distraction would come to an end. Well, she hoped it would, on the one hand.

Molly sighed. A thought crossed her mind, standing out among the floating wonderings about the future. “Will you retire to Musgrave Hall?” she asked him, keeping her voice to a whisper.

He lowered his ear to listen to her. “What makes you think I will get to retirement age?”

“You will. Your stubbornness will see to it.”

He chuckled.

“You’re indestructible,” Molly continued, moving to hug him closer. Sherlock pulled away a little, though, making Molly have to catch herself. She sat up stiffly.

“No, Molly,” he looked into her eyes, the look in his deadly serious. “I very much am not.”

“I know – I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing and wincing with it. “I didn’t mean...”

“It’s okay...” he said quickly, seeming to recover himself. He placed his hand on the back of her head and moved closer again, kissing her forehead. Molly closed her eyes, beginning to feel nausea rising. Sherlock shushed her quietly. Something about him doing that jarred in Molly’s head and she pulled away this time.

“Sherlock, you know – what happened to Mary, what happened to your little friend, what your sister did, none of it was your fault...” she reached for him as he turned his body away, catching his forearm. “No – listen – you’re blaming yourself, I know you are, but you need to stop.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can – you have to. If you ever want to move on...”

“Move on to what, Molly?” the tone of his voice took Molly by surprise and she stopped speaking.

“I am not the person I was.” He looked away from her and towards the river, a strained exhale leaving his lips. “What if I’m no longer capable… what if I cannot fix it?”

“Fix what?” Molly put her hand on his shoulder, pleased to hear him voice his doubt for once, even though it made her sad.

“Everything,” he replied, exasperated, his voice rising.

“Sherlock – you are not responsible for the whole world.”

“I cannot bend it to my will, it seems, but that does not absolve me of responsibility – I cannot waste the life Mary gifted me...”

“You won’t, you aren’t wasting it – look at what you’ve done already,” Molly pleaded, wishing he would look at her, wishing speaking wasn’t so painful. Her eyes were watering with the effort.

Sherlock let out a derisive sound, his features hardening. “What I’ve done? I’ve allowed my heart to govern my head and my life has imploded as a result.”

“Sherlock...”

He stood and walked the few paces to the railing at the rivers edge, taking hold of them. Molly stayed where she was; she felt dizzy and was afraid to stand up.

“This isn’t me, Molly – it’s not who I am.”

Molly listened, her lips pressed together and her hands held tight together in her lap. This was it. His hand went to his face and Molly felt the salt water running down her cheeks turn hot, the burning in her throat intensifying and a sob sending a sickening jolt of pain down her neck. She let out her breath, trying to relax, lights popping behind her closed eyelids.

She opened her eyes as Sherlock took her shoulders in his hands. He was crouched in front of her, his face inches from hers. “You need to go home,” he held the back of his fingers to her forehead. Molly pushed his hand away and a look of shock appeared in his face, hurt in his eyes.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said with all the strength she could muster.

“But I do – don’t you see?” he implored her. “I worry I can’t fix...”

“Don’t you dare say me,” Molly shook his hands from her shoulders. He sat back on his heels and looked at the ground. Anger crept up Molly’s backbone, she’d promised herself she was done with his games and having been through what she had, she was done with shielding him as well.

“I won’t watch you hide behind protecting me when what you’re really frightened of is what letting me in might do to your ability to work.”

His head snapped up and his eyes fixed on hers. She watched his lip curl.

“Hide?” he snarled. Molly forced herself not to recoil. “Protecting you – all of you – my life’s work – is the equivalent of running unarmed across no-man’s-land in broad daylight! When I was alone, exposure, failure...” he spat the word “… were unknown to me!” He stood and paced agitatedly in front of her, passing his hand over his mouth.

“I was not frightened of anything,” his eyes focussed on her and Molly froze under their intensity. His head tilted fractionally. “Shall we perhaps discuss your deepest fears, Molly?”

He took a step towards her, his hand held outwards, but this was not a gesture she hoped would turn into a loving touch. She knew it wouldn’t.

“You have systematically forged a life of solitude, your closest companions are the dead with which you surround yourself. You push away anyone who dares to get too close, facilitate those who would use and disregard you, lock away your secrets from the people who love you, and yet here you are accusing me of using my desire to safeguard your life as merely an excuse to keep my distance from you. Accusing me of ostracising you when it is you who the expert on isolation. All the while, you can’t imagine anything worse than ending up alone.”

Molly’s breath came hard and fast, she gripped the edge of the bench seat with her hands.

“Was hiding your suffering, even this very night, protecting me, Molly? Or was it protecting yourself?”

The quiet of the London night pressed in around them, as if it was watching and waiting. Molly’s tears had stopped.

“I love you,” she said, holding his gaze, unblinking. “I made every mistake I have made since I met you because I have loved you since that day. And believe me...” she saw the flicker in his eyes as her voice filled with fire, “… I know failure.” Sherlock swallowed. “I don’t need you to tell me my deepest fears, Sherlock, they’re with me every day. I just hoped you might learn to live with yours...”

Molly felt her stomach fall away, followed by her chest cavity and her thoughts. The searing in her neck stopped and all the pain slipped away.

__________

“Leave me alone..."

Leave me alone.

Sherlock backed away from Molly’s bed. He had lain her upon it having carried her home, the actions of removing her coat and boots and covering her with the duvet prompting her to swipe at him and dismiss him before she succumbed to exhaustion. He wanted to believe that it was the combination of overexertion and strong medication he was hearing, but his reason told him otherwise. Going out with her had been a mistake, the ramifications of their poor judgement only becoming clear as the time had worn on. He brought his hands to his face. He still held her coat in one of them, her scent was already ingrained in the fibres and his middle twisted powerfully as he inhaled.

He sat down heavily on the armchair in the corner of her bedroom. There were just a few hours until dawn. Leaving her in the condition she was in was not safe, so was not an option, but then neither was letting her awaken to find him there. So he sat, wide awake, timing her breath and focussing on her in the almost pitch dark until the muscles behind his eyes ached unbearably, waiting for the light. Toby, Molly’s cat, padded through at 5am; the creature’s body clock and rigidity of routine never failed to astound Sherlock. He stood and stretched, hearing his joints crack.

He took one last look at Molly, threw wide the door to where she lived in his mind and willed every detail to find a home. Then he did as she bid him.

Chapter Text

Baker Street.

Three days later.

The only feature of his visit to Sherrinford, from which he had just returned, that stuck in his mind was playing with Eurus; the honing and strengthening of their performance. The rest was a blur, he couldn’t recall details of his conversation with his brother, the journeys, anything. It didn’t matter.

He climbed the stairs and made his way to the kitchen. Mrs Hudson had clearly been not-housekeeping, the surfaces were clear and clean, two mugs placed by the new kettle. The sight was at odds with the blackened walls and shells of cabinets above. The table remained covered in what Sherlock and John had gradually accumulated. He sat there with his coffee once he’d made it, picking over the items in front of him, lingering on the book held closed by the knife.

His phone alerted him to a text coming through. He took it out quickly but it was John, again. The third one today and the tenth or twelfth or however many in the last few days. He sent a reply.

Me: Do as you please. SH

He put the phone face down on the surface and went to run a bath. The boiler had yet to be replaced so it was no comforting prospect. As he returned to the living room a little while later, the tips of his fingers still numb, he heard the front door slam and he resisted the urge to busy himself. He had it coming.

John appeared in the doorway, an embossed paper carrier-bag in one hand, the motif of the Regent Street store glinting as the bag swung by his side. Sherlock felt a dropping in his stomach.

“If you’ve hurt her, Sherlock, nothing would please me more than to knock you out,” John seethed, a muscle in his cheek twitching as he clenched his jaw. “But she is as bad as you – the only straight answers I get nowadays come from the baby.”

John thrust the carrier into Sherlock’s hands. He looked into it, surprised by it’s weight and saw not a rejected gift, but a paperback book.

“Returning your toothbrush?” John asked.

Sherlock picked the book out of the bag and turned it over to look at the cover.

MY DEAR BESSIE

A LOVE STORY IN LETTERS

“And your bedtime reading material?”

“Not mine,” Sherlock contested. He turned the book over in his hands, thumbed the often-turned pages, opened the tatty cover to the plate. It was Molly’s in every detail.

“Sherlock, what’s going on, mate?”

Sherlock looked at John. “I don’t know.”

__________

I can’t speak to you just now. Literally, as well as anything else.

But I want you to know that our evening by the river was wonderful – if it was the last night I spend in your company I will die happy. Think about that, Sherlock, and read this beautiful book while you do.

Love, Molly xxx

Sherlock ran his thumb over her words, felt the depressions where she had applied varying pressure. He brought the book to his face and inhaled the scent of the page, the ink, her skin. She had kissed his name, he felt sure he would see the evidence of it under the scope.

He had turned on his heel, leaving John alone in the living room, and closing his bedroom door behind him, he had read the whole book cover to cover by the light of a candle he found in the bedside cabinet. The task had taken him no longer than he expected, no longer than it had ever taken him to read any other literary work intended for entertainment; that is to say not very long. But where he partook of the occasional work of fiction, he did so having surmised the supposedly intricate plot and it’s predictable conclusion either from the blurb alone or certainly by the end of the first page.

This work, though – an annotated collection of letters written by two lovers (a soldier and a cypher clerk) who met and conducted a courtship during the Second World War – had eluded his grasp before he had opened it, the protagonists remained hard to predict throughout and the conclusion had left him thoroughly intellectually unsatisfied. In time gone by, this would have rendered the tome unworthy of shelf-space and it’s contents would never again cross Sherlock’s mind.

So why, then, did he clutch the book in his hands now, feel the weight of it as though it were ten times it’s size? He rested his head back on the pillows, the book on his chest. He closed his eyes and blew out a long exhale, brought his fingertips together.

What’s today’s lesson, Professor Hooper?

English Literature? Could never be bothered with it.

Drama - now there’s a subject if you want textual analysis and

I always prefer to stand up for Shakespeare.

T he door behind him swung open and he turned to Molly. She wore dark trousers, a blouse and cardigan, her lab coat. Her hair was swept back from her face, clipped behind her ear, the lengths falling over her shoulder. She smiled at him, colour in her cheeks.

She held the book open in her hands.

Bessie: If I lose you, I will have lost all, Molly read.

Sherlock replied, framing the quotation as she had:

Christopher: Nonsense. Firstly, I am not all. Second, you are not going to lose me through any act of mine. I am going to hold on to you as tightly as I can. A sort of death-grip.

As they recited the lines, he placed his hands upon the steel counter-top in front of him, the white walls of the morgue forming around them.

Bessie: I want to be at your mercy.

Christopher: One day let us hope you will be. And then we shall really meet. You make me feel a little drunk when you place yourself at my command. I love you.

I love you.

Molly’s voice was strong and clear, her words rang around the room.

He spoke again:

Christopher: If you think I am an ass you must tell me so, I am so desperately in need of you...

His cheek stung and he staggered as she slapped him.

Her voice shook with barely suppressed rage when she spoke the next phrase...

Bessie: You have caused an upheaval within, an upheaval which contains so much

sweetness, ecstasy and pain. Something that I didn’t think I was going to know.

Something that I thought did not exist because I had not known it.

I guess it’s the uncertainty of life in London that enhances it.

I want to rest with you in peace. But you are so far away.

It’s like touching the stars and then touching rock bottom.

Christopher: I do not want to marry until I am sure that only natural causes, including your cooking, can separate us. I was afraid of marrying you because at all times mortal, in war,

man takes more risks than usual.

Bessie: ...why couldn’t I come out to Greece so that I could stand in the way of any stray bullets? You have moved me, right down, down to the foundations. You have accomplished what I shouldn’t have thought was possible. You have opened a vision of a new world, a new experience for me.

I cannot help but be very, very grateful to you.

Molly slid a clipboard along the desk and he stopped it.

He was looking down at the (professionally and medically unethical, illegal, forged, perfect)

death certificate and port-mortem report for the man Moriarty had hired as kidnapper.  Ostensibly, the confirmation of his own demise.

Excellent, Molly – now, gaining access to the funeral parlour should be relatively straightforward, if you follow my lead. I have adequate supplies to disguise us both,

you may wish to…

He’s here.

What?

A locker door to his left opened and out slid the slab within,

laid upon it was a man of such striking likeness to him as to be repulsive.

I went on my own. And I didn’t wear a false nose.

He looked at Molly as he spoke again.

Christopher: Before - I loved you, my idea of you...

Molly reached out her hand and laid it upon his cheek. He turned into it, kissing her palm,

his eyes slipping closed.

...but now I have seen, heard, smelt, touched the living warmth and flesh of you. We now do know what we mean to each other. I keep thinking of all the things I might have said to you,

the things we should but didn’t discuss.

Molly pressed her forehead to his, he could feel her breath.

Bessie: Oh for the time when I might awaken during the night, hear you breathing beside me, feel the warmth of your body and snuggle down in sheer happiness and comfort of your presence.

I would like to start putting us on the map.

Every fibre of his being roared in want of her mouth on his.

He dragged himself away, held her at arms length.

Christopher: My dearest one, I would prefer not to get married, but want you to agree on the point. In the battle I was afraid, for you, for my Mother, for myself. Wait we must, my love, my darling. Let us meet, let us be, let us know, but do not now let us make many mistakes. I am anxious, very anxious, that you should not misunderstand what I have said. Say what you think, but please agree. And remember that I was afraid and am still afraid.

Molly smiled.

Bessie: My dearly beloved. What you wish, I wish. I want you to be happy in this, darling. Want to make you happy. Whilst you are afraid you will not be happy.

Molly’s spine straightened, her shoulders squared in his hands. She tipped her chin upwards.

We must get rid of those fears.

He fixed his eyes on hers.

Christopher: I can never be as good as you deserve,

but I really will try very hard and I know you will help.

Molly laid her cheek against his and whispered her final recitation in his ear.

Bessie: I’m thinking of you, hoping for you, with all that is in me.

Sherlock opened his eyes to inky blackness above him, the candle having extinguished. Flat on his back, with no way to orientate himself in the room besides the certainty of the surface under him. He didn’t know exactly where she was, but he could feel her presence, just beyond his reach.

Sherlock brought the book to his lips again.

Molly.

Two ordinary people forged a love which spanned unimaginable conflict, endured enforced separation and voluntary resistance. He desired her, loved her, relied upon her. She idolised him, understood him and endured for him. Offered to stand between a bullet and him.

So very like her, to take something he would otherwise find inconsequential – boring – and transform it into something he couldn’t live without. He turned back to the note she had written for him at the beginning of the book.

I want you to know our evening by the river was wonderful.

Sherlock thought back over the evening in question, recalling what was said, accusations that had been thrown, tears that were shed. Shame roiled in his gut – if that was to be the last night he spent in Molly’s company she ought to take fury to her grave, not happiness. Sherlock laughed dryly; trust her to refer to her eventual demise with ease, while the reference sliced into him and almost brought him to prayer that this ‘happy event’ would be very eventual indeed.

Trust her too, to respond to his coldness and ignorance with love and generosity. Hadn’t she always? More than that, she had called out his faults and let him do the same to her. But where she remained the teacher and him the recalcitrant schoolboy with his shoes upon the desk at the back and his text rested open over his eyes, was she acknowledged her mistakes, her weaknesses, ripped her heart from her chest and held it outwards. Molly was, by far and away, the bravest person he knew; the very definition of grace under pressure.

She could look back over an exchange like the one they had on the Embankment and endure what was uncomfortable, focusing only on what mattered.

Sherlock sat up, taking up My Dear Bessie in one hand and feeling around for his phone with the other. Locating it, he opened the home screen but stopped in his tracks when he saw that it was 2am. He flopped back down on the pillows, set his alarm for three hours time and set his mind to sleep, even going as far as to promise himself a cigarette on the walk if he dropped off quickly enough to not look a complete wreck in the morning. Telling himself he had that level of control over himself was the battle half-won, in his philosophy.

He did fall asleep quickly, the book pressed to his heart.

Chapter Text

London

5.45am

Molly collided with Sherlock on her doorstep. Head down, huddled in her coat against the chilly morning air, her mind was focussed on getting what she had to do done while she felt okay. She didn’t see him until her hands were on his chest and his steadied her. Their breath fogged, mingling in the very little space between them. His eyes were dark-circled, but they were so, so beautiful. Molly blinked.

“Have you been smoking?” she heard herself say.

He closed his lips.

“Not going to fly with a cancer survivor,” she continued.

A pause. He released her and took a step backwards. She readjusted the strap of her bag, the belt at the waist of her parka, feeling her cheeks redden.

“I wondered if we might...” he began.

“I can’t, sorry. I’m busy. Not work,” she added, to save him the trip.

“Oh.”

She smiled tightly, escaping close proximity as quickly as she could and making her way down the path. She had to stop, though, as if there was an invisible line fixed at either end to her and to him, the tugging of it making her turn around. She walked back to him, pushed herself up onto her toes and kissed him briefly on the lips. She watched his eyes open after hers. Then she turned and marched away.

__________

“Do you know when I realised, Molly?”

Molly knew what Mary was referring to, of course.  The two women were sat in Mary’s front room on a Sunday lunchtime.  John was out, apparently meeting friends at the local.  Mary was sipping a glass of red wine, making it last while eyeing Molly’s third full glass with envy.  Molly had come over straight from Bart’s, straight from an incredibly unpleasant hour in Sherlock’s company.  She was right-royally pissed off and could think of little worse than her empty flat with the knowing superiority of Toby’s gaze as her only company.  What she didn’t need from her friend at that moment, was another round of ‘you’re unhappy because you’re not over Sherlock’.

“Let me guess,” Molly snapped, feeling guilty but not enough to stop herself. “It was your engagement party - you took one look at Tom and thought, poor Molly, she’s the only one who can’t see that he’s just Sherlock in every way except the important one.”

“Nope. Well, sort of,” Mary said. Molly scoffed, gulped some wine, “John would probably pinpoint that moment and load it with significance...”

“So did Sherlock, I have no doubt.”

Molly didn’t know who she was the most cross with - Mary, John, Tom, bloody Sherlock or herself.  

“I didn’t need Tom to show me you wanted to climb Sherlock like a tree...”

“Oh God,” Molly hid her face, felt it flame.

“I realised you loved him when you slapped him across both sides of his face.”

Molly snapped her head up to Mary, saw her eyebrows raise, one side of her mouth quirk into a smile.  “You thought I loved Sherlock because I hit him?”

“Three times. Dead give-away.”

“Oh, Mary,” Molly put her glass down on the coffee table so she could scrub her hands over her face. She felt gritty, dirty and tired. And stupid. “We are cut from such different cloth.”

Molly heard Mary’s glass clink onto a coaster, felt her hand on her knee. “We’re not at all, Molly.”

She looked at Mary. Molly had been shocked by the revelation of Mary’s past life. Simultaneously horrified by what she had gone through - the prospect of what she might have had to do - and in awe of her having managed to leave it behind, to have the strength to go about the rest of her life with her head held high. Not that Molly thought she shouldn’t, she could not admire Mary more, no matter what horrors lurked in her past, and she loved her dearly. But Molly envied her capability.

“You’re a nurse, Mary - you’re better at medicine than I am...”

“Bollocks!”

“Mine don’t move or complain, remember?”

Mary laughed.

“And your life experience somewhat outweighs mine. Not to mention you’ve managed to find and marry a lovely man and start a family...

“Oh yeah,” Mary scoffed. “Because that’s going so well! None of that matters, you donut,” Mary put her arm around Molly’s shoulders and Molly leant into her, admitting privately that the contact was embarrassingly welcome. “I mean we’re similar in other ways, the important ways. We don’t let men walk over us, we stand up for what’s right, we don’t want... dishonesty in our lives. We hold our boys to account and we push them towards knowing themselves better inch by God-damned infuriating inch...”

“Your boys, Mary.”

Mary took hold of Molly’s shoulders and turned her to face her. “Listen to me, darling girl - Sherlock is just about the biggest idiot I have ever met - doesn’t know himself from Adam or what’s good for him. But he doesn’t listen to anyone like he does to you.”

Molly smiled thinly, felt tears prickling behind her eyes. Hated herself for wishing Mary was right. “At any rate, they would be best left to themselves,” she said. “Sherlock only needs John and John doesn’t know when the best thing that will ever happen to him is right in front of him even though she’s getting bigger by the day. Sorry! Not like… you know what I mean.”

Mary smiled, sniffed, looked down. She reached for the two glasses and handed Molly’s to her. “Here’s to our boys - may they one day figure out what we’ve been trying to make them think was their own sodding idea all along.”

Molly laughed dryly, clinked her glass against Mary’s. They both took a drink.

“Molly,” Mary’s voice was serious now, she cleared it, when her eyes met Molly’s there was a plea behind them. “You know me as well as anyone in my gorgeous new life...” Molly took her friend’s hand. “And no matter what you think, we are so alike, we want the same thing - we only want to...” Mary’s voice faltered. Molly squeezed her fingers, worried for her and seething in John’s direction. Mary pressed her fingers to her lips for a moment, then gathered herself.

“I would like to ask you something, Molly.”

“Okay.”

“If something... happens... to me, would you help me?”

“Of course I would! Why would anything happen to you? Is there something wrong, Mary, is it the baby? Do you need me to arrange for you to see someone, at the hospital?”

“No, no. I’m fine, I’m fine, the baby’s perfect...”

“What is it, then?”

“… It’s nothing,” Mary flapped her hand. “Pregnancy hormones messing with my head.  Don’t worry about it.”

Molly regraded her friend. Her closest girlfriend by a long, long way. To describe the look written all over her features and in her frame as sadness wouldn’t scratch the surface, Molly feared. Her heart constricted, but her nerves steeled.

“Mary, whatever you need me to do, any time - whether it’s next week, next year, whenever - I will be here.”

“I know you will,” Mary pulled Molly into a hug.

Molly recalled that exchange in vivid detail as she walked along the quiet Camberwell terrace. It had been about a year before Mary let Molly know exactly what had been lurking in the corners of her worried mind that day, what she wanted Molly to help her do in the event her worst fears – all of their worst fears - came to pass. Molly could remember that day like it was yesterday, too. It practically was, only the world had turned upside down since then. Still, Molly felt as close to Mary now as she ever had, finally understanding the woman who had understood her from the beginning.

She pulled the zip of her coat higher, proud of herself for having managed the journey without feeling like laying down on the pavement and having a cry. Her throat only hurt like having a cold, too. She’d take that. She was getting a taxi home, though. The very quiet last few days probably did her the world of good and she was keen not to over-do it and set herself back.

She buried her lips and nose into her scarf; a gift from John, with Sherlock’s input. John was as surprised as she that Sherlock had offered and also seemed to know what she would like. The boys. And Mary, Rosie, Martha Hudson and her. And lovely Greg. Molly smiled, she would have loved to see the look on his face if a wanted assassin had turned up at his office and started dishing out orders. Molly felt her sore heart lift and, in spite of herself, she raised her eyes to the clouds, lined with gold from the sun waiting just behind.

She pulled the envelope from her bag, addressed to John. Her instruction from Mary had been to wait until John and Sherlock stalled in their joint efforts to bring 221B Baker Street, their work, back to life. Molly doubted Mary could have foreseen how much physical work that would require but she could easily believe Mary knew they would struggle in every other way; that they would need the push. Molly raised the parcel to her lips and kissed it lightly, quickly, picking up her pace as she looked along the street.

“Oh – excuse me…!”

The postman had his booted foot on the top step outside John’s flat; he turned as she called out. She hurried up to him. “I think you must have dropped this,” she handed him the envelope, watched him scrutinise the front. Molly privately admired Mary’s handiwork – or her contact book, who knew? - while her heart skipped in her chest.

“Oh, right – cheers,” the postman nodded to her and went down the steps. Molly set off back down the street as quickly as she could. Check me out, Sherlock, she thought.

The sun broke through the clouds overhead and bathed the street in it’s warm glow. Molly took a deep breath, concentrated on the energy that gave her rather than the soreness. Before she turned the corner, she glanced back towards the Watson ’s .

“I won’t give up on our boys, Mary,” she whispered, before heading for home.

Chapter Text

London

In that moment.

Sherlock watched her auburn ponytail flick as Molly vanished around the corner, but he remained in his concealed position for the time being.

You are rather good at this, Mary.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, taking a deep breath as his heart raced a little in anticipation. Allowed himself a moment to relish the feeling of satisfaction which had come from observing the padded envelope Molly had passed to the postman, identical to the one Mrs Hudson had pretended had been mixed up with her post.

The women in his life had taught him so much.  He should spend the remainder of his days recognising their worth, their power. Proving that he did.

To him, the simple fact of their gender was insignificant in terms of their ability, their potential.  It didn’t matter that Molly was a woman.  But it did matter that he was a man who was truly willing and desired to stand shoulder to shoulder.  

Tenderness swept over him as he imagined Molly’s face, recalled the lightness in her steps as she had hurried away from the scene of her delicious deception.  He supposed he had to correct himself; in one respect, he was very glad Molly was a woman.  He cleared his throat.

His phone rang in his hand. He answered it. “John, are you okay?”

“Yeah – I think you’d better get over here”.

“Oh, all right… I’m about...” he looked at his watch, decided how much longer he could stand waiting, “… 6 minutes from your flat.”

“Uh-huh...”

John ended the call, Sherlock imagined the distraction on his friends features and felt a pull in his middle. He decided to make it four minutes, his cheeks were reddened enough from the cold it would appear as if he had rushed.

__________

“Will you listen to me – who you really are, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the legend, the stories, the adventures...”

Mary spoke their names and her smile was the last image before the screen went to black. There was a moment of silence which made Sherlock’s spine tingle, the air in the room seemed to crackle. A nervous energy had built in Sherlock’s middle as he listened to Mary’s post script.

She was right. Molly was right. Who he was, who John was, what they had endured, what they had inflicted all made up the great tapestry of their existence. Many worlds, multiple spheres and phases and dimensions made up a life – a person – and the fact that these elements did not sit neatly beside one another in an organised and predictable fashion did not devalue that life. The capabilities a person had were the reward for endurance, choosing how best to use them was ones duty. That might be difficult, painful, but it must not be avoided.

Whoever Sherlock thought he was now, who he had become, how he had changed, he always would be nothing more or less than himself. And he had to move forward. With integrity.

John stood up with a sharp inhale, his hands fisted at his sides. He bounced on his heels.

“We’ve got work to do,”, he said.

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Baker Street

The next day.

John Watson cleared his throat. Sherlock watched the quiet resolve crystallise in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Now or never.”

Sherlock sat in his armchair and composed a text message.

Me: Time to discuss the future. SH

The pips at the bottom of the screen began to ripple almost immediately. Sherlock’s lip quirked.

Lestrade (G?): About bloody time!

Got several things you could look at.

30yr old cold cases etc,

should keep you busy for 10 mins.

Me: You know where to find me. SH

Sherlock lowered his phone and turned to John. He was stood by the mantle, his thumb running reflexively over his lip and his eyes focussed on the middle distance.

“We’ll figure it out,” Sherlock said, despite his misgivings. “We usually do.”

John’s eyebrows flashed. “Going to have to be over email for now, mind you. Can’t really have clients round yet,”

The devastation in the room was still total. The lackies were back, debris was being bothered at but it likely sensed no imminent danger. The doorbell sounded from the kitchen table, making Sherlock and John jump.

“Christ – I had no idea it was that loud,” John said.

“Put it back in the fridge,” Sherlock jogged down the stairs and opened the door to receive the delivery of several pieces of new communication equipment including the over-engineered laptop Mycroft had specified.

“Mrs Hudson!” Sherlock called as he watched a fifth box being lugged through the door. Did his brother intend him to establish some sort of remote hub? Oh God, surely he wasn’t hoping they could co-work…

“Gracious, Sherlock, what’s all this?” Mrs Hudson appeared at his side, pink Marigolds and apron in place.

“Your new beau is a plumber,” Sherlock said.

“Dental hygienist,” she responded.

“No, the new one. Thank you,” Sherlock signed the tablet held out to him and closed the door behind the delivery driver.

“What, Jason – who I’m going for dinner with this evening? For the first time?”

“Yes him,” Sherlock eyed her. “How does Dr Teeth feel about non-exclusive relationships?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“I’ll only engage with the man if he lays a finger on you. An unwelcome one, that is...”

“Sherlock Holmes!” Mrs Hudson swatted him with the back of her hand, laughing, her cheeks reddening. “I’m past all that.”

“Never too late, you know.”

“You should know,” she twinkled up at him. He went to speak but she cut him off. “Anyway, did you want me to get the boiler sorted now? I’ve not wanted to interfere ‘til you were ready. I can get Wyn to come and quote for the redecorating while I’m at it – ooh, you could have it freshened up, make it a bit more modern, bit less dark.”

“Why would I do that? Faithful re-creation – that’s me,” Sherlock smiled at her.

“Nothing wrong with making a few alterations here and there.”

“Agreed,” he kissed the top of her head and headed off up the stairs with the first of the boxes, listening to his landlady chuckling to herself all the way back to her hoover.

__________

It was a tentative beginning but Sherlock was pleased with the rapidity of progress at Baker Street. Eight and a half minutes it had taken, from Lestrade’s email landing in his inbox to the promised cold-case being thoroughly reheated and the solution discovered. The inspector was thrilled. There was coffee and donuts in the offing.

There was a lightness to John, long absent, and it made Sherlock glad to see it. Mrs Hudson’s inane chatter about electricians and wallpaper sample books all no doubt adding to the atmosphere of enlivenment, but Sherlock remained a casual observer. Removed – intrigued but not committed. The will to progress was there, but persons other seemed to be in control of the mechanics. He was expected at Sherrinford the following day. His Mother had been on the phone, her tears had caused a flare in Sherlock’s core and it had reminded him of the more serious work he still had to do.

He unlocked his phone, the screen having gone to black several times while he deliberated over his next move.

People are such a complicating factor.

Data is the clay from which one makes bricks, but one can’t ever grasp the facts,

can only make predictions based on some understanding of human nature,

when the source of that data is another person.

One can never be sure.

I hate not being sure.

He jabbed the call button and raised the handset to his ear before he could change his mind again. What to say? How to ask? Without loading his words with expectation or unintentional persuasion. He listened to the ringtone. Nine, ten, eleven, click… Hello, this is Molly, at the dead centre of town…

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Whoever invented voice-mail should be forced to have every call they ever made go through to it – condemned to suffer the grating irritation of having the flow of information interrupted. The recording tone sounded, Sherlock thought of hanging up. Seconds passed. His eyes alighted on the paperback on the bedside table.

“Dearest, darling, only one. Thank you for all that you have been to me through these years.”

He disconnected the call, placed the phone next to the book and let his fingers trail over the cover, picturing her face, listening to her voice in his mind. Feeling the trace of her lips on his. He swung his legs off the bed and went to the bathroom. On returning, he saw the screen illuminated.

Molly Hooper: I want to go with you tomorrow. Mxxx

His middle twisted, he felt his heart rate respond. Sherlock tapped the screen a few times and brought the phone to his ear again. Waited. Two, three…

“I need you to fast-track a security clearance. No it can’t wait until you’ve eaten your cake. Yes you are.”

Chapter Text

Sherrinford

The next day.

There was a different light in the room, a different atmosphere, a different essence. Sherlock locked eyes with his sister over the head of the violin and she smiled at him. Had the room altered before or after that exquisite moment? In all likelihood it wasn’t, in fact, the room that had changed at all.

For the remainder of the time they played together, Sherlock and Eurus didn’t break eye contact even for a moment. In his mind he repeated over and over that this, his gift to her, came from the most real and true depths of his soul, from the place within him he kept closely guarded. That he held her there. He told her that living in the light, living with love, was a gauntlet that must be run, but a hand was held out for the taking. He told her he saw her, that his heart saw hers, that he knew her. He was bringing her home, and he would never let her be taken away again. He would make the world work for them.

The final notes hanging in the air, their bows raised from the still shivering strings, Sherlock felt himself take a sharp in-breath as he heard Eurus’ voice for the first time since Musgrave.

Who you really are, Sherlock.

__________

Molly’s head was filled up with the crashing of waves and the wheeling of gulls. Sat on the sand, her eyes were closed and she was breathing in crystal ozone and salt spray, gentle exhales lost to the wind. She could smell fried egg sandwiches, white bread and vinegar. Her Nanna’s finest breakfast made in the kitchenette of her Frinton flat, before a day spent picking over pebbles, searching for little gems of tumbled glass with the sound of the waves scouring and renewing her fraught nerves. Pure escape. Just for her.

“How can you stand all those... bones and gory bits, Moll?” Her Nanna always fussed with Molly’s coat and scarf as she put her back on the train to London. “You wanted to have an ice cream van on the front when you were little.” Her hair smelled of the Chanel perfume she wore when Molly kissed her. Posher than she ever was, she would say, whenever Molly’s Dad gave her another bottle.

“I love it, Nanna,” Molly said.

“You like leaving it behind too, Moll. Don’t forget about the living.”

“It’s time.”

Molly opened her eyes. She let them get used to the light. “I’m so glad for you, Sherlock.” He was stood by her side, she turned to him.

Sherlock watched the waves for a moment. “May I join you?” He asked. Molly returned her gaze to the sea. “You’ve found some peace,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish to intrude upon that.”

“You’ve found it too. Peace,” she said.

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Good. Good.”

Molly blew out a long breath. Then she looked up to Sherlock again and couldn’t help but smile at the worry in his features. Composure was his shield, but Molly saw behind. She patted the sand next to her and he folded his long limbs to sit, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, his voice low.

“Better,” Molly answered. “This reminds me of visiting my Nanna. Going to see her was more like going home than going home.”

“You miss her.”

“Yes. Very much. I loved her, a lot.”

Sherlock hummed in response, clearly wrapped in his thoughts. “Family,” he said.

The clouds passed overhead, taking their time to build and resolve the conflicts of the sky. The sun broke through and Molly turned her face up to it, just so glad of the opportunity.

“I am not whole, Molly. You are what remains and you always have been. But I was afraid.”

Molly turned to find Sherlock looking at her. “You wanted to keep me safe,” she said.

“Yes,” the word rushed out of him, heavy with relief.

“You did, Sherlock.”

“And yet...” he tried to carry on.

“But you didn’t do any of it alone,” she stopped him.

He closed his mouth, took a breath before speaking. “No. None of it. Not one bit.”

“No, Sherlock. You had me. I was there for you, I was there for myself, and I survived.” Molly shifted to face him properly, he released his hands from where they had been clasped around his legs, but here again Molly recognised his indecision, he couldn’t tell whether there was trouble to come with her - and too right. He had a lot to learn.

“Control is a very rare thing, Sherlock. When it comes down to it, you only have control over yourself. Your choices. The rest of the world - the rest of us – we are in charge.” She took his hand, he gripped hers, looking into her eyes steadily, listening. “Of course you can choose who you have around you - who becomes your family outside of the messy, beautiful one you were born with.” A lump rose in Molly’s throat in response to Sherlock pressing his lips together, tears threatening along his lower lashes, “But it’s a two way street. We choose whether we stick it out or not.”

“I couldn’t live if you died, Molly.”

“You can’t live without love, Sherlock. And it’s not your place to tell me not to love you because you’re afraid of how you would feel if being with you got me killed. You don’t get to make decisions on behalf of my heart. You only get to decide whether the life you have now - with everything that’s changed since you saved your sister - is worth living without love.”

Sherlock rested his head on their entwined hands. Molly felt the first of her tears fall, but she did not feel weakened.

“What if... what if I can’t give you what you want, what you deserve?” His voice was a plea.

“What do I want, Sherlock?”

His head snapped up, panic in his eyes. “Er... I...”

“What are all these dreadful expectations you think I have?”

“Well, you... you said yourself... once.... a dog, going to the pub at weekends...a...”

Molly laughed, tipped her head back, the sun was so bright she had to close her eyes. “You idiot.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows lifted in the middle.

“And that was enough for me, was it? That would be the reason I’m here with you now instead of sitting in front of the telly with Tom - because that’s all I aspire to? You know you don’t believe that’s what I want.”

“You want to be happy - I want you to be happy. I want you to have a happy, normal life where there isn’t a price on your head, a target on your back!”

“A normal life?! Sherlock for pity’s sake – I cut up dead bodies for a living, I’m thriving in a speciality dominated by men who are convinced they know everything better, including me, I have been an accessory to crime, a secret-keeper and a fraudster, my God-daughter is the child of a disturbed ex-soldier and his world-class assassin wife, I kicked the worlds most prolific criminal to the curb after one date, I’m kicking cancer up the backside, I emailed the Queen’s right hand man for family snaps and I’ve spent the last three hours sunbathing on the private beach of a fortress where they just about contain the most dangerous people in the country.”

Molly’s breath came hard and fast, she felt the heat in her cheeks and the thud of her heart against her ribcage. She felt alive, for the first time in such a long time, and that very same feeling is what she waited to see in the mercurial sea-foam eyes in front of her because that was when they were their most beautiful.

“I love it, Sherlock, in-spite of you. The one thing I cannot stand - will not stand - any longer, is dishonesty.”

Sherlock looked at her and she stood her ground, didn’t blink, tipped her chin up. She wanted him, she would never truly want anyone else. She loved him, all of him, every side, every world he inhabited. If he couldn’t see that, couldn’t see that he needed that, then the fatal blow to their relationship would not be by her hand. And she would survive.

Sherlock drew in a harsh breath. “I don’t know what the future looks like,” he said.

“No one does. Well, one person has a good idea, and she’s in there,” Molly jabbed her finger at the castle behind them, high on its rocky perch. “So thank your lucky stars that is one of the many talents you do not possess.”

He huffed out a laugh, Molly found she had to stop herself giggling. “Luckily for Eurus,” she said, “her brother gets sentimentally attached to strange women.”

Molly saw Sherlock’s frame stiffen, knew she’d touched the nerve, felt a thrill in her belly.

“Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side, Molly Hooper.”

“Which side are you on, then, Sherlock Holmes?”

He looked up at her through his lashes, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Neither.” He spread his hands out wide, the wind catching his hair and his coat. “I’m a romantic!” He grinned at her and she back at him, shaking her head.

“Sentimentality is a defect, Molly,” he grabbed both of her hands, that look igniting. “It’s a function of the brain which parrots attachment to objects or people while protecting us from being wounded by them - because while sentiment might be strong, compelling, blinding, it belies true feeling, is devoid of real emotion and is not - not even a pale comparison to - love. I abhor sentiment, because it is dishonest and self-serving, however unwittingly so. I knew how to love as a child, how to carry my emotions closely and show them without fear or shame. But the very fact of my ability to enact love got my first friend killed and tore my family apart.” He paused, took a deep breath, Molly squeezed his fingers.

“I thought I had cleansed my existence of emotion and I proved to myself every day that my uninhibited reason was enough to save a life. But you are right - love has enriched my life, immeasurably, whether I like it or not. Not being the more common...”

Molly smiled through the waterworks. Then, Sherlock’s smile resolved to a stillness.

“I am not sentimental about my sister. Or my family. Or John, or Rosie. My friends. I love them dearly. I may not currently, nor may I ever truly understand this incredible incarnation of love which I feel now but I can assure you that when I think of you...”

He leant closer to her, the expanse of the beach condensing down to the space between them.

“...when I look at you, I do not experience sentimental attachment. I cannot keep you carefully protected within a glass case, untouchable by everyone who isn’t worthy of your redeeming gaze and so much less able to be injured or to injure me. I do not want that any longer. I am so desperately in need of you.”

Molly felt the blessed release of being heard. Her heart soared.

“I’m not sentimental about you, Molly. I love you.”

His lips met hers and Molly’s body responded with indecent speed. She pushed herself almost into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing a hand into his hair. His breathing heightened, she didn’t give the groan in his throat space to leave his lips, swallowing the sound instead and feeling her stomach plummet as his arms enclosed and crushed her to him. When she dragged her mouth from his, he shifted his to her jawline. Then, slowing himself, he kissed her throat, cradling the back of her head and carefully tilting her skull to exactly where he wanted her.

“I love you,” she was surrounded by it.

“Forgive me, Molly,”

“It’s done, it’s done,” she soothed.

He caught her mouth again, the vibrations from the noise he made kicking Molly’s system up another gear and she made a wanton sound in response, pushing her tongue against his.

“I warn you...” he said in between deep, hungry kisses, “...I cannot abide dinner parties...”

“Me neither,” Molly replied, grasping the lapels of his coat. “I always make... a fool of myself in social situations...”

Sherlock pulled back enough to hold her face between his hands, to bore into her eyes with his. “You’re no fool, Molly Hooper.”

“I am for you.  I’m a mess when it comes to you.”

“I refute that entirely,” he kissed her cheek. “You wield your intelligence like a scalpel in my presence...” the other cheek, “...you can see through the unimportant and cut right to the heart of the matter...” he kissed her lips, tenderly and slowly, giving Molly chance to indulge in the dizzying sensation of it, “...right to my heart.”

She opened her eyes. In the very distance, the broken rhythm of helicopter blades slicing the air could be heard - their lift back to reality. What did the future look like? She was as uncertain as he was, but she welcomed that, wanted a part in everything they both were, what they could be.

“Your time – your mind - is your own, Sherlock,” she told him. “I have a life of my own too. Honesty - and your heart - is all I want,” she laid both her palms flat on his chest.

“It is yours.”

Chapter Text

St Bartholomew’s Hospital

Three months later.

There was a parcel on the end of the bench nearest the door, the uppermost of a pile of post consisting otherwise of medical circulars and membership renewal notices. Sherlock looked down at the label, it was addressed to Molly in unnecessarily embellished handwriting, two Xs below, several postmarks and airfreight stickers denoting the journey of this package to Bart’s from Australia.

Second cousin lives in Perth.

Fellow cat fanatic.

Sherlock lifted the package from the pile and moved to the open window at the far side of the room. Thankfully, the lab was deserted. Holding the envelope closed on the counter below he tore the opening strip, lifted the package carefully and dropped it from the window. Wherein it exploded, just as it crossed the threshold of the open commercial recycling bin in the alleyway below. Admittedly there would have been much more mess had the bin been full, but a good quantity of cardboard might have disguised the sonic reverberations somewhat. Possibly prevented the hole being blown in the base. At least the process of finding the blast site for collecting samples for chemical analysis would be exceedingly simple.

That made twelve. Lucky 13 next. Sherlock smiled to himself.

He heard the door swing open, turned and saw Molly enter. “Hello,” she said with a smile.

“Hello,” he walked over to her and kissed her cheek, his hand on her waist signifying their increase in intimacy while also minimising the risk of her receiving disciplinary action for unprofessional behaviour, and him losing his access to the lab facilities into the bargain. Molly seemed pleased with the concession; her cheeks flushed, the effect was beautiful. It took him a moment longer than would have been ideal to remember to remove his hand. He shrugged off his coat.

“Anything specific today?” Molly enquired.

“Quite specific, yes. Just need to collect some samples. Oh, and I’m afraid I’ve got bad news about dinner...”

__________

Sherlock closed the door of the cab he had hailed for Molly, telling her he would meet her at her flat, that he just had to see John on the way.

He made his way through the streets, relishing the expectant stillness of the London evening air as he crossed Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Re-emerging onto High Holborn he paused, looked toward the exit way of the underground to see John Watson emerge from it.

“Evening,” John said.

“Yo.”

“What’s this all about, then?”

“Just paying a call.” 

“Right’o.”

The two men set off along the street

__________

“To think, I’ve given up a potentially unforgettable evening - candlelight, music... but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to confirm the extent of your stupidity. Sadly for you the conclusion appears to be - fatally.”

Sherlock held the twenty-six year old, solvent, Oxford-graduate’s arm outstretched behind him, twisted at the wrist, his other hand clamping the low-life’s neck to the wall. Behind Sherlock, John stood from checking the vitals of the two accomplices he had knocked out cold. The gentleman doctor.

“Ahh! Christ, I haven’t even done anything!” The man struggled ineffectually against Sherlock’s hold.

“Sure about that, are we?”

“Of course I’m bloody sure - I’m here aren’t I?”

“You weren’t going to be at the restaurant. You never are. You rendezvous with your unwitting date...” Sherlock spat the word, infused with malice, feeling his blood boil, “...at the hotel room - tonight that is to be the Langham, room 131. I suggest you keep your appointment.”

“Why would I do that?!”

“The woman some more of your little friends are at this very moment drugging is a trained undercover policewoman, her colleagues already have the hotel surrounded. If you go there, you have a chance of survival - your enemies, all the mates you’ve double crossed, forgotten to pay, didn’t share with...” John Watson shifted from foot to foot, Sherlock would have happily put money on his hands having balled into fists, “...might just forget about you while you rot in a prison cell for a decade or two.”

Sherlock felt his captive gulp.

“Or you can stay here and put the kettle on - my good friend will broadcast your mobile phone number, your location, the location of the family pile in Derbyshire, your two bolt holes, on his little blog - how many followers do we have now, Watson?” Sherlock glanced over his shoulder.

“About twenty thousand.”

“Pretty decent reach, don’t you think? Ought to catch the attention of every real criminal who has their eye on us, and perhaps - you.”

“I wouldn’t have done anything to her... I swear.. I just wanted...”

“Bragging rights?!” John’s voice was seething. “Check me out - I pinched Sherlock Holmes’ bird from under his nose?! You could have killed any of these woman with the drugs alone and that’s before we even get on to what you put them through...”

For once, Sherlock didn’t actually mean to do it. The crack was audible, splitting the air; even John startled.

“Ahh - ahhhhhh! My arm! Get off!” The barely-man dissolved into gulping tears, Sherlock growled as he released him, watching him slide to the floor, clutching his broken wrist to his chest.

“We won’t keep you, you’ve got a date.”

Sherlock swept from the building, John behind him. The evening air hit him and he tried to calm himself by filling his lungs with it.

“You okay?” John asked.

Sherlock took his phone from his pocket and sent a text to Lestrade. Receiving an almost instant confirmation, he put his phone away and then turned to John. “They’ve always been filth, John - the foetid waste beneath even the scum of the earth. But now, they’re worse.”

John blew out a breath. “Yup. You just wait ‘til you have a child.” He clapped Sherlock on the shoulder and set off down the street towards the main road. Sherlock followed.

After a period of companionable silence, John asked, “how many attempts on Molly have there been?”

“Twelve,” Sherlock replied, “If you don’t count the one we just foiled.”

“Oh I’m counting...”

“Four to go.”

“Four to...?” John stopped walking. Sherlock turned back to him. “What, you know four more lunatics are going to come for her?”

“They’re going to try, and we’re going to stop them as well.”

“As well? I had no idea I was involved until tonight.”

“You would rather I didn’t utilise you?”

“Of course not - she’s my friend, Sherlock, my daughter’s God Mother, your... whatever you refer to her as.”

Sherlock regretted many things about the two years he had had to spend apart from his friend; the reasons for it. Not least of which, that he didn’t get the opportunity to observe the early stages of John’s relationship with Mary. It would have proven most useful. In relation to the somewhat difficult matter of how people who were engaged in a relationship of a romantic nature referred to themselves and each other, Sherlock was envious that Mary had only ever been John’s fiancée, then his wife, at least to him. All the other possible iterations seemed beneath his feelings for Molly. ‘Girlfriend’ reminded him of Janine, and while he didn’t feel bitterness towards her, there was an element of discomfort there...

“Sherlock!”

He focussed on John, who’s eyes were widened and scathing.

“Sorry,” Sherlock said.

“I said - what sort of thing have we - apparently - been dealing with?”

“Oh. Er... the one with ventriloquist dummy...”

“The strangler?!”

“... the diplomat, the bell-pull, the thing with the cat stuff - litter?”

“Really?”

“And do you recall that weekend I invited you to Bognor Regis? We thwarted a poisoning...”

“Sherlock,” he paused as John raised his hands. “After the four you say you know about, what then?”

“This is a test period, John - the interested parties I am aware of are trying their luck, testing my reaction, gathering data - well, they think they are the ones gathering data...”

“A test period? So does this happen every time you... make a friend?”

“Not every time. But this isn’t the first. The worst instance I can think of was the harpooner on Clapham Common. The least convenient journey back to Baker Street I have ever endured.”

“Who were they after?”

“You.”

John’s hands went to his hips and he looked at the ground. “Jesus, Sherlock. You can’t do it forever. You have to trust... fate! You have to trust us!”

Sherlock let out a long exhale. He knew John was right, as Molly was. This was his eternal battle, at least part of the currency he had to spend wisely.

“There will be things - people - that I don’t see coming, John,” Sherlock admitted. “Molly will have to deal with those. And I have faith that she will. But anything I can anticipate, I will do everything in my power to protect you all from it.”

They both pictured that summer night.  John blew out a breath through his nose.

“You don’t need me to remind you that you’re not invincible, Sherlock,” John said. “But I will remind you that you are not insignificant. Pick your battles, please.”

Chapter Text

Baker Street

Two weeks later.

John no doubt passed Molly on the stair, Sherlock heard the giddy elation in her greeting, imagined John’s reaction. Sherlock smiled to himself. All Clear. Two more blissful-sounding words he could not imagine. He rested his head back and closed his eyes as John reached the doorway.

“So, how’s romantic entanglement?” His friend enquired.

“Exhausting.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

Sherlock looked down, imagined seeing himself dressed as he was, in the livery of a Ritz Hotel porter, from John’s perspective. It wasn’t easy to strip away that many cognitive layers. He looked up at his friend from where he was slouched on the settee, bone-tired but exhilarated.

“Number 17.”

John went into the kitchen muttering to himself and shaking his head. He heard the click of the kettle being switched on.

“Tea – thanks!” he called.

A text alert sounded. Not that one – after Sherlock and Molly were pictured together several pages into one of the nationals some weeks previously, he had only heard that one once:

NICE CHOICE

LAB MICE BITE

LET’S ALL HAVE DINNER

X

He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the message. A photograph appeared – a white, left-handed male of Celtic heritage – possibly Scottish – approximately 45, a boxer with a heavy vodka habit and at least… four ferrets. He was laid asleep on a pavement – oh no, not asleep – unconscious. There was an open flick-knife on the ground by his hand.

Client?

Victim?

Who sent the message?

Sherlock launched himself off the settee and thundered down the stairs. “Sherlock?” John called from behind him.

He wrenched open the front door and saw the man laid a few feet away. A small crowd was gathered, including Speedy and…

“Molly!” Sherlock went to her and took her wrist between his fingers, his other hand at her jaw, tilting her face so he could examine her. “Did he hurt you?”

How could I be so stupid?

Pride cometh, idiot.

“What did he do to you, Molly?” He turned and took a step towards the man on the ground. His heart pounded.

“Sherlock!” Molly grabbed his arm and he turned back to her.

John appeared at the front door. “Molly – Jesus! What the… are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m...”

“For God’s sake, fellas, let the the woman speak!” Speedy spoke over Molly.

“Well, quite!” she shouted. “He got hold of me, I thought he was after my bag. I elbowed him in the stomach, he pulled the knife – so I knocked him out.”

………...

“It’s a miracle. Something has finally shut you both up,” Molly dead-panned.

John cleared his throat. Sherlock shook his head. “You knocked him out? How?” his voice was incredulous, his head perplexed. Amazed.

“You should know!” Speedy chuckled, some of the people stood around snickered, looking at Sherlock and whispering to one another. Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

“Oh I think you credit this small-time, petty criminal with too little intelligence, Speedy.” His audience was hanging on his words, but only one member mattered. “Whilst I don’t doubt for a moment that his heart is blackened and cold, I suspect he lacks the capacity to recognise the antidote when it hits him in the face. Dr Hooper’s personal brand of miracle-working, I sincerely hope, only works on complete morons...”

Molly’s eyes burned into his, her lips pressed together. Sherlock knew they would be pinkened by this action, felt compelled to her down to his very soul. He swallowed. “… and this man clearly isn’t one of those – look, he has a subscription to the National Geographic.”

He gestured to the man without looking. He was vaguely aware of the quiet simpering of the strangers around them but Sherlock focussed on Molly. “So my guess would be a perfectly timed kick to the groin, followed by a knee to the face.”

“Hmm,” Molly smiled at him, flicked her eyes downwards and then back up. “You didn’t notice his arthritic knee.”

Sherlock whipped his head around to look. “No...”

“I didn’t until I kicked him. Lucky, really – he went down like a sack of potatoes. He should get that looked at.”

“We should call the police,” John said.

“On their way, mate,” Speedy clapped Sherlock on the back and then made his way into the cafe along with several members of their audience, chuckling as he went.

“What are you doing?” Molly asked John. He was pulling on a pair of latex gloves from his pocket.

“Mugging a mugger, on behalf of several hundred Londoner’s a week.” John pulled two phones, a wallet, three Oyster cards and a gold-plated lighter from the man’s pockets. He folded the knife. As an afterthought, he checked his pulse.

“When did you learn to do that, Molly?” John asked. “And – more importantly – how old does Rosie have to be before you can start training her?”

Molly giggled. “I took classes.”

“In what?” Sherlock asked.

“Serbian. In self-defence, Sherlock”

“Why?”

“Well… I’m a woman living alone in London, I travel to work at all hours, never have a big burly bloke on my arm...”

Sherlock straightened.

“… and I’m a known associate of the biggest baddy-botherer in England.”

He sniffed.

“Ha!” John barked out a laugh. “You’re a total bad-ass, Molly. No wonder Mary adored you.”

Molly flushed and smiled, her fingers entwined together in-front of her. “I know,” she said. “Well, I did survive a date with a psychopath.”

“They say history has a habit of repeating itself,” John remarked.

“They do, don’t they?” Molly replied.

They were both smiling at Sherlock. He bristled, entirely for show. He felt Mary’s presence as if John’s mention of her name had summoned her spirit. She hadn’t been the only one.

“So,” Molly carried on. “After I’d helped you with the… mad... thing… on the roof, while you were off...”

“Baddy-bothering?”

“Yes, that – in eastern Europe - I went to classes. Still do.”

“I’m impressed,” Sherlock admitted.

“Me too,” Molly said.

Whirling blue lights turned the corner onto Baker Street, the whoop of the siren being switched off making them all turn to look.

“You two go and finish making the tea, I’ll deal with this,” John said.

“I’ve got to get to work,” Molly looked at her watch.

“I’ll go with you,” Sherlock said, reaching for her hand.

“No you won’t!” Molly snapped. Pride swelled in Sherlock’s chest. Pride in her; she would be okay.

“You look ridiculous. I’ve got a reputation to think about.”

John laughed. Sherlock looked down and only then remembered the uniform. He looked back at Molly, her eyes were sparkling. He pulled her to him by the hand; gathering her in his arms he kissed her full on the mouth, lifting her almost off her feet.

A breeze blew down Baker Street. People bustled up and down, about the business of their extraordinary lives. A police car pulled up outside a busy cafe. A black front door emblazoned with a famous number opened and a grey-haired lady appeared with a toddler who reached her hands out to her Dad, who was stood on the pavement holding an assortment of stolen goods and a knife.

And an incredible woman and her ridiculous man shared a very ordinary embrace.