Chapter Text
Standing at Molly's door, Sherlock doesn't bother with his key or even the bell – both options require more manual dexterity than his shaking fingers feel capable of at the moment. He clenches his hand into a fist and bangs heavily against the wood. Bits of blood flake off from his glove where the fluid has dried onto the leather and drift to the floor like crimson snowflakes to land on Molly's disgustingly friendly mat.
There's a patter of feet from inside and the door is yanked open. Although he's expecting it, Sherlock nearly topples through anyway. "Do you mind?" Molly says in a hiss. "You'll wake-"
Then her rich brown eyes meet his hollowed out ones. The hand holding together the lapels of her dressing gown clutches tightly at the fabric, crinkling it into sharp creases.
"Sherlock? What's happened?"
"Mary's dead," Sherlock says. He doesn't topple through the door but into it; his own weight is suddenly too much to bear so he has to brace himself on the frame. More blood flakes away from his glove. Some of it sticks to the painted white wood of the casing, some of it drifts away on a current of warm air escaping Molly's flat.
Molly's phone rings, and she starts badly before fumbling it out of her pocket. "It's John," she says after a quick glance at the screen. Answering it, she steps clear of the doorway and moves into the interior of the flat. "Yes? John, I just heard; I'm so sorry."
Sherlock can't hear John's voice on the other end, but he can hear John's fury in the wide stretch of Molly's eyes when she turns to look back at him. Sherlock has been left impotent on the doorstep, unable to heed the words on Molly's doormat and enter, but equally powerless to flee the scene of his terrible crime. From further inside comes the thin, waking wail of a little girl who will never know her mother now.
"Yes, he's here," Molly is saying. "But, I don't … Okay, okay, I won't, but …" She pauses for a longer time, shifting uncomfortably as her eyes dart to Sherlock, then down to the floor, then back to Sherlock. "No, I don't understand, but it's fine … Yes, yes, of course, as long as you need. We'll just pop round in the morning … Get some rest, John. And call me if you need anything."
Molly signs off and drops her phone back into her pocket. "What did you do, Sherlock?" she asks, eerily calm.
Sherlock shakes his head. He means to go but when he tries to stand straight, his knees won't hold and Sherlock has to maintain his grip on the door frame.
"Come inside," Molly says.
"I can't," Sherlock replies, finally finding his voice. "John doesn't want me to."
"This is my flat, Sherlock Holmes." Still, Molly maintains her composure. It's a bit like the stagnant lull that settles heavy in the air before a hurricane makes landfall, something Sherlock has never forgotten from his time in Florida. The drugs he'd pumped into his veins hadn't done a thing to dull the sharp, visceral terror he'd felt when he'd stepped outside to watch the storm's approach. "Are you a danger to Rosie?"
"No!" Sherlock swallows back the lump in his throat. "Of course not."
When he opens his eyes – he doesn't remember when he squeezed them shut – Molly is holding the door open wide, waiting. "Then come inside," she says. "You're letting out the heat."
It's a trite reason for obeying, but Sherlock does so anyway. Before he crosses the threshold, he pulls off the blood stained glove, then the other – useless without the first and he's unlikely to ever don this pair again – and drops them on Molly's mat. She makes a noise, but the quick shake of Sherlock's head stills her question before it can be voiced.
"I shouldn't be here," Sherlock says quietly.
"Sit down, Sherlock." He does, perching at the edge of his chair in her living room. "You are not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on," Molly says, hands clenched into fists. Here is the storm he's been waiting for, but it doesn't bluster and shake the rafters. It breaks quietly, spilling down Molly's cheeks. "You always do this. You never tell me what's happening. Not about Jim being Moriarty. Not about the drugs and that bridesmaid. Not when you nearly got shipped off to die in Eastern Europe." She lifts her chin and pins him to the chair as neatly as a butterfly to a board with only a glare. "But Mary," Molly's breath hitches. "Mary was my friend too, and you are going to tell me what the hell happened. Wait here."
Rosie is wailing in earnest by now. Sherlock waits and listens to Molly as she goes down the hall and puts away her hurts while she coos gently, singing the baby back to sleep. Sherlock waits and watches the closed front door. It would be easy to slip away while Molly is distracted. He could be long gone before she realized, but he is still in his chair when Molly slips out of the spare room and returns.
"I killed Mary," he says without prompting.
Molly, just at the corner of his vision, stops without properly entering the living room. "That's what John said." She doesn't believe it; that much is obvious from her quiet patience as she waits for the real explanation.
Perversely, it makes Sherlock angry. "Don't think I'm capable? Did anyone bother to explain to you why I was nearly exiled?"
"Yes," Molly says, cutting him off with that one word. She comes up next to him, lays her hand on the back of his chair, just by his shoulder, but not touching. "Mary told me, about Magnussen. Everything."
Sherlock slumps forward, pressing his face into his hands. "It's my fault," he says.
How she understands the words, muffled as they were, Sherlock doesn't know. Molly squats down next to him, touching his knee with two fingers. "Tell me what happened," she commands.
His hands slip upwards, fingers tangling in his curls, and he does. The story bubbles out of him in fits and starts, his normally well-ordered mind in chaos.
Molly is quiet while he speaks, has no reaction at all except to spread her hand over his knee, gripping gently. The press of warmth that seeps through his trousers grounds him when he falters, and Sherlock carries on doggedly. He holds nothing back. Nothing. His eidetic memory works against him as he describes every word, every twitch, every breath. Sherlock can't seem to censor even the slightest thing. Self-censorship not being among his proficiencies to start, with Molly kneeling at his side, her brown eyes looking up at him solemnly, he's lost what little ability he had to do so.
"It is my fault," he finishes finally. "I should have... I-"
Molly's fingers tighten on his knee as she pushes herself to her feet. Before he can react, she has slipped an arm around his neck, pulling his head against her breast. Sherlock's arms instinctively lift up to loosely circle her waist as Molly bends over him, lips pressed into the curls at his crown. She makes no noise, but a few fat tears fall against his scalp.
Neither does she refute his statement, and the silence echoes harshly. He leans back to disentangle himself, a task made more difficult by Molly's reluctance to release him. "Molly," he says hoarsely, and she obeys his unspoken request, her arms falling away.
"Stay here tonight," Molly says.
He looks away, to the door and his imminent escape. To what, Sherlock doesn't know. It's been a long time since he's run from something rather than towards something, not since he met John Watson. But there's little doubt that he's running away now. It's only a shame that there's nowhere he can run to get away from the mess he's made.
"I can't," he says. "John..."
"Rosie is sleeping in the spare room with the door closed," Molly says with a set face. "John doesn't want you to see her and you won't. But don't go home to an empty flat."
At the mention of his goddaughter, Sherlock turns towards the hall. "I don't want to put you out," he says, fully aware of the irony of his statement. A year ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to take over Molly's bedroom – had done so on more than one occasion. But today he is all too cognizant of the fragility of friendship; that it can be destroyed with a single, fatal mistake.
Mycroft likes to wax poetical on the fleeting nature of life, and for years Sherlock avoided creating ties with people, unable to stomach such a loss. For the first time, Sherlock is considering that there are other ways of losing a loved one, and fear clenches at his gut that he's lost John's regard for good this time.
Simple, ordinary, dull Molly Hooper sees through him, as she has always done, and says, "John needs some time, Sherlock." Her small hand grips the sleeve of his jacket. "Please don't go home to an empty flat tonight. Please, Sherlock."
A shudder rips through him as he looks down into her wet, brown eyes, and Sherlock sags a little, defeated. "Thank you," he manages to murmur.
Molly's relief is palpable as she leads him down the hall towards her bedroom. Sherlock sheds his coat while Molly digs in her drawers for the set of his pajamas that she keeps for him. "I'll just be on the sofa," she says, lying the clothes on the bed. "If you need anything."
Sherlock catches her wrist with a trembling hand. "Don't go." Even his voice is shaking as the trembling in his hands spreads to the rest of his lanky frame. In some distant part of his brain, he catalogs the reaction as his body's response to the stress of the last few hours. It's frustrating, to once again be proven so human, with human fears and needs. But at the moment his greatest need is overwhelming everything else. "Stay. Please?"
Biting her lip, Molly nods quickly in response to his heart wrenching plea. "Okay," she says. "I'll just step outside while you change."
His grip tightens around her wrist. "No. Help me." Sherlock holds out his other hand, fingers shaking violently, not sure what he's asking. But by Molly's sharp indrawn breath, she does.
"Okay."
Molly gently frees herself from his grip and places her hands on his shoulders, smoothing down his lapels in a comforting caress before she dips her hands inside his jacket to push it off his shoulders. Sherlock flicks his arms and the jacket falls to the floor. Molly catches one of his hands in both of hers, turning it over to expose the button on his cuff. Unfastening it, she moves to his other side and repeats the process. Sherlock stands still, arms hanging at his side where she has dropped them, while Molly deftly undoes his shirt buttons, tugging his shirt tails from his trousers to reach the last ones.
When his shirt is fully unbuttoned and hanging loose, Molly stops and looks up at him uncertainly. "Sherlock?" The question is there, though she doesn't put it to voice. It's the one she always asks, and the same thing she's always offered.
Sherlock takes her hands in his, finally understanding what he's asking her. Like all the things he's ever asked of her, it's too much. "Please," he says, putting her hands on his chest, inside his shirt.
"Okay," she says for a third time. Her hands slide up, over bare skin of his pectoral and collarbone, curving over his shoulders to brace herself as she lifts up on her toes.
Sherlock barely has to tilt his head down to touch his lips to hers and take what she's offering. It's always too much, the things he takes from her. But it's what he needs, and as always, Molly does not hesitate to give him that.
…
Molly wakes to an empty bed, a soreness in muscles that haven't seen use since she'd gotten shot of Tom, and a wailing baby in her spare room. There's also, Molly realizes as she rises to tend Rosie, a host of images that have transcended fantasy into reality. Molly scrubs at her eyes in aggravation, as if that will rid her of them, and sets about changing Rosie's soiled diaper.
It's the last one of the stack she'd grabbed from John and Mary's flat last night, and Molly knows she needs to get over to John's – just John's flat now, she realizes, swallowing back a lump in her throat – to resupply, as she's agreed to take care of Rosie until John finds his footing. Thankfully it's her day off, so she doesn't have to worry about that as well.
But breakfast is the first order of the day. Molly leaves Rosie in her cot while she heads for the kitchen, intent on making up a bottle of formula and whatever she can scrounge for herself while the kettle boils. She smells the pot of coffee as she comes down the hall, but still nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees Sherlock sitting at the bar that separates her kitchen from the sitting room.
"Morning," Molly says as she skirts around him.
There's a bottle prepared, sitting next to the coffee pot, just the right temperature. She pours herself a cup of coffee, thinking absently of Mary's amused retelling of Sherlock Holmes: Wedding Planner Extraordinaire. There's a simple truth about Sherlock buried in that story, the same truth that's echoed on her counter. When Sherlock is out of his depth, he must take some action.
If cups of coffee and a bottle for Rosie are the best that Sherlock can manage today, then Molly is at a loss. The night he'd thrown himself off the roof of St Barts, he'd sent her off to Waitrose with a fist full of cash and a very detailed list, rearranged her kitchen for maximum efficiency while she was out, then cooked enough food to fill her previously empty fridge. Cooking was merely chemistry, he'd explained haughtily when Molly expressed her delighted surprise. While she slept, he'd cleaned her flat from top to bottom, leaving before dawn with a note that said only that he hadn't vacuumed because he'd not wanted to wake her.
But today Sherlock has none of the frenetic energy that had overwhelmed him while he waited to embark on his mission to destroy Moriarty's network. Molly peeks at him when she turns to get some milk from the fridge. Sherlock sits limply at her counter, looking hollowed out.
"I have to go out," Molly says, although she is certain that her words are unheeded. It's an impulse she can't control, to fill the silence with something. "I'll take Rosie with me, of course. You're welcome to stay."
Sherlock stirs himself, lifting his head. Molly's breath catches. She's entirely unable to suppress the memory of those storm colored eyes from the night before, glowing in the low light as he'd looked up at her from between her thighs.
"Molly," he says. The one word is tentative, nervous, and entirely unlike Sherlock. "Last night..."
"You don't have to say anything," Molly says tightly.
But Sherlock is determined, and in this at least, he's the same way he's always been. "It didn't mean-"
"I know." She doesn't need to hear the words. More than that, she can't stand to hear them, and it seems that Sherlock understands because he falls silent at her interruption. "I know what it was. And it's okay." Molly stubbornly blinks away her tears. It seems an awful thing to cry over something she's known for years – Sherlock doesn't love her and never will – when Mary's not even been dead for a full twenty-four hours.
Sherlock jerks a little and looks at her, really looks, with the same searching surprise that had graced his expression the day she'd told him she didn't count. "I-" He falters, shakes himself, and says, still unsure, "I'm sorry."
Molly knows that too.