I wrote this loooong ago in January of 2012. I finished it tonight on my fic journal at LJ, and I'm cross-posting it here for you fans of Molly, Sherlolly, and bittersweet angst. Enjoy!
From the beginning he has said the wrong thing. He makes elegant and cruel statements about her hair ("Mousy-coloured."), her figure ("You've been eating those chocolate biscuits again, haven't you? Your hips are screaming it."), and her clothes ("Been shopping in the Girls' section again, Molly?"). She's made countless excuses to slip out to the loo and cry into a wad of toilet paper. She is nothing to him, but she always comes back because he is brilliant and and cold and he can't see what he is doing to her.
She thinks she is being so clever when she wears that black dress and huge jewelry and too much lipstick. I can appeal to his baser instincts, she thinks. No man can deny the appeal of an attractive woman in a clingy dress and red lipstick. But Sherlock can, of course. He looks right past the picture she's painted for him and sees the desperate, sad, lonely little girl underneath. Every nasty sentence is like the slap of his riding crop. And in front of all their friends. Why does he have to make her feels so small? Why does he say such horrible things? Such horrible, horrible things, she wonders aloud.
Then he changes the rules and apologizes to her. He kisses her on her cheek and begs her forgiveness. The defenses she thought she'd cultivated against him are cowed by this humble display. She drinks far too much wine that night and spends the next day with the worst headache imaginable.
She can't help but feel a sense of pride when he arrives with John and pulls her back into the morgue with the promise of crisps and his approval. He needs me, she thinks, andsome foolish, hopeful part of her glows. She has learned to observe him right back in these long, silent stretches when he's analyzing slides. He has been nothing but business for nearly two years, even when he swept his eyes down that Adler woman's cold corpse. But today, he is sad.
Sherlock tries hard to be chilly and detached, but she sees his shoulders dip and his eyes soften. And then when John speaks, his back is ramrod straight again, and he nods curtly as if everything is usual. He finally cares for someone, and she feels her heart reach out for him like it has so many times before for more selfish reasons. But now Sherlock is sad and she wants to help. She tells him about her beloved, dead father, and how she can see Sherlock's pain the way he'll never see the pain of others.
He seems surprised by her admission that she doesn't count, and that surprises her. Why should she count? She's been nothing but wallpaper until recently, and fodder after that. She knows what she is to him, and she's learning (slowly, painfully) to accept it. That's why it shocks her to her core when he admits that she is right. He is sad, and he is alone.
But Sherlock needs her, and this is not how he usually demands her help so she forgets her surprise and her hurt. He needs her and he is begging and all she wants to do is make his hurt go away. She reaches up and takes his pale, panicked face in her hands. "What do you need from me, Sherlock?" she says, her voice soft but firm.
She will always come back. But it only just occurred that so will he.