"Is he clean?"
Molly felt her rage building. She wanted to hit Sherlock. Hard, so hard her small hands would feel very sore afterwards.
It wasn't just Sherlocks renewed drug habit though. It was everything that had happened in the past few weeks: her cat Toby being sick almost every day, finding a big rat under her kitchen sink and her mother calling her twice a day to check up on her.
The latter doesn't sound so bad, until she figured out the real reason why she was phoning her.
"How's Tom?"
"Have you set out a date yet?"
"Give my love to Tom!"
"Are you working on my grandchildren yet, honey?"
"You're coming over for Christmas, right dear? Tell Tom I'll make his favourite dish!"
It was always Tom! She was glad her mother liked her fiance, but Molly was marrying him, not her. She had considered giving her mother his number but she knew that if she gave it, they wouldn't have a romantic moment anymore without the woman's voice interrupting. Not that they had a lot of them before…
So instead she lashed out at her, told her to back off. Due to little amounts of sleep and lot's of work, she might have been a bit harsh, cruel even. But it had had its effect, since then Molly hadn't heard a word from her. Molly refused to feel guilty over it, she had a life too and she was too busy to bother with stupid questions. That was five days ago.
When she met Tom, a year after Sherlock's 'suicide', she thought she was the luckiest woman alive. She had found a nicer, sweeter and romantic version of the 'dead' man she was once madly in love with. He was handsome, friendly and adorable. He didn't think her mouth or breasts were too small, they never had a row and maintained a healthy sex life…
Molly started to think, hope, that she had finally found the man of her dreams.
That was, until a certain detective came back from the land of the dead.
Sherlock Holmes had, once again, turned her life upside down.
She had last seen him in the morgue, where he gave her the final instructions.
"John can't see the body under any circumstances. He is unstable right now and doesn't believe I'm dead. So he'll want to see my body, but the resemblance-trick only worked from a distance. He could mess up everything-"
Molly interrupted him: "So I won't let him see you- the body I mean. Don't worry 'bout it, I can do this, Sherlock."
Sherlock smiled, which made his face look a lot softer. "I never doubted it."
Molly's heart fluttered in her chest, she was in love with this incredible man and somewhere in the back of her head, she wondered if she would ever get over him.
"When will you be back?" Sherlock's expression became one of barely concealed sadness.
"I don't know, Molly. But not until Moriarty's most dangerous criminals are finished."
"And with finished you mean..."
"Yes, professionally murdered. For that part, I can count on Mycroft's international 'employees'. It was about time he proved himself useful."
Molly smiled at his sneering remark at his brother. John had complained about it to her after he walked in on one of their childish feuds. She would have loved to see it, she only ever saw the utterly composed, cool and indestructible Sherlock. The side he showed everyone except his loved ones. And even those moments were very rare.
Molly had caught a glimpse of it once, in the lab. She was watching him as always, whenever she thought he wasn't looking.
She saw how Sherlock looked at John's profile with a vulnerable expression on his face, like he was memorizing him.
He looked... sad. Like he knew he was going to leave his friend for a long time and that he was going to hurt him but didn't want to.
Being a woman she always had had a bit of insight in a person's feelings. But, like her ability to speak fluently, that insight vaporised whenever Sherlock was near. But not that moment, no. That moment she was absolutely certain that what she suspected was right.
Sherlock had a big secret and she wanted to find out what it was. Right now.