A/N I don't own the characters. No profit. Yada yada. Thank you to Adi for the beta.

One of his shirts is crumpled on the floor next to the bed. Not one of the dress shirts, of course. Those are all hanging neatly in the closet, arranged according to some color wheel for which only Sherlock has the key. This is a lowly t shirt. One that he must have thrown on at some point post-coitus and pre-shower. It is this shirt and its odor of their mingled sweat and sex that has Molly Hooper lying prone on his (formerly their) bed, staring at the digital clock on the bedside table.

She's been doing really well with the packing. She doesn't even have a place to move to yet (hasn't even started looking) but she wants to be damned sure she 'll be ready to go when she found something.

But as she was gathering up dirty laundry, she picked up this shirt, not certain if it was his or hers (plain white) and one whiff finally triggered the tears that she'd been shoving down since she let him leave, two days before.

They had made it five months this time. A record for them in the two years since they first decided to give this thing a go.

She can't believe that she is in her thirties and is half of that couple. The one that is always breaking up and getting back together. She hasn't known a couple like that (other than Greg Lestrade and his wife) since her uni days.

This time was significant in that it was the first time they had lived together, at least since the few days she harbored him after he faked his death. Their living arrangement was probably what had kept them together past their usual three month marker. So bloody hard to find a flat in London. She groans at the idea of all the "I told you so's" that will pass from her friends' lips and keyboards when they learn the news.

She wonders if any of this would be happening if she hadn't gone and gotten herself kidnapped. They had been broken up for a little over two months when Raul de Santos, whose conviction for Connie Prince's murder had been overturned while Sherlock was away, had very elegantly taken her at knifepoint as she was walking from Bart's to the tube stop. Charming smile, asking for directions, the sudden dig of the knife into her side as she pointed the way. Despite getting away with murder, he did hold a significant grudge against Sherlock for the time he had spent in prison.

It had taken Sherlock less than twenty four hours to track them down.

After Molly was cleared by the paramedics at the scene, Sherlock had gotten a taxi and accompanied her home. His face was seemingly impassive as he looked out the window at the city passing, but the tension in his jaw revealed his rage. Somehow, John Watson had gotten to de Santos first. She didn't want to think about what might have happened if Sherlock had been first on the scene.

With all the adrenaline from her rescue expended, exhaustion was setting in quickly as they pulled up to her building. It hadn't registered that he had sent the cab away instead of having it wait while he walked her inside. He knew how hard it was to get a taxi on her street late at night. He'd opened the door and told her to wait just inside while he swept through all the rooms, making sure everything was safe. It didn't take him long to explore the tiny flat, and the second he knew it was clear he let the façade drop away, and just before he pulled her into him, shutting the door with his foot and leaning back against it as he held her, she saw the terror in his eyes. He had held her for a long time, his body shaking and his heart hammering in her ear. She sank into it, her body instinctually finding the old places where she fit best. Soon the soft kisses he was placing on her head became frantic open mouthed kisses and he had picked her up and carried her to her bedroom, where a stream of apologies and entreaties to never leave him while he lost himself inside her culminated in a confession of love and a plea for her to move in.

He had fallen asleep almost immediately after, and as she followed, she wondered if he would be there when she awoke.

He had been. And she had given him an out, telling him she totally understood. It was all adrenaline and relief.

Sherlock had barely looked up from his paper before casually telling her to not be ridiculous and that he would pay whatever was needed to get out of her lease. She had told him she needed time to think. So he had taken her to bed again, and after two days of his very methodical, intensely attentive method of persuasion, her mind was enough of a stew of hormones and endorphins to agree to move to Baker Street.

However, she refused his money and opted to sublease her flat for the remainder of the lease term. That lease had run out last month and the subletter had decided to become the letter. Bollocks. At least she had put her furniture in storage rather than sell it. She wonders if that decision was subconsciously directed by the knowledge that things would eventually fall apart.

Molly's phone rings and she lets it go to voicemail. It rings again almost immediately. She looks at the display. Mary. She answers this time because she knows that Mary will either keep calling or come over. She doesn't want anyone to come over and see the state of her and the flat. Someone else's seeing would make it real. Mary's sympathetic eyes would shine on Molly's shame like a Klieg light, leaving no unlit corners for her to hide.

She cuts to the chase. "Hi Mary. So, is your sister still an estate agent?"

"Oh, Molly, what's happened? " Molly appreciates that she didn't tack on a "this time."

"We broke up again. He's gone. I'm here. I need to find a flat."

Mary is the one person that she can count on to not say "I told you so," even if it's what she's thinking. "Do you need me to come over?"

"Yes, but I don't want you to."

"Well, in that case I'll be there in half an hour. When's the last time you ate anything?"

"We had just come home from dinner when it happened. Two days ago. I don't want anything."

Molly can hear Mary gathering her keys and bag and opening the door.

"Have you been drinking?"

"No."

"Okay, make it forty-five minutes. Take a shower. Don't say anything. I know you. You're sitting in your own filth and I don't want to have to breathe through my mouth the whole time I'm there."

The shower walls are filthy (the two of them had been in a standoff regarding cleaning it) but the water is hot and the water pressure impressive for such an old building. She stands under it until the temperature drops, not really washing. She turns from back to front intermittently; making sure her body takes an even pounding.

Her friend is in the kitchen when she steps out of the shower. Molly is a bit embarrassed to be wearing Sherlock's dressing gown, but she had forgotten to check the cupboard for towels and it was the only thing handy. She shrugs when Mary eyes her up and down.

Delicious smells waft from the bags and there is a particularly interesting looking, very cylindrical brown paper bag tucked among the takeaway. Molly's stomach, to her embarrassment, growls.

"Ah, you're alive after all, aren't you?" Mary crosses the distance between them and hugs her tightly. "We're gonna talk all about it, but not until you've stuffed your face and had at least one whisky."

Once dinner had been sorted and Molly had downed two whiskies, Mary asked her what had happened. Molly hid her face in a pillow.

"What was that?"

Molly lifted her head and sighed.

"I brought up Violet Hunter."