"No," Molly says, her polite demeanour still attached, but she is firm in her statement, refuting him.
Mycroft Holmes sits in the lounge chair in Molly's sitting room, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded in his lap. He can't help but let one side of his mouth quirk up in a sad half-smile. She jumps up from her chair and is pacing back and forth furiously, and it reminds Mycroft so much of Sherlock's behaviour; she must have picked up some of his habits while he lived with her.
Almost two hours he sits there trying to convince her that it is true; that this is not a coy like it was before when Molly was involved. She kills Sherlock Holmes once, and never intends on hearing that he is killed again.
The first hour she seems calmer than he expects; denying all of his statements, anger hints in her eyes, but not the typical Molly Hooper response. This is easier for him, seeing as how he is an emotional cripple just like his brother, maybe even worse.
"He's not dead," she tells Mycroft for the sixteenth time. "Why would you even believe that rubbish? You know Sherlock gets himself out of everything. You, of all people; you should know this better than I do."
She never thinks she could gain this sort of confidence around an intimidating man like Mycroft, but in this circumstance she does. Her patience is wearing thin as she tries to convince him that his information is wrong.
"Ms Hooper, I understand-"
"Dr Hooper," she snaps suddenly, her voice quiet, but she is starting to get upset.
Just as Sherlock would, Mycroft is cataloguing her reactions, the way Molly is when she is torn apart – though this may be the only thing that makes her react like this. He, in a way, understands.
And suddenly, Mycroft is uncomfortable. A tear slides down her cheek, hysteria setting in.
She yells, actually yells, at Mycroft. Not accusing him, but yelling as if he is Sherlock, as if she blames Sherlock for being so stupid and missing a step in his usual preciseness. She still cannot firmly believe it, but it is starting to set in.
Her hands ball up into fists at her sides as she tells Mycroft it makes no sense that Sherlock would be dead. And inside, Molly's insides are burning. Her body is tense, her chest is constricting, her head pounding. It is all too much to take in and she will fight as long as she has the energy to deny that Sherlock Holmes is dead, for real this time.
Tears fall down her cheeks for the next half hour that she argues with Mycroft, but she will be damned if she lets a single sob release from her throat. That would make it seem as though she is giving in, and she cannot; not yet. She does not want to believe it.
But Mycroft lets her pour out her feelings; on this very rare occasion he does not get up and walk away. He is interested in observing and clarifying Molly's true feelings, from the horse's mouth and her body language screams this. The reactions, the pauses to try and control her emotions – she's falling apart. The only time he can almost find the word love an appropriate association, a believable term in regards to one's feelings for another.
He may be the Ice Man, but there comes a point where Mycroft cannot watch this anymore; this is growing tedious and he needs her to see before he walks out that door. Maybe the only reason he can convince her is because Sherlock devises this so that Mycroft believes it himself.
"Molly," he says calmly, breaking a solitary silence that has been festering in the room for minutes now. "Please sit down," he asks.
He never uses first names, but he knows that using them makes the situation seem more personal, it is a comfort. He will allow it for this situation, and he knows she will take his tone seriously.
Molly takes one look at him before seating herself in the chair across from him. She watches as he is no longer leaning back in his chair relaxed.
"I understand that this is… a delicate matter…" he begins, and she is silent, unmoving. She looks as if she is bravely bracing herself for a fatal blow.
"I received a series of photographs and Sherlock's clothes, also a message. He was captured in an attempt to eliminate Sebastian Moran, and Moran did not hesitate in killing him."
He leans forward, giving her an awkward tap on her hands resting on her knee. Molly first glances at his hand on hers, but when she looks up, it takes all of her strength not to flinch.
Mycroft Holmes does not show the slightest bit of emotion; she learns that from Sherlock and from the few encounters with Mycroft, but he lets down a wall she never thought she'd witness. He does this for the sake of her sanity.
She sees a twinge of pain in his eyes, the true reality of hurt about his brother in those fleeting seconds. The Holmes brothers will get overwhelmed by emotion if they allow it to take over, and this is precisely why it is kept buried within. "Molly," he says again, and this is the final time he will use her first name when addressing her. "Sherlock is gone."
Molly stops breathing until her body will not let her anymore. She is frozen in stone and her crying ceases immediately. She knows from the look he is giving her that he knows it himself; that he is not trying to convince her at Sherlock's request to protect the ones that know, at least not to Mycroft's knowledge.
Her gaze is on the floor and something breaks within her. She loses all knowledge of Mycroft being present in the room. It does not take Mycroft long to realise this, and without a word, he sighs and leaves her alone in her flat.
Molly doesn't know how long she is frozen in her position before she snaps out of it; minutes, maybe an hour, two hours. When she does, she feels a panic rising in her chest.
How could this have happened? Sherlock doesn't slip; he never slips, he's always on guard. Yes, he had not dealt with Moran until that point, but he always has a plan. He cheated death once before, it was surely possible again.
The problem is that if anyone were to realize it was a trick, it would be Mycroft. Mycroft has always been smarter than Sherlock, so would he actually be able to outsmart his brother this time?
Apparently, yes, but the only one that knows this is Sherlock Holmes.
Tears roll down her cheeks and do not stop. Somehow Molly ends up lying on her floor, moisture from her eyes dampening the floorboards; she cries until her body is too exhausted to keep up anymore and has no choice but to give in to sleep.
By that time daylight is creeping through the cracks of the blinds and she faintly hears the chirping of birds. Such contradicting weather for the way the day should be when someone is given news like this; days like this don't deserve to be nice.
When Molly wakes up again, it has to be late afternoon. She has used her entire day off to sleep, but for some reason she does not exactly remember what day it is anymore. She reaches her hand up and grabs her phone off of the coffee table, the screen lighting up to let her know it is Tuesday. This means work early tomorrow morning.
She makes her way out of the sitting room and to her bed. She buries her face deep into the pillow, expecting (hoping rather) that sleep will overtake her again, allowing her to forget, to pretend as if this doesn't exist. But one thought makes her alert and awake, and she feels a twinge of pain in her chest.
She remembers the last time she sees him, before he leaves her forever:
She is asleep until she feels the arms wrapped tightly around her pull away. She rolls over to face him and his hand cups her cheek.
While this is old to her, it is also new to her.
Sherlock hides in her flat for six months, and for some reason, maybe because she's the only choice, he finds solace in Molly Hooper. He spends the last month sleeping next to her; it is only recently that she wakes up and finds that she is in his arms and he looks more peaceful than he has in what seems like forever.
She is quiet, grogginess still in her heavy lids as she looks at him, but she will not let herself fall asleep. There is something in his eyes after the peaceful look flees, something of loneliness, of sadness, and the want to not.
For the first time, Sherlock pushes Molly onto her back, bracing her hips between his knees and his lips find hers. He isn't rough, there is no trace of lust within the motions of his mouth against hers, but it is a feeling of longing. He kisses her tenderly, his tongue swiping over her bottom lip, consuming her with every movement, in every way she has ever wanted him to.
She does not gasp in surprise, her cheeks do not flush red; Molly has gone over this moment in her head a million times and it was never like this. The only thing that runs through her mind is that this feels right; that Sherlock against her, claiming her mouth, hovering over her as a sheath of protection and warmth is where they both belong.
But in this moment, she realizes that he is about to leave like he previously tells her that he inevitably would have to.
He can't stay in her flat hiding forever. At the right time, he needs to leave, to break down a network of the most dangerous men and women in the world.
He stays like this for a long moment, his lips never lingering away from hers, barely allowing the two of them a chance to breathe. He clings to her like moss to stone and the last thing that he wants to do is leave her. He can't even bring himself to say the words, but Molly is different and she understands what he means without him needing to speak.
He can feel her understand when she pushes herself closer against him, her need stronger as she realizes this is more of a final moment.
When he pulls back slightly, she lays still for a moment. Her eyes close as her tongue darts out slightly against her already moist lips. She can still taste his lips, his tongue against her, and she greedily wishes to have their shared breath back into her lungs.
Her eyes open again, wide and void of fatigue showing before. She sighs softly.
"Come back safely," she tells him, but he cannot promise anything. He does not reply to her request but he rests his forehead against hers. His eyes remain open, taking in his last moment with her, and boring into her brown ones.
He does not utter a goodbye to her because he can't. Because he knows eventually it will not be safe for her to know that he is alive; not when he goes after Moran. He feels guilty and it is two years before he will even need to do this. He's hurt her so many times, but he's sure this will break her.
It's as if one lung is hollow, as if it is a struggle to breathe and she fights between a suffering numbness and a panic attack. She lays there for hours, hovering between the line of both, trying to convince herself to sleep. Before she knows it, her body takes over to try and flee the aching feeling coursing through her body.
She dreams that night that she wakes up just like she had the last night she saw him. But this time, he pulls away because he falls away from her. Because when she turns around to face him in hopes that he will meet his lips to her again, her bed is empty; as if no one was ever there.
These dreams repeat a few times a week, haunting her, making her relive the news she never wanted or thought she would hear.
Two months pass and Molly can only feel broken, numb. She tries telling herself week after week that there is nothing more that can be said or done, and that she needs to move on, but that feels impossible.
He should have told her he was in trouble, he must have known. Or if not her, Mycroft; his brother was the British government, for God's sake. She should have known to be concerned without hearing from him for two years. She knows deep down that there was nothing that she could do, but in her self pity, she wants to blame herself so she can stop being so upset with him.
This is not the way it is supposed to turn out.
This is the day, like any other monotonous day that she has to force herself through, which John Watson decides to visit her.
It should not surprise her that he does; they send a few texts to each other weekly, but she has not physically seen him in a few months.
She pushes a weak smile onto her face, letting it brighten her a little when she realizes that John looks better than he has in two full years.
John, on the other hand, finds his friend to be opposite. While his world is starting to look up, Molly looks like a complete mess; he's never seen her like this.
Even when she is sad, she tries to add a bounce in her step. She tries to make it better, to push herself through, but this time it does not seem that way.
Then again, two years of time and grieving is much different than two months. Molly's wound is still bleeding fresh, right against her heart, and she knows there is no way she can get John to understand without telling him. It's not something she is willing to do.
They go for coffee, and John swallows hard, finding this more difficult to tell her than he had originally planned. He found Mary Morstan, a woman who he fell in love with the second she caught his attention. She was kind, tender; she brought his spirits back up, gave him the motivation to try and make his life normal, and helped him through all of it.
Molly smiles weakly and tries her utter best to show that she is happy for John. And she truly is; he deserves this, and after all she has put him through, even though he still does not know, he deserves her to try and forget about her feelings to congratulate him.
"Has… something happened, Molly?" he asks her after Molly runs out of questions to ask about Mary and a heavy silence follows.
She has been staring at her hands, but the question causes her to look up at him, her eyes wide and red rimmed, as if she was trying to force herself not to cry. "N – No. Why, what do you mean?"
"Are you okay? You look… sort of like I did when…" but he does not need to finish the sentence because they both know that John is talking about when the fall happened. He knows grief better than anyone at this point.
"I'm fine, John," she says distantly, staring at her coffee cup now as her head repeats over and over that she is not. After a moment, she looks back to him and gives him a smile. "But thank you."
She has spent so much time numbing herself to the situation, keeping herself on auto pilot and not allowing herself to cry.
When she is at work, she temporarily forgets; her hands buried in a body, trying to convince herself that she needs to do her job because she can't just give up on everything. She needs to focus, needs to get away from this feeling, but she knows that leaving the morgue will only resurface the way she felt earlier that morning.
It's only a week after seeing John that her eldest brother decides to call her. She does not answer the first three times in a row that he calls her, but knows he will not stop and answers the fourth.
Her brother is aggressive in his behaviour, always the tough one. Well, at least after their father had died. Her eldest brother was always the favourite son and instead of dealing with his death, Caleb decides that he does not need to feel, that he needs to buck up and get over it.
It is not what she needs right now, and it is certainly the person who, more than Sherlock ever could, would throw her right over the fucking edge.
"I haven't complained to you," she tells him listlessly, but this is her brother she is talking to, and he knows she is wallowing.
"Molly you need to move on rather than pretend that you have," he tells her insensitively. "Just get over it already; it's been over two years and the bloke never treated you right anyway."
Tears are streaming down Molly's cheeks now at her brother's ignorant words, and she is crying for the first time in two very long months. "You don't understand," she tells him in a whisper, wiping under her nose as she sniffs.
She has not dealt with this properly, but she has spent these two months building up a wall to at least try to push it out. It only takes a few words for all of that to come crumbling down and it is falling quickly.
"Molly. He didn't love you. You've said so yourself so many times."
A hard sob comes from her throat at that because in her heart she makes herself believe that it is true. At this point it is easier to believe he had no feelings at all than to think he did and she only experienced it a few minutes before he left her life for the last time.
"I know he didn't love me. Of course he didn't," she says, her voice less audible now, but she can't handle this. She drops her phone onto the sofa, not even bothering to hang it up before she walks to her bedroom.
She's so upset and her eyes are so blurred from tears that she does not notice Sherlock in her doorway. He has been staring at her, and did not bother to knock when he heard her on the phone with her brother.
Molly would not have seen anyway. She sees shadows out of the corner of her eyes these past two months and she teaches herself to ignore them. They are always a disappointment when she turns and there is nothing there; it is her imagination torturing her.
When she reaches her room, she tries, not very hard, to pull the covers down so she can sneak under them; one chance more to hide from reality that she has been saturated in enough for one day. Her bed is made and so her blankets are tucked firmly under the mattress.
In frustration, she rips them off the bed and lets them fall into a ruffled mess on the floor. She curls up on her preferred side of the bed, hugging her knees against her chest as she lets the sobs release from her throat.
Sherlock is in the doorway to her bedroom now, Molly's back facing him. He is overwhelmed at the thought of how she looks when he last sees her, and how she looks now. He's never heard her cry so hard, and he knows that it is because of him. He always does this to her; but hopefully this is the final time he causes her to feel quite like this.
He has told everyone else that he is alive because he knows he cannot just tell her and walk away. He knows he has damaged her and he won't forgive himself for that.
He lies in bed beside her and she freezes, but for just a second before clamping her eyes shut, hugging her knees closer against her chest as if she wishes to grow smaller, to disappear.
He wraps an arm around her waist and nudges his nose against the back of her neck, wishing she would turn toward him. For a second he thinks she does not respond because she is furious and upset with him, but it is really because she does not believe him.
"This dream always ends the same," she mumbles and is surprised that for the first time she is allowed awareness. That she has finally convinced her subconscious to have control over her dream, as a participator rather than an observer.
"Molly…" he begins, trying to explain, but he knows that it won't be easy to get through to her; not after what he's put her through. He knows why Mycroft recovers quickly, but is surprised that John does. But John was always like that with him, and was in a better place to listen to Sherlock give him a worth explanation and forgive him, just glad that he is not actually gone.
"No," she says softly, trying not to cry so loud. "I don't want to remember this anymore."
It's a lie on her part; she would never wish to forget him, but she wishes this repetitive dream would disappear from her subconscious.
Sherlock's breath catches, and it frightens him to see her so broken apart. He can feel the emotion radiating against him and his eyes fill up with moisture at the empathy constricting in his chest.
Is this what he did to John? To Mrs Hudson?
"Molly…" he says again, but there is a lump in his throat. She hears the distress in his voice, and even if it is a dream she can't convince herself to ignore it; not if he needs her, never if he needs her.
She rolls over to face him, but she still keeps her eyes shut, still in fear that he will disappear if she looks.
He is unsure of what to do. He knows that at this point she can barely even talk, so he decides to pull her against his chest, his hand cradling her head against him as she cries.
No one has made him capable of being so empathetic before and the only way he can cope is to hold her closer, whispering "forgive me's" to her.
After a few minutes, she freezes in his arms and thinks she probably isn't dreaming anymore. He leans his head back, kissing her forehead, and then her nose. He stares down at her as she has still not opened her eyes yet. She tilts her head up and before she can even open her eyes, he kisses her as he did before he left her last.
His thumb traces over her cheekbone, her jaw, her collarbone as he refuses to part his lips from hers.
"Look at me," Sherlock says between kisses. "I'm not going anywhere."
Her crying is becoming calmer, more controlled now, and she finds some will to open her eyes. She knows that even in a dream, her mind can't make her feel the way that the kiss makes her feel. Her mind cannot replicate something so strong inside her chest.
She lets out a ragged sigh as she looks at his face. He is still there holding her in his arms, and her gaze is set on him. He is here; he is safe. She proves herself correct in that she should not believe Mycroft. But he admits to her once that her brother was more intelligent, cleverer than he was, so she figures he would not stump his brother.
He is lying if he denies that he is scared for a moment when Molly is silent, taking in the information. In all honesty, he does not blame her if she wishes him to leave her alone; he deserves it. Then again, Molly would say he is silly to think she would ever wish that. She loves him; she has not seen him for two years, and the last two months she thinks him dead. The farthest thing she wants is him away from her.
She presses her forehead against his jaw, closing her eyes when she feels his fingers sifting through her hair. A small smile is on her face, knowing he is comforting her, and in his own silent way, still apologizing. A brilliant man as this should know that she forgives him the second she realizes he is alive.
Her lips press against his throat; she gives one soft kiss before her body stills in hesitation. He hears her inhale through her nose before she speaks.
"I love you, Sherlock," she tells him, anxiety in her chest at releasing these words. "I know that you know, I'm sure that you have deduced it, but I feel like a fool that I let my timidness keep me from vocalising.
"After Mycroft convinced me, I knew that I should have said something before you left. That even knowing you don't feel that way for me, it needed to be said."
Sherlock's chest constricts at her words, and when Molly pulls back slightly to look at him, his eyes are closed and his eyebrows knit. He does love her, but he has trouble speaking. Sherlock hears Molly inhale sharply, and he can tell by her body language that she is more uncertain about his feelings for her than she's ever been.
That is when he moves his lips to hers again, willing her to see how he feels. That he is not ready to say it yet, but one day, he might be. He has been through two rigorous years of clearing his own name; to say he was overwhelmed with rawness and emotion was an understatement.
He licks and sucks at her bottom lip and one of Molly's hands come up to tangle in his hair. She pushes her body close to him because she has never wanted him closer. She understands in that kiss what he means, and she knows that things will be different from the way he treats her before he dies. He can be alive again, and things can be better.