Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even Rob Thomas' voice. *le sad sigh*

This is How a Heart Breaks

Chapter 1

"Life is like a mean machine / It made a mess out of me
And let me come between / Like an anchor dream, I was stranded"

~Rob Thomas

Molly Hooper was having one hell of a shitty morning. Or night, or – oh hell. Let's face it, she had been having one hell of a shitty past few months. First there was the death of one of her closest friends. Then Sherlock went crazy with the drugs. ('I promise, Molly. It's just for this one case, and then I'll be off them. I won't lose it, and I'll let you know about everything that's going on. You can even monitor me, if you like.')

And of course she agreed to go along with it. Of course she did. Whether it was because he was lying on her couch with his head in her lap and her fingers carding through his hair (a personal fantasy come true for her) or if it was the fact that he had opened his eyes and looked at her so very earnestly and entreatingly, she was not sure. But she knew that she would do it, because she was a fool for Sherlock Holmes and her heart wouldn't let her do anything else.

Yeah. That had worked out so well. Okay. Well. She would give him a little credit. He had gotten John to forgive him, so there was that.

After that lovely debacle, things had started to calm down a little bit. Sherlock spent even more time with her in her flat doing some of the most mundane things. She would never tell him how positively domestic it all felt. He seemed to enjoy being with her, and she loved him, so she would take what she could get.

It never once occurred to her that Sherlock Holmes would want her sexually though.

Molly had just finished a gut-wrenching autopsy on a young girl that was no more than thirteen. She had been bought and sold in a sex ring and had been caught trying to escape her keeper. Greg had said that the girl had made it to the middle of the large yard before anyone had noticed she was missing. However, the girl had tripped the security lights flooding the yard and the house with a brightness that rivaled the sun, alerting her keeper of her escape. He grabbed his gun and took off after her. He was trigger happy and drunk, and his aim was more true than he liked. The girl didn't stand a chance.

What made the autopsy even worse for Molly, was seeing the small fetus within the child's womb. It was only because there was an intern working with her that she held it together. (She needed to remain professional in front of her students and interns.)

Sherlock had breezed in earlier that day, (for the first time that Molly had seen him in over a week) deduced everything that he could about the girl, and then told Lestrade where to find the girl's keeper. He shot Molly a secret smile that she completely missed in her emotional turmoil, and breezed right back out the door. Molly hadn't seen him since. She counted that as a good thing, since she wasn't sure that she would be able to handle his emotional stiltedness toward the situation.

She chided herself for being unfair. He had been putting out some effort to understand emotions. That did not mean however, that she was willing to put up with him on this particular night. All she really wanted was to get home, take a nice soak in a bubble bath, put on some comfy pajamas, and curl up in front of the telly with wine, cheese, and chocolate.

It was a lovely plan, and she could almost forget the horrendous autopsy that she had just done.

And then she walked into her house only to find Sherlock sprawled out on her couch in what she had dubbed his 'mind palace pose'. He wore his jewel toned royal blue shirt with his shirt sleeves rolled up. ('No man should ever look that hot. It just wasn't fair to her poor nerves.') His shoes were lined up neatly by the door, his Belstaff coat was hanging on the hook on the wall, and his suit jacket had been flung across the back of the couch.

There was a bag of take away on the counter that separated the sitting room from the kitchen. (Take away that she had no intention of eating, no matter how well-meaning Sherlock was trying to be.)

The whole set-up was a bit too much for her to take in at that moment, and she groaned softly. Huffing out a sigh, she threw her keys on the hall table and dropped her bag on the floor next to it. She slid out of her shoes, left them next to Sherlock's, glanced at him once more, and went to her bathroom to start her water.

If he wasn't going to acknowledge her presence, all the better for her.

Thoughts swirled in her mind as she undressed and got into the tub. They just wouldn't stop. All she could do was envision that poor girl and the horrors that she must have gone through. The whole thing hit a little too close to home for her and she finally let the tears free. (She had lost a friend to child trafficking years ago, and she always gave to charities that helped those children and broke down those rings.)

She spent the better part of an hour in the tub, refilling the water whenever it started to get cold, before she felt that she was calm enough and clean enough to get out and have to face the consulting detective.

Stepping over the edge of the tub, she wrapped herself in her favorite silk dressing gown (one of her few clothing indulgences) and went into her bedroom. Only to find that Sherlock had moved into her bedroom and was now watching her intently as she walked in.

A part of her wanted to be embarrassed. She had never been as underdressed in front of him as she was at that very moment. However, there was a much bigger part of her that was thoroughly exasperated with his mere presence. It was this part that made her decided that she just didn't care.

She shot a glare at him as she went to her dresser to get out her underwear and clothes. Deciding as she went that she would have to go back into the bathroom to get changed.

"Molly," Sherlock said quietly.

She huffed and continued to ignore him. She wasn't counting on him sitting up and grabbing the edge of her dressing gown as she passed by. He pulled her toward him and forced her to sit on his lap.

It was all rather shocking to the shy pathologist who had pushed all her Sherlock fantasies out of her mind to the best of her abilities. Apparently, Sherlock wasn't completely done surprising her because the next thing that she knew he was whispering in her ear, "Let me help you forget for just a little while."

And then he was kissing her lips, and it was bliss. He was touching her and making her body come alive. It felt like a fantasy, like dream. Only, it wasn't. He was above her and around her and inside of her and she was in a place that was beyond heaven. In those moments, there was no room for doubt, no room for fear, no room for questions; there was only room for them. Their bodies, their tongues, their heat. It was only as she was coming down from the euphoria that she began to wonder what all of this was about. Before she could give it too much thought, he had rolled off of her, pulled her to his chest, and told her to stop thinking so much.

She drifted off to sleep surrounded by the scent of her lover.

She woke up alone.

~SH&MH~

"And I'm steady though I'm starting to shake / And I don't know how much more I can take"

The call had come at about 4:30 that morning, and she had answered it without checking the Caller ID. She supposed it was a type of habit since the only person that ever called her in the middle of the night was Sherlock. So, it came as a slight surprise when it was an American voice that greeted her on the other end of the line. Besides, wasn't Sherlock right next to her…? She rolled over only to realize that no, Sherlock was not there at all.

Really though, she should have seen this coming. She could probably even put money on him not being anywhere inside of her house. Hell, he was probably on the other side of London by now. She pushed those thoughts aside and focused on what the American was telling her.

Her estranged older brother, it seemed, had gone and gotten himself killed and left behind his two children. Their mother was missing, or dead – nobody really knew, but she hadn't been in the picture for quite a while, and Molly was the only other familial contact that they had. (She hadn't even known of their existence until now.)

Molly felt herself going into shock. Her brother had left for the states shortly after he turned 17. Molly was only 13 at the time. She quite clearly remembered the row between her father and brother. (It was not an argument that she was likely to ever forget.) After he left, Molly had tried to reach out to him and bridge the gaping hole that had been left behind, but he was always unwilling to do so, and eventually she had just quit trying.

She was caught unaware that her brother even had her listed as a contact for his children. She supposed that he had probably saved her number to his phone after she left a message for him with the news of their father's death. (And even after that tragic affair, he still had not contacted her.) Now the children had no place to go, and if Molly did not come and claim guardianship over them, they would become wards of the state of Texas.

Lovely.

She wasn't even surprised that something like this had happened. It was just how her life seemed to be going. She got up from bed, only sparing a glance at the place she knew Sherlock had rested the night before, and went to start her day.

She looked into flights first, choosing one that was leaving out at 21:30 that night. Then she called Mike Stamford and let him know that she was going to need some personal days. She didn't go into detail, but since she never took any time off, Mike was all too happy to give it to her.

As she was cleaning her house and booking a kitty hotel room for Toby, she considered calling Sherlock to let him know that she would be out of town for a while. She waffled over it for about three seconds and then completely discarded the idea. After what happened last night, she didn't know where they stood in their relationship, or what his thoughts actually were. More than anything though, she was certain that she did not want to come across as needy.

God, but she wished she could have his strong arms around her right now. She took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. She had to pull herself together. No one was going to hold her up, and she needed to be strong for her brother's children. She figured it was better to start getting herself under control now instead of waiting until she got to Texas.

By the time she had managed to get her suitcase packed with all her necessary items, the sun had made it to the mid-point of the sky and her stomach was protesting loudly. It was at that moment that she realized that she had not eaten anything in the past 24 hours.

She knew that had it been anybody else *cough a certain consulting detective cough*, she would be giving him the fifth degree. Molly rolled her eyes at herself and went to make some tea. As she waited for her tea to steep, she stared at the little crystal sun catcher that hung above her sink. Her brother had got it for her when he was 17, just before he left them for good. She was pretty sure that he knew at that point what was going to happen. The night before the big fallout, Molly woke to him sitting beside her bed. He held it out to her and she took it gingerly from him.

"What's this for, then?" She asked quietly.

He smiled at her, though it was more of a grimace than anything. He didn't answer her question directly though. He only said, "Hang it in a window and the sun will make beautiful colors all over the walls for you. It will be just as bright and cheerful as you." Then he hugged her and wished her goodnight. The next day he got into an argument with their father and he was gone.

When she came out of her thoughts, she was leaning over the sink holding the back of her neck. There were no tears in her eyes, but oh, how she wished the turmoil would just stop.

She thought again of Sherlock's strong arms pulling her into a loving embrace. Right at that moment, despite all of the complications that their relationship was riddled with, she would have given anything to have him to lean on. To feel as if he truly cared for her. To simply be loved by him. She ruthlessly pushed those thoughts out again; utterly foolish notions that she could not deal with on top of everything else.

Then her phone rang, and she just knew it was him. Molly glanced at where it lay on the counter, debating. She turned away from the sink and started to make her tea.

'Think of the devil…'

Her phone went silent and she was grateful for all of two seconds, until it started ringing again. Sighing, she answered it. He would just keep calling anyway.

She had expected his call to be something mundane in the grand scheme of Sherlockian things. Some body parts because he was bored, some help on a case that John couldn't attend to with him, or even some help in the lab.

She was not expecting him to crush her already crumbling heart.

A/N: A special thank you to lilsherlockian1975 for all of her help on this! This would not be as marvelous as it is without her!

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