The chest of the tall, lanky man on the couch was heaving placidly, his dark curly hair plastered against the sleep-moistened forehead. The eyelids of the man started to tremble, his eyeballs were twitching rapidly as if chasing some chaotic inner vision. Maybe it was one of those rare moments even the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, too, was exposed to erratic subconscious powers - the closest to ever being vulnerable. Molly had already heard him utter words in his sleep, words she couldn't make sense of, although she surmised 'John', John Watson, was surely one of them.

It was weirdly endearing watching him like that - in his sleep - as if Sherlock Holmes were a child entrusted to her care. Molly Hooper had to admit this was how she felt more than once in the past months of Holmes' (and hers) subterranean existence. Save for the times she wrestled through the familiar bitter-sweet agony of 'being around Sherlock Holmes' - which was always.

The Sherlock Holmes the world knew was dead now, though. The man on the couch in the shabby appartment in London East didn't exist for the time being, til futher notice. The appartement had been hired by Molly Hooper on Sherlock's request, and from the very moment the detective moved in, he had been spending nights and days behind his Mac (purchased entirely new - from scratch, - again by Molly Hooper). In addition, Molly acted as his trustee and envoy for various assignments all over the city. She knew Sherlock himself ventured outside a few times. and this knowledge nearly got her as far as to take up praying, although she realised her faith in Sherlock was still much greater than in God.

As far as she could ascertain, Holmes' endeavours were aimed at dismantling the remains of Moriarty's network, by expanding, tightening and manipulating his own (the details of the process were never imparted to Molly - for obvious reasons, she assumed). At the moment, though, Sherlock's enquiries seemed to have reached the point of saturation, and with results not imminently in sight, his frantic energy of the first days gave way to - as yet - manageable irrascibility. When he didn't measure the room with his long legs, he lay on the couch without moving, giving in from time to time to shallow, tiresome sleep of someone who is not actually tired.

With a heavy sigh. the man on the couch opened his eyes. His light blue gaze was crystal-clear, devoid of any signs of sleepiness, as if he were able to quantum jump from the state of sleep to alertness.

'Molly?'

The low throaty baritone startled Molly, and she realised she had been staring at at the sleeping man in pyjamas and a robe for some time now.

'I brought food,' she murmured, picked up her Tesco bags in both hands and waddled hurriedly to the tiny kitchen, where she started emptying them on the table.

Sherlock's disheveled, gangly figure emerged at the kitchen door a few moments later, and Molly realised, somewhat alarmed, that he wouldn't have done this only a week earlier. It looked like Sherlock Holmes suffered from a medium to severe form of sensory and/or intellectual deprivation; in other words, he was bored to death.

'I've got milk, bread, Penguin biscuits (which you never eat, she wanted to add, but refrained). 'The Telegraph'.

'Thank you, Molly.' As expected, he grasped the newspaper right away and scanned across the pages absent-mindedly (which was a mere visibility, though, as Molly knew Sherlock mastered reading in the diagonal, actually he had even perfectioned it).

'Boring,' he concluded at last, threw the newspaper back on the table and looked straight up at Molly, who cringed inwardly feeling absurdly responsible for not being able to provide Sherlock's analytic intellect with a noteworthy challenge.

'England won against France yesterday, 2-1. Huge news in the mortuary. No, not in the mortuary - I mean, in the mortuary, too - you know what I mean - I mean -, ' she stammered.

Sherlock didn't bat an eyelid, and Molly simply knew she had to leave as soon as possible lest she should beat her own records of awkwardness. She was quite happy she already had an excuse, and she didn't even have to lie.

'I have to leave now...I'm already late...'

'The London National theatre, 'Roberto Zucco' at 8 p.m., seat 9H ?' asked Sherlock deadpan.

Oh no, not that, too.

'OK, just tell me - , ' she uttered hopelessly.

Sherlock said dryly: 'Molly. The last five minutes you've been rearranging the contents of your handbag on the table right in front of me. Presumably, you have been looking for this -

With eyes widened in horror, Molly watched his long nimble fingers run through her things and hand over to her her very own 'Advanced membership' card with her ticket for the show attached.

'You're getting absent-minded, Molly,' Sherlock added in exactly the same voice, the present continuous tense instead of the present simple actually being a major concession on his part. Barely registering her own ministrations, Molly put everything back into her huge formless handbag and thought: 'Absent-minded? I'm only absent-minded when I'm not at work. When I work, I don't miss a thing. You should have seen me doing that brain post-mortem this morning. I'm actually very good at my work. Not the best, not the only, but still - . The rest of the time I am a total mess. Just like you, but you probably don't even know it, or you don't give a damn - and I do, and oh god, I give a damn for two.'

For a moment, she entertained a crazy idea to blurt it out without giving a damn, but ended up with an unadressed moan:

'When will it end?'

'Exactly what?' Sherlock quirked an eyebrow.

Molly quickly gathered herself and said in her best 'normal' voice:

'This. This appartement? You being dead?'

'Hmm. Resurrection, you say.' Sherlock's words came out as a dry rasp somewhere at the back of his throat. Molly froze at the sound of his voice and only stirred up when he added:

'Do you think it's still worth it?'

'What are you talking about?' She shouted out, suddenly terrified.

'Don't worry, Molly.' A strange smirk curled the left side of his mouth. 'It's so boring. Staying dead.'

'