Ahoy there. First Sherlock fic, and I'm kinda excited. It's a one-shot and it's kinda short so take that with a grain of salt. Read and review, please? It's much appreciated.

~AA

Dear Sherlock,

I don't care that you think the dear is overused. I don't care that you don't like reading letters and that you'd much rather text. I can't text you and the only thing you've ever seen in writing of mine is medical forms and so I'm writing this now and you can't stop me. For once you can't.

At the Christmas party, when you hurt me—no, I didn't mean to say that. It's not that and I'd erase it if I wasn't writing with a pen. But when you told me everything about myself that I was hoping no one would notice I realized something. That's your job. I'm no different. You tell people these things about themselves that they hate and you brush it off like it doesn't matter. And I suppose I'm the only one that ever thought, "It's not all there is to him, Molly. It's how he expresses himself."

And it's funny because it was just a few months later that I told you I don't count. And you told me that I did, and I helped you… not die. And you are still alive, aren't you? I don't think you'll ever die, Sherlock. You're so clever I'm sure you could outwit death. I wasn't afraid... not in the slightest...

John misses you. He doesn't talk as much anymore and I think going to the flat pains him. I'm sure there's a letter he's written to you somewhere. He's seeing his therapist again, he tells me. He says there's progress but I don't know. He just seems... sad. No one says "Sherlock and John" anymore and "John" on its own isn't the same.

Sometimes, I have a hard time believing you really are alive, and a harder time still at pretending along with everyone else you're dead... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like I was whinging. Maybe you could visit once, just so I know you're still living?

I'm not expecting you to write back. That's not your way. I just have to remember that you might've read this.

Love,

Molly

(P.S. I don't know if I can look at a bag of crisps the same way anymore.)

Sherlock posited the sheet of paper back on the chipped oak table. The note was on plain white cardstock, but halfway crumpled-then-smoothed as if a certain someone had excavated it from the rubbish.

It had a return address scrawled in Molly's nervous script (the palpable work of someone who was expressly diffident), but the sending address was written in another hand. Mycroft's.

The ex-detective stared out the window to the pearly gray skyline, wearing his usual scarf and wool coat. His room was a bit drafty, but nevertheless suitable.

He spent so much time observing others, he'd never stopped to think what others drew from him. Molly had specifically written /I'm not expecting you to write back/. She was correct. He wouldn't. But her mention of John stirred some kind of hidden discomfort—he wouldn't call it misery—that he always tried to cache. Now that he was shielding all of himself, he might as well own up to it. He missed John, and not only him but Mrs. Hudson and Molly and everyone else.

Molly.

How was it that such a simple person could leave him so speechless? Everything she said was as if she was cornering him. It was so effortless and she didn't even realize how much they affected him. She and John didn't dance around the truth when they talked to him.

No, Molly wouldn't get a response letter. But he whispered a few small words to the windowpane. A few small words that would tell her everything, everything.

He wouldn't say them to her in person. But here, in this tiny, dilapidated flat, he would say them.

And he could hope for the first time that she could hear him.