AN: Just finished watching Last Vow and this was the first thing that came to mind. Short, so I hope you can forgive me, but I couldn't shake this. Hope you all enjoy, I'd love to hear from all my fellow Sherlolly fans - I hope this gives you just enough of a twist that watching that scene again will make you smile.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock or any of the wonderful characters/plots associated. They belong to Doyle and the wonderful Sherlock crew.
~Voi
He's been shot.
He's been shot and is now bleeding.
Standing there in surprise, he counted not more than two meters between him and the assailant. Not far for a bullet to travel, but it seemed all the more potent as he stared at the woman who he had foolishly thought he could trust, that John could trust.
Ah, sentiment.
Hadn't he been warned time and again? He tried to sigh and felt his lungs hitch in pain.
He would never hear the end of it, hadn't he learned his lesson before?
What need had he for sentiment?
And yet it seems he can't quite shake this weakness either, because the first person he thinks of after he registers that he's been shot is not John, nor Mrs. Hudson. It's not even his parents or even Mycroft.
It's Molly Hooper.
Quiet, practical Molly who is single once more.
And yes, that was the first thing he said to her Bart's, wasn't it?
There is something to be said about one's gut reaction, the instinctual, animal part of the brain that condenses all of life's ambition and complexities into a single action, a single thought. A survival instinct that even he cannot quite shake.
He had used such a technique against the Woman, hadn't he?
A fire alarm and there it was, the hidden location of her most precious item given up in a single traitorous turn of her head.
Instinct.
And here he was, shot, possibly dying, and the very first thing he thought of, the person he looked to was his pathologist. She wasn't in the same building as him and yet he could see her standing beside him in his mind's eye, expression serious as she began her work.
Damn.
The pathologist, not his pathologist.
He could mentally hear John groaning in the recesses of his mind. People were not things, Sherlock; you can't actually call them yours just because you happen to be thinking rather than talking aloud.
And there's no time to talk aloud, no space to do anything more than think about Molly and what she's trying to tell him, to help him.
It's strangely disconcerting that in her explanations she finds reason enough to slap him repeatedly, like some sort of ghostly imprint of her actions back at Bart's have shaped the vision of her in his mind.
But she had impressed him with her temper hadn't she? Shown some backbone that he seemed to have thought important enough to store, to remember.
Her help is just the start, of course, and his path into the depths of his mind palace grow more chaotic as the situation grows increasingly tense.
But it does eventually get better.
Someone calls for a doctor and he does eventually get better.
He survives.
He lives.
And none of the in-between matters, the ambulance ride or the time he spent in surgery.
He can only remember the beginning of it, and how he remembered to fall on his back.