Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'…" ― Alfred Tennyson
Things always come back around. No matter how long or rambling the road, eventually you come back to where you started. It was a difficult fact to admit but here, in this place, that point was hard to argue.
The skyline as seen from the roof of Bart's Hospital was not one of the more magnificent prospects available in London. It wasn't even her favorite if she was being entirely honest. That didn't stop her from coming up every now and again when she needed a moment. It was a bit morbid to be sure but she was a woman that made her living by trying to understand and interpret death in all its forms. Molly Hooper was no stranger to the ghoulish or the macabre. All things being equal, that realm was her milieu of choice.
She found the spot by rote, stood there looking out over the city proper with her hands clasped behind her back. Out of habit, she bent and placed one hand flat on the frost rimed stone. Fingers, bare and puckered from the cold, splayed out on the ledge as she traced the divots and flecks of the unworked edge. Molly imagined that she could feel tremors held within the matrices since that day. His desperation, her fear, their determination that nothing would interfere with the outcome of the plan they'd cobbled together.
It was an end and a beginning, the events of that regrettable day. He died and yet lived. She concealed and protected and withheld. Reacted and orchestrated. Played the game and let the game play with them. What do you want? What do you need? One question she asked herself and the other she asked him. The answers to both turned out to be one and the same…you….her to him and him to her. it was probably the most honest they'd been with each other.
Her phone chimed…his text alert…and her hand moved reflexively to answer.
Where are you? SH
Molly laughed and tapped out a cryptic reply. Let's see how quickly the consulting detective could puzzle it out, she told herself as her fingers danced across the screen.
Where it ended and began. ~MH
It was a bit of a surprise when his answer came back almost immediately. Damn him anyway.
Stay there. I'm on my way. SH
She slipped the phone back in her pocket and waited, just as he'd asked, wondering what she would say when he found her. Why had she come here tonight of all nights anyway? The city around her was alive and breathing, marking the passage of time, the change of one year for another. And here she stood in a place that, for her, was so symbolic of the occasion but she felt no urge to celebrate.
"Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?" She sang the lines quietly and with a melancholy tone. Was it time to finally let go? Would it be a 'cup of kindness' after a fashion, honey in the medicine to make it go down easier to cut loose that last bit of hope that things would be different?
"You choose the most interesting places to do your thinking, Molly Hooper." His deep voice flowed over her, enfolded her like a blanket even as she shivered unconsciously at the sound. "And lack the common sense to dress appropriately it seems." He shrugged out of his Belstaff and draped it around her shoulders. "In the interest of comfort, might I suggest we keep this short." Once he'd ensured she was adequately swathed, he sat down on the ledge beside her and looked out over the city. "What are we doing here?"
She snorted at his cheek in including himself in her reveries without so much as a by your leave. Clutching the lapels of his jacket closer, she buried her nose in the fabric, both to warm it and to savor the hint of his cologne. The bastard. He didn't even have to try to get her.
"Don't you ever take stock of where you are and where you hope to be, Sherlock? Isn't that what this whole thing's about?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug and his lips quirk into a smile…small but genuine. "I delete the things that are no longer of use to me, Molly, and retain only what I deem worth hanging on to." An oblique answer if she'd ever heard one.
"How very….unsentimental of you," she drawled in too dry tones. "Still I can't say I'm surprised."
He turned to face her, resting his elbows on his knees as he brought the full power of that pale blue gaze to bear. "Sentiment. You're correct that those matters which hinge on sentimentality have held little regard for me. They still don't." Pale fingers beat out a rhythm on the cold stone beside him…once, twice, a third time….a slight variation included with each new round, a subtle change that altered the cadence entirely.
"I remember the first time we met, you and I." He caught her surprised look and smiled again…that same swift flick of his lips. "I remember the first time I read one of your research articles. The first time you sneaked out a kidney and sent it over because I said I was interested in the medullary pyramids. I remember every single first we've had."
"Why?" It was the softest thread of a whisper, barely audible against the white noise of the city beneath them.
"You know why," His words were an unconscious echo of those she'd once said to him on another day, in anther life that seemed far removed from this roof and the odd swell of emotions that weighed down the space between them.
"Say it," she entreated, her fingers knotted in the folds of his coat, holding it tightly to her. "Say it like you mean it then."
He found his feet and edged closer, his hands gentle as he disengaged hers from the cloth. "I love you." His arms slid about her waist, gathering her into the curve of his body, his head bending toward hers until their lips were a breath apart. "I love you." The second time was gentler, deeper, and God help her…meant. Each word was a gift, precious and rare and imbued with his adoration for her and her alone.
What else could she do but return it.
They kissed in the cool darkness on the roof of Bart's Hospital with the star studded sky above them and London spread out like a shimmering jewel at their feet. Dimly, she thought she heard the sound of bells in the distance. Twelve chimes.
His words ran through her mind even as he held her enthralled with feel of his lips on hers. It was disconcerting. "I delete the things that are no longer of use to me, Molly, and retain only what I deem worth hanging on to." I remember….I remember…I remember…
Molly felt it….a beginning…something bold and new and beautiful but strong because it was built on a shared past, a mutual appreciation, a recognition that every moment before had been leading them right to here, to now, to this.
She thought maybe she finally understood what those lyrics meant….
"For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We'll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne" (Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne)