Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes, in any incarnation.
Molly freezes with her gloved hands hovering over the dead man's chest. She doesn't have to look around to know who has just entered the morgue.
'No,' she says quietly. She prays she is wrong and knows she is not at the same time. She wonders if this was how Sherlock felt, when he worked it all out – when he realised what he would have to do. She wonders if she will ever be able to do anything without thinking about Sherlock's reaction, but isn't really sure she wants to try.
'You don't even know what I was going to say.'
'I don't care.'
'Of course you do. You are hoping –'
'No, I'm really not.' She turns to face him, thinking that interrupting Mycroft Holmes might just be the bravest thing she has ever done, even including the horror of the last two months, and feeling a rush of stubborn pride at how steady her voice remains.
'I know that Sherlock is alive.'
He doesn't. He's guessing. But Molly is too tired to try and contradict him.
'If you say so,' she replies dully, her voice thick with grief she shouldn't have to be feeling but still doesn't need to fake.
'I can help him.'
Molly doesn't reply. It is taking all her energy just to remain upright, not collapsed weeping in a corner because she would so much rather be facing anything but this. Even John's utter helpless devastation and everything that comes with it would be better than looking into Mycroft's slightly pinched, irritable expression – as though he is facing a stack of irksome paperwork, not the death of his only sibling.
At least she knows how she feels when she looks at John: crippling guilt and sympathetic agony. With Mycroft, she can't decide which emotion of pity or fury is stronger. The confusion is unbearable.
'He could be in danger. You have done admirably so far, Miss Hooper, but –'
'Stop it.' He does, surprisingly, fall instantly silent, and regards her with what almost passes for reluctant interest. His entire non-reaction, his dismissal of how impossible this situation is for her even once he has guessed the truth – and more than this, the idea that she might even fleetingly consider throwing away the trust Sherlock has placed in her, no matter the enormity of her task – sweeps away any remaining shreds of patience she might have had. 'Get out,' Molly commands, pointing with a trembling finger towards the door.
'You must listen to me –'
'If he was alive,' she snaps, her voice quivering with equal parts terror and disgust, 'I'm not saying he is, but if he was – don't you think there'd be a reason he came to me and not you? Haven't you done enough?' she demands furiously, folding her arms and glaring at him with every bitter and guilty thought she has had in the last eight weeks etched onto her features.
There is a ringing silence after her outburst.
Molly has never been very good at articulating her thoughts. She can think in beautiful, seamless lines of perfect logic, construct irrefutable arguments for any theory that occurs to her, and she feels so very deeply – but as soon as she opens her mouth to express any of it, words almost always fail her. They build and build until they burst from her lips disordered and clumsy, no matter how long she has spent planning how they are supposed to sound, and nothing ever frustrates her more than being able to know all these things and not tell anyone. It is one of the many things she admires about Sherlock; his ability to know and explain – when he chooses to – better than anyone else she has met, and most of all herself. And, though she hates it sometimes, the very fact that she doesn't have to explain herself to him, because he can read her more easily than she could ever want him to, means her inability to communicate in words is not so much of a hindrance as it usually is.
This time, though, she seems to have done the trick alone.
Mycroft blinks. That is all – he just stands and blinks at her, but on his coolly impassive face the movement conveys all the shock and outrage as if she had slapped him.
Or perhaps she is only hoping it does, for Sherlock's sake.
Perhaps she will actually slap him, just to compare.
She wonders how Sherlock would react if she did, if he would manage to smile.
She wonders if Mycroft has dared approach John yet. She doesn't think so; she doesn't see any bruising or black eyes, and she doubts John would be able to hold himself back when she, who knows the truth and blames herself for the doctor's pain as much as she blames Jim or Mycroft, is barely managing to. At least she deserves this pain. John doesn't. No more than Sherlock himself does.
Molly thinks of Sherlock's face when he had told her what was going to happen, of how lost he had seemed, and of the broken shell that used to be John Watson which has been left behind by one man's arrogance and another's boredom.
She thinks of how the two best men she has ever known or ever will know have had their lives torn apart by the cold practicality of the man in front of her, and still takes no pleasure in turning her back on Sherlock's brother.