A/N: Another Ficlet Friday Prompt Fill. I try to answer a few every Friday, so please feel free to msg me here or on Tumblr if you have a prompt (my user is MissMollyBloom on Tumblr, too).
sherlolly2015 asked for: Short angsty fic where Molly is fed up and gives up on London, thinking no one will care about her ever. Sherlock proves her wrong? One-shot. Fluff at the end?
Rated M for a few rude words and some implied smexy times.
She didn't like to admit defeat, in fact, when she was at uni she once played a game of Chess for three hours after the king became her only remaining piece. She refused to give in until her defeat was undeniable.
But when she saw the news on Boxing Day morning, she had had enough.
There was nothing in the report to link the murder of Magnussen to Sherlock, but she knew it. The drugs, the fiancée, the gunshot - it was all linked. And even if no one had bothered to keep her in the loop, she knew it as a certainty.
She knew him too well.
She remembered his words, the way he looked at her like a man lost and told her he needed her to make him a dead man.
She remembered his resurrection, and his first appearance in Bart's locker-room. He like her Belstaff-clad resurrected Lord and she his Mary Magdalene.
She remembered his assurance, that she wasn't just replacing John, she was being herself. He wanted her.
She remembered the way he approached her in the hallway, ignoring her babble about a fiancée who was never anything more than a temporary distraction, and telling her that she was the one person that mattered the most.
She remembered his appearance in her flat the night of John and Mary's wedding – so lost. And he held her and kissed her and after, when they were lying together in her bed she swore he whispered "I love you," into the nape of her neck.
Was it all lies? Was any of it true? Or, did he play her just like he'd played that poor girl Janine?
Why didn't he warn her about the drugs? Why didn't he tell her that he needed a deliberate relapse for his case? Why did she have to find out when John called her – only to have their suspicions confirmed when she ran the test herself?
Why did he lie about Janine? Did he really have the stamina to be fucking both of them – Molly in the early evening and Janine all night long – as her article in The Times claimed.
And when he was shot – why did he have to find out from Greg? Was she that unimportant to him?
Her mind raced with questions she never wanted to ask.
Instead, she marched into Mike's office at midday on December 26th, deposited her letter of resignation on his desk while she knew he'd be at lunch, and turned around, leaving Bart's for what she expected to be the last time.
At 7pm on December 27th she had her last ever Thursday night drinks with Meena.
"Where are you going to go?" Meena asked, trying to hide her shock behind a glass of Merlot.
"My grandmother left me a cottage in Sussex, maybe there."
"And what will you do?"
"Anything. Just as long as it has nothing to do with -" she didn't want to say Sherlock. Meena would have too many questions. "London," she finished. The euphemism was fitting. She always felt that Sherlock was as much a part of London as London was a part of Sherlock.
On December 28th, she booked a removalist.
On December 29th, she spent the day wrapping her valuables and delicate items in newspapers emblazoned with Magnussen's face.
On December 30th, she took one last walk through Hyde Park. She only meant to detour as far as Marble Arch. She didn't mean to walk all the way to Baker Street. She didn't want to stand outside the door to 221b. She was definitely relieved to find she'd walked away before lifting the front door knocker.
On December 31st, while the rest of London was out partying, she had planned a quiet night in, watching Dr Who DVDs and drinking the last bottle of red she had stored in the back of her kitchen cupboard.
The last thing she expected was a knock at the door.
The last person she expected to see was him.
All anger, all disappointment, all fury was lost when she saw the hollow look in his eyes, the haggard appearance of a man whose days were numbered.
"I'm going to die," he said in lieu of a greeting.
There was no qualifier. This time he didn't just think it, he knew it as a certainty.
"What do you need?" she asked, more than an echo of her former self. Instead, it was a bold restatement of everything she wanted to give him.
"Stay," was all he asked of her.
That night he worshipped her body with his own, studying her intently as if trying to create her flesh anew in his mind palace. With hands and lips he gave her silent words of apology that she hadn't dared ask for.
And in the morning, he was gone.
On January 1st, she went back to Bart's. She had told herself she was there only to clear out her locker. But she knew that if she saw Mike, the first thing she would do would be to ask for her job back.
She didn't make it into Mike's office.
Moriarty's face on the TV stopped her dead in her tracks.
Within moments, her phone rang.
"Molly, I need you," was all Sherlock said.
"I'm here," she replied, "for whatever you need."