Wrote this ages ago (as in right after Reichenbach, so yeah. It's old), but never got around to uploading it. It's puny and very much a disjointed introspective stream-of-consciousness piece, so.
Title from Timshel by Mumford & Sons
She knows he's not dead but she cries anyway.
Because, Molly thinks, he really is, isn't he? Dead to Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson and John , dead to everyone except her and it's not fair, it's not it's not. Because – "You do count" – but she knows she doesn't really, not like they do, and that had been the flaw in Moriarty's plan, hadn't it. She didn't count but (so) she is the one to know and it just isn't fair, not to them, not to her, not to him.
She almost doesn't go to the funeral – Sherlock tells her he doesn't care, it changes nothing and he's not even dead, what's the point – but she thinks of his friends (his three friends that he broke to save), crying and mourning and wondering why why why and she goes and cries with them, because she thinks it's only fair that she gets to mourn a little too. Because – he could still die, chasing after the web Moriarty has left behind and she might not even know, and she has to live with the truth and the guilt and it's just not fair.
She visits his grave, once, after he leaves, and as she gets there she sees John as he is walking away. He nods at her and tries to smile and it hurts because she can tell he's broken broken broken, shattered and holding the jagged pieces in bleeding hands and trying so hard not to let it show but she can tell. She can tell and she wants to tell him so badly, tell him it's okay, he's not dead, he's not he's not please don't do this John it'll be okay it'll be okay I promise –
but she can't because it's not safe, because she promised (and she does not want to make promises she cannot keep). So she can only try to smile back and hope it is a comfort, hopes she can help hold him together (but she can't, not really) until she gets to that cold black gravestone and then finally she cries because it's just not fair.
Look after John, he'd said right before he'd left and she'd nodded because his voice was so raw, so vulnerable, so broken that she just couldn't refuse. But they both knew it was an empty promise because she couldn't look after John because he didn't need her, he needed Sherlock, but Sherlock was dead, dead to the world and dead to John and dead dead dead in all the ways that matter and there's nothing Molly can do except try to do – something – until he came back.
She wants to scream, to be angry, to cry, to laugh–
(maybe then it will just be one big joke)
But in the end she can do nothing but beg:
please come back.
There is nothing but the silence and that hurts most of all.