One

Even a happily married man and adoring father needed a break every once in a while to hang out with his best mate. And this is exactly what John Watson was doing this particular Saturday in early March. The two of them were in Sherlock's Baker Street flat, hanging out and ready to receive any potential clients who decided to come knocking.

Around noon, just before John suggested they grab some lunch at Speedy's downstairs, they heard a single ring at the doorbell with the correct amount of pressure to indicate a client's arrival. John settled more comfortably in his chair, and Sherlock dropped himself into his own chair, only his eyes giving away how eager he was for a new challenge. They listened to a pair of measured and determined – but light – footsteps travel up the stairs (a woman, then, and with a serious case, at least in her own mind), and then the sound of three crisp but loud knocks at the front door.

"Come in," Sherlock called, ready and waiting.

But when the door opened, the two men saw the last person that they had been expecting to see.

"Morning, John," said Molly Hooper, nodding to him, and then turned to look at his best friend. "Sherlock." She nodded again. There was no trace of the friendly smile that she always seemed to have at the ready. In fact, her demeanor was purely professional, even a bit cold.

John's eyes immediately went to Sherlock. He saw the shocked expression on his face, and he seemed to have frozen involuntarily at her unexpected arrival. John was shocked as well. The detective and the pathologist hadn't been on the best of terms for months now, not since John and Mary had brought Sherlock to St. Bart's to pee in a jar. He'd secretly cheered when Molly had reacted the way she did – the git had deserved it, especially from her – and he could understand why Molly only visited him in the hospital when he'd been unconscious or asleep. But after the supposed return of Moriarty, things between them had gone from tense to all but shattered.

Because Sherlock had not let her know about his exile or said any form of goodbye. An exile which John, Mary, and everybody else in Sherlock's inner circle only learned later would have proven fatal. Plus, the overdose of drugs that Sherlock had taken that morning hadn't helped matters at all. After learning of these things, Molly's last thread of hope and trust seemed to snap, and the only interaction the two had from that moment onward was at St. Bart's, when Sherlock worked with the Yard on an urgent case. No more experiments, no more body parts, no more favorite bolt-hole, no more professional or personal favors.

"Molly, hey!" said John cheerfully, needing to break the ice, and began to rise from his chair.

But Molly held out a hand. "Don't get up, John, either of you. I came here as a client." With that, she seated herself in the chair designated just for clients and faced Sherlock. "Four years ago, I saved your life and the lives of your friends. I've come to have that favor returned. If that's not enough, I'm willing to pay a fee. And even if that's not enough, then I'll just go to your brother."

John couldn't speak if he wanted to. Never in his life did he expect Molly to speak to Sherlock like this, so coldly and with no emotion. Just like he does, John realized, and his heart sank.

Sherlock, meanwhile, seemed to snap out of his shocked stupor. The mention of Molly taking her case to his brother must have done the trick. He blinked, sat up straighter, and became the image of detached professionalism. "There won't be any need for that. What is it that you would like me to do?"

Some of the tension in Molly's shoulders seemed to fade, and she took a breath before speaking again, keeping eye contact with the detective. "I need you to find Tom."

Yet again, the two men were taken by complete surprise. For a second, John was afraid that Sherlock wouldn't know who she was talking about. After all, he forgot poor Greg's name on a regular basis, and he doubted that Molly's former fiancée had ever registered in Sherlock's mind as important enough to remember his name.

However, it seemed that Sherlock knew exactly who she was talking about. He looked completely confused for a split-second before he snorted. "Molly, your engagement is over. Why on earth would you want to chase after him now, since you –"

Sherlock abruptly stopped talking at the rage that suddenly rose on Molly's composed face.

The small woman leaned forward ever so slightly. "Since – I – what?" she said in a very soft, very dangerous voice.

The detective, thankfully, was a smart enough man to know not to finish his sentence. John didn't dare speak either for, like Molly, he had a very good idea as to what Sherlock had stopped himself from saying.

Molly gave a derisive snort that was most unlike her and didn't suit her at all. "So, you assumed that I was the one who ended things. I thought that the great consulting detective never assumes. But, ah, of course! Your logical reasoning is just as big as your ego, so you felt confident in coming to the conclusion that I ended things with Tom because poor little me just couldn't get over you."

Her gaze turned sharply to John who, unfortunately, looked just as guilty as Sherlock. Her face became even more angry and now disappointment and hurt were added. "You too, huh? I bet everybody else who knows me jumped to that conclusion. Just because Tom was tall, pale, had curly hair and a long winter coat? Like millions of other men in the world? Well, let me clue you two idiots into a fact that you are somehow completely oblivious to."

Her gaze turned back to the detective, who seemed to be trying to sink as low into his chair as he could.

"Not everything revolves around Sherlock Holmes."

John Watson rubbed his forehead, feeling more ashamed of himself by the second. All of the Magnussen business and his own marital drama had made him completely forget about Molly's terminated engagement, thus he'd never bothered to ask what had happened. John suddenly felt that the answer would not only be surprising, but devastating.

Sherlock cleared his throat, his face failing miserably to look neutral instead of guilty. When he spoke, his voice didn't have its usual silky texture. "Why do you need to find him, Molly?"

Molly leaned back against the back of her chair, but her hands tightly gripped the armrests and her eyes filled with a deep sorrow. "When I first met Tom, and when we started dating, everything was okay. He was alright. But just before we got engaged, he would sometimes get sick. Each time it would get worse. Both of us feared what it could mean, but neither of us was brave enough to address the possibility…"

John's sinking feeling got worse for, as a doctor, he had a very good idea as to what this could mean. "Was it cancer, Molly?" he asked as gently as he could.

Molly nodded, now looking at her lap. "I knew he was a cancer survivor. Leukemia. He'd been in remission for four years when we met. He didn't think…neither of us…his oncologist had been optimistic…Well, a week after your wedding, John, he got so badly ill I had to take him to the hospital. The doctors looked him over, ran tests, and…it was back. Worse that before, much worse…they told him another year would be a m-miracle."

Molly swiped at her eyes and swallowed furiously, willing herself not to emote in front of the two men. Sherlock seemed unable to speak; he was looking at Molly as though he'd never seen something quite like her before. She could no longer meet his eye, so she didn't notice. So John asked the most difficult question, since by now he knew that Molly would never have ended things between them.

"Why did he end it, Molly?"

She bit her lip, took another deep breath, and managed to meet John's gaze. "He knew what was in store for him, and so did I. He knew that I'd watched my father pass from pancreatic cancer, and how those memories still haunt me. We talked for a long time about what we were going to do…and in the end, he wouldn't budge. He ended the engagement, called off the wedding…because he couldn't bear to put me through that again. And he didn't want to make me a widow so soon after being a wife."

She shut her eyes, hard, and her knuckles were white as they gripped the armrests. John opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Sherlock stole his words and spoke them in an almost broken voice.

"I'm…sorry…Molly."

His words seemed to come from the deepest depths of him, and they caused Molly to abruptly turn her head and look at him again. Her eyes widened, and for just a moment, John saw the old Molly, the Molly who had loved Sherlock so unconditionally though he did nothing to deserve it. But in the next moment, she had blinked and her guard was securely up again, and she only nodded in acknowledgement.

"So…will you take my case, Sherlock?" she asked, her voice quiet but steady.

"Yes." His response was immediate, and his tone was quiet and firm. "I will look into it right away. You're on your lunch break?"

Molly nodded. "I'm working until six o'clock today."

"I will inform you the moment I find out his condition and location. If nothing comes up by the end of your shift, I'll at least give you a status report."

Molly nodded again and opened her handbag, which was resting on her lap. "I know that you have a fixed rate, but I'm not sure what that is. Would you prefer I pay now or after? Or half now and –"

Sherlock held up a hand to stop her, looking almost offended. "No charge, Molly, no matter the outcome, so please don't think of that again."

"Oh, um…okay then," said Molly, closing her handbag again and standing up. "I'll be waiting for an update." She nodded to the both of them. "See you later."

She then practically fled from 221B, and a heavy silence permeated the flat for some minutes after that. Finally, with a subtle shake of his head, Sherlock snapped out of the frozen posture he'd fallen into since she'd left. He then picked up his laptop, which was on the floor by his chair, and opened it.

John spent the next few minutes trying to think of what to say to his best mate. He wasn't even sure if Sherlock either wanted or needed his help for this, though John wanted to help in any way that he could. Molly's words had certainly cut through him, and he wanted to do anything in his power to help her now and make it up to her later.

"That was the right thing," John finally said to Sherlock, who was now busily typing away on his laptop. "Not charging her for the case. I didn't really think you would, but –"

"John, that woman has saved my life three times, not to mention she has saved you, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. To charge her now would make me worse than Magnussen and Moriarty combined."

John barely had a moment to feel proud of Sherlock when he processed what he'd said. Three times? What am I missing here? But before John could ask, Sherlock was speaking again.

"I know that you want to help with this, and I have a task for you. I'd like you to phone Tom's parents and gather any information they may have about Tom's whereabouts. They may know more than Molly does, but if that doesn't give us the answers we need, I'll have to trace him through other means."

"Of course," said John, accepting the telephone number that Sherlock had just written down and passed over to him.

And with that, the two men set to work.

Thankfully, since Tom was not a criminal mastermind, he was fairly easy to track down if you knew where to look, which Sherlock did. Three hours after Molly's visit, Sherlock and John were leaving Baker Street and hailing a cab.

Once inside the vehicle heading for St. Bart's Hospital, John asked what he'd been wondering about since Molly's visit. "You said that Molly has saved your life three times. I know that she did so through helping you in the Fall, but what about the other two times?"

Sherlock didn't respond for a long minute, and just as John began to give up on hearing an answer, Sherlock gave him one in a monotone voice that didn't fool him at all.

"That is the most obvious and well-known instance, yes…When I was shot, it was her who came into my mind first, giving me instructions and helping me stay alive…which way should I fall, what my body was experiencing, to keep fighting…"

John nodded. That made sense, for since the Fall, Molly had established herself as someone who could be trusted completely, especially with Sherlock's life. "And the third time?"

Sherlock paused again, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. He kept his gaze on the cab window. "Before we met…I had a relapse, and it was bad. To this day, I have no memories of those few hours, I was so high. When I came to, I was in the hospital with Mycroft beside me. Told me what a close call I'd had, that if I hadn't made a list I would be dead, and that he would drag me to rehab if he had to. I went and have been clean since."

"Except for when you went undercover in that drug den," said John with a frown.

"It was for a case," Sherlock ground out through his teeth.

"And, of course, the cocktail you served yourself before getting on that plane."

"I was supposed to die in six months, anyway!"

"No excuses. Now, please continue."

After giving an irritated huff, Sherlock did as John commanded. "Mycroft filled me in as best he could as to my movements while I was high. Most of the time, I had wandered the London streets, but my final destination was the lab in St. Bart's Hospital. Molly was working at the time, and when I collapsed at my microscope, she raised the alarm and called Mycroft."

John processed this new information, and it filled in some blanks for him. While it hadn't surprised him that Molly had been angry about Sherlock using again – all of his friends had been angry and rightly so – her absolute fury which manifested in three hard slaps across his face had taken him by complete surprise. But now her actions made perfect sense to him. Of course she would be furious to see him in that state again, and very rightfully so.

"When exactly was this?" asked John.

"About nine months before we met," replied Sherlock, his eyes still glued to the car window. "Molly had started at St. Bart's three months before that. I could see that she was the best pathologist from the first time I worked with her on a case, so from then on I only worked with her. When that became apparent to my brother, he approached her the same way he would approach you: offer her money to spy on me for him." Sherlock smirked to himself. "Like you, she basically told him to stuff it up his uptight arse. But she did accept his phone number 'just in case'…she didn't know what he meant like that…not until I stumbled into her lab high as a kite."

John nodded, and his next question more slipped out than anything. "Did you ever thank her?"

"She never brought it up and I was too embarrassed to address it," was Sherlock's terse reply.

Sherlock fell silent after that, and John didn't try to break the silence. It amazed him just how much Molly had done for Sherlock, from helping him in the lab to saving his life multiple times. And what had she received from Sherlock in return? Or from any of them, for that matter? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't enough…

Now John could only hope that helping Molly be reunited with Tom – hopefully before it was too late – would begin to remedy that.