GUYS. It has been FOREVER! Like, 10 years? New school, new move to different state, new jobs, new EVERYTHING, including a new season of SHERLOCK, and so this has been turning in my heart and soul for the last few weeks, to make it perfect for you lovelies. I've missed you all in the passing years, but getting back into my writing, which has been fueled by that angst that is Sherlolly in Season Four. These two definitely needed to have a showdown after episode three, and I couldn't help but imagine Molly putting Sherlock in his place... with a few unaware surprises the Detective admits to his favorite patholigist as well... I LOVE THEM. And I tried my best to dialogue this fanfiction as close to their characters as possible, even through all of the hell and growth they've been dragged into by Moftiss the last season. I sure hope this isn't the end...

I've really felt that I've improved in some writing skills, so I'd love to know what you all think... and please read and share, since I've been away from so long I'm not sure how everything works anymore...

thanks all! Love you! And two more Sherlolly fanfics to come (multi chapter) in the near future!

So also, this is dedicated to tumblr's artbylexie, or lexieken on dA, better known as Lexie-Sometimes-Draws. I'm sure everyone has seen her amazing Sherlolly fanart; the girl's got natural talent and I adore her for bringing these two to life (as it really SHOULD be!). Lexie, I hope you can read this someday (and share with Writingwife-83 as well, I'm such a big fan of the both of you!), because in all honesty, when The Final Problem first aired, and our beloved scene between them came on, it was not the dialogue I really listened to or the acting I watched, it was not "ohmygoshness what the heck is going to happen I'm going to die!," my only thought as I watched that scene was...

"OH MY GOSH I WONDER HOW LEXIE SOMEWHERE IN THIS WORLD IS TAKING THIS."

Lexie, this is for you. Thank you for your wonderful art, and I hope I can do this fic justice for you and for your artwork.

This takes place after THE FINAL PROBLEM. CRIT PLEASE! :)

The morning routine of her day off had already started hours before the dawn began to show itself into her flat. She had lost another night to racing thoughts and a pounding heartbeat, recalling his words to her, then a sudden deafening silence on the other end of the telephone.

She was confused, angry, and suspicious. What in the world had prompted him to goad her into telling him she loved him so spontaneously? She felt stronger than she knew, however, making him say those three words first. She had conquered the high ground, hearing the confusion in his voice and his stammer as he struggled to speak. But he said it. He said it.

And then left it at that when she responded, her heart breaking in two at the click of the phone line.

That was it? No explanation, no clarification. Even days later, not a text, call, or visit. Even Bart's was quieter, as if he was avoiding her for a reason. Then again, it was Sherlock. While Molly never quite expected what he would do next, she always knew he would eventually turn up.

And so the knock at her door, even at half-past six in the morning, was hardly a shock.

She already knew it was him on the other side. Lately she felt that while her whole life seemed to be an organized and practical setup, this one man—this infuriating, annoying, and altogether exceptional man—was her private Pandora's box that was slowly tearing away at her insides. Especially after the matter at hand the previous week—that one conversation with him, lasting less than three minutes—had torn down her world.

Molly wiped her shaking hands on her trousers as she took a deep breath and headed toward the door. Anger won't solve this, Molly. Whatever he's got to say, be the adult here. Do not give in again.

But he was here! Regardless of how unsocial the detective was, how nervous she always became when she was around him, Molly was going to demand clarification and communication this time. She was done playing games.

She opened the door to a pale narrow face half-hidden by his collar and black curls, and piercing blue eyes, which softened as they fell on her. He clenched his jaw as he stood to face her squarely, but he locked his hands in a grip behind him and sheepishly looked down as he tried to open his mouth. She kicked herself as her pulse increased.

"I believe I owe you an explanation."

You sure as hell do. She gritted her teeth, but backed up. "Come in."

The detective stepped in meticulously past her as his eyes scanned her flat like a drone, at the same time forcing himself not to reach out and grasp her shoulder to steady his racing mind that she was now safe. She knew he was observing, but could not help but notice the hint of panic in his features as he tried to maintain aloof. Closing the door behind him, she also closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning. "What are you looking for?"

"Any faults in your dust line, normally it describes your touch of home etiquette, particularly for you because you invite so few guests over—"

"Sherlock—"

"—in the understanding that you have few friends and even fewer close relatives, and the fact that you work long hours at Bart's—"

"Sherl—"

"—so as to never keep a tidier house than your salary will allow you to keep with purchases for the cleaning supplies found—"

"The point, Sherlock?!"

"Explosives."

"Wha-?" she frantically looked around. "Here? Why?" She watched him open and shut a few cabinets, hastily running his fingers over different baseboards and windowsills. "Why would there be explosives in my flat? What did you do? Hell, Sherlock this better not be another consequence from one of your drug-fueled highs. Or—" she paused and laughed dryly, crossing her arms. She'd had enough. "Is this got something to do with Moriarty again?"

She watched as his hand paused on a lampstand as he stood up straight, becoming still at her words. Even in her angered jest, she knew him way too well. Sherlock swallowed, grateful she was behind him so as to not see the pain of the truth in his eyes.

"You have no idea."

A noise from outside the front entrance ticked him off like a pointer hound. His head jerked in its direction. "You being followed?" she huffed. "Or is John here spying on you?"

"John is keeping me from running away, in a manner of speaking." Sherlock lifted the shades delicately as he observed. "I didn't want to face you, but I knew I couldn't avoid you forever without explaining the profundity of my absence since our last—communication." His voice hitched at the last word, eyes still scanning the street through the blinds.

She let out a soft snort of disbelief. "So I take it John made you come here too, against your own will. Figures that you didn't have the personal decency to come here of your own accord after you did that to me last week." She leaned on the bookshelf and crossed her arms. "Leave it to John to be the better man."

"He is an elemental force to be reckoned with in his obstinate military quality of air, albeit not first without his explanations of the human consistency to react emotionally and as strategically as calm under pressure. My reaction it seems, as of late, is not always as methodical." He backed away from the window and turned to face her. "Although I have no quarrel with your assurance that he is the better man, it was I, and I alone, who knew I needed to explain the reason behind everything that took place between us. He is simply outside to stop me from leaving more quickly than anticipated in the possible circumstance that you would shut me out, as I was unsure of your response in this manner—" He swallowed quickly and shook his head, ceasing the flow of his mind weaving and saving a hundred different observation patterns about her flat safely shut into his mind palace. This was important to her, he could tell. And more importantly, to his own soul. "—which, gladly, I was able to get this far."

Molly again huffed in disbelief, walking toward her kitchen and leaving him behind in the hallway. Let him make up his own impossible excuses, she told herself. He obviously isn't able to comprehend how much this matters.

Sherlock blinked a moment, suddenly perplexed at her reaction to simply leave the room. It was Molly, and Molly alone, who he never seemed to figure out, at least on a scale deeper than mere physical or psychological observation. It was intriguing, to say the least, to have someone he knew so well still suddenly baffle his wondering at the drop of a hat. He knew it was his own fault she was acting this way, and he knew he had to come to terms with the entire truth—both in admittance to her, and also to himself. He leaned gently against her bookcase, taking in the comfort of the silent front room as he set about trying to find the right words to explain the events of the week. The detective closed his eyes and sighed, far deeper than he would have liked.

The young woman left him where he was as she set about making her tea and breakfast, trying to focus her thoughts on anything but what she wanted to scream at him. Preparing her mother's recipe for honey lemon earl grey seemed like the perfect way to bring down her nerves for the morning, either that or losing herself in the cadaver of the day, but that second glimmer of hope was lost to her in the reminder that it was her day off. A day for relaxation and Molly time, and here she was, trying to stay calm under pressure as the man she loved was impatiently dodging the bullet in her living room as to the explanation of why he called her and asked her to tell him those three words.

Eventually, with the kettle boiling, and her breakfast on the skillet ready to flip, she heard footsteps edge closer to the kitchen, and she looked up. Angry or not, she wasn't about to have her breakfast while he simply stared. From across the room, she still was able to notice the hint of alarm in his features as his eyes again quickly flew around the layout, but steadily came to rest on her. She motioned to the stove. "Would you care for any breakfast?"

"No, thank you."

"You do look like you could use some tea, though."

The corner of his lip turned up in a smile. "Good deduction. By the aroma of the brew started, it's a blended concoction of familial reminiscent memories, I assume. One your mother expertly knew would quell the anxious mind."

She couldn't help but mirror his smile as she nodded then to her kitchen table. "Sit down."

The detective took off his Belstaff and neatly hung it on the peg behind the door before settling himself in the chair, and Molly couldn't help but notice that he sat uneasily, as if waiting for a gun to go off. Or a bomb, she reminded herself. Bringing a mug over, she placed it before him, and he took it in both hands, deriving comfort from the warmth as she poured. He looked up with a small smile.

"Thank you."

The softness in his voice was strange, and Molly embraced the moments when he sometimes acted like this, like an actual human being, but those moments really didn't make him the man he was. Something was bothering him, deeper than he cared to admit, and it made her uncomfortable. She simply nodded nervously and returned to the stove corner to check on her breakfast, tautly checking on the eggs with the spatula, already knowing they were done. She just couldn't move to sit down and actually face to look at him right now like she thought she would.

Minutes of silence went by as she stirred the skillet, and he held the mug tightly, both of them white-knuckled and on edge. Molly finally knew that she would have to be the one to start, or they would be here all day. She never was very good at conversing when nervous, but Sherlock was never good at conversing at all.

"I assume then by your final scan of my flat, I don't have to call Greg and the bomb squad to give it all-clear."

"Who?"

"Lestrade?"

"Oh, yes. Your flat is secured. You are safe now." How he hated small talk, but his mind was a jumble of figuring out just exactly what he was going to say, so he welcomed the interlude from the main event.

"And so I take it I won't explode today; it is my day off, after all. I wanted to enjoy it."

"Quite so."

"Hopefully one day I'll believe you won't be the death of me," she remarked sarcastically. But as she looked over to him, the completion of her sentence had made him stop with the cup at his lips, eyes narrowed in alarm. It was those moments—those tiny little moments where the spark of something darker and sadder took over his features for the briefest instant—made her remember that he was, in fact, human. The look on his face, like she had slapped him, immediately wanted her to take back her words. "Oh, God. I'm sorry, Sherlock. I didn't mean that literally; I'm just a little—" she took a deep breath "—on edge about what happened to you, between us, last week. I—I was caught off guard, and it was a bad day."

"Why weren't you in a pleasant mood when I called?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does."

"Why do you care? When have you ever cared?"

"Why are you acting this way?"

"Acting like what?"

"Something is different about you, Molly Hooper. You aren't stammering over your words. Normally I know this is a typical reaction to those whose anxiety levels trigger the proper response levels of hormone production to counterbalance the flight or fight rejoinder. Even though we know each other quite well, you always seem programmed with 'flight,' around my presence particularly. Why is it now that you are converting to 'fight?'"

"Probably something having to do with the fact that I have really had enough of all of this, Sherlock." She felt it coming. Regardless of the explanation of his actions to come, he was going to hear her speak. "You're an expert in reading someone after the course of two minutes. Numerous cases, countless conversation—if you could even call it that—I've known you for years. You've always seen that my— " she felt her breath hitch as she began to admit more of the truth "—my feelings for you went far deeper than friendship. But has it ever registered, somewhere in that thick head of yours, that your own actions have consequences on the hearts and souls of others? Why...Why do that to me? Not even face to face? You, with all of your deductions and theories, who can see past any façade, decided to blindside me when you already knew how I felt, regardless of you having any feeling, or none at all, in response."

She felt the tears start to prick the back of her eyes as she dropped her tea mug down to the counter, harsher than necessary. "And still you give me no explanation as to that phone call and the abrupt silence after I finally admitted my 'little secret,' like it meant nothing at all. It may have been insignificant for you, but it meant everything to me. I have no idea why you bloody did it, but why are you playing this game with me?" His outline became blurred as angry tears threatened. "I'm not your puzzle pawn. I-I may be gullible and far less intelligent than you would ever give me credit for Sherlock Holmes, but I am not stupid. It hurt. Surely you must believe by now that pain of the heart, even of the soul, is not withheld from anyone, even you, no matter how highly you think of yourself."

Sherlock looked down, taking in every word of her heated outburst in quiet disgrace, searching his mind for an answer to calm her anger. The young woman had every reason to be. She wasn't just anyone to impress with his clever observations and witty abruptness. This was Molly, his Molly. The lump in his throat was growing. She had it the wrong way round with her notion that it meant nothing to him. He never intended for her to be in the way of any danger, and certainly never intended it to hurt this deep.

"You were indeed a pawn, but it was not of my own intentions. It was a steep precipice that Eurus intended to push me over; into deep, deep waters."

"Eurus?"

"My sister."

A pause of silence overcame the kitchen as she tried to fathom that prompt but unexpected answer. "Your what?" she again snorted her distrust.

"A sister I never remembered, or so Mycroft says. Pushed too far over the limit in such a childhood trauma that I simply erased her, is my understanding. Frankly I still can't cognize how everything can emanate as a blatant observance on no account of excess brain power at all to me, and yet the sheer fact that a family member has come to exact her revenge over years of forced solitude on my brother's part plays no recollection to my hard drive's mind palace notions of my completed family. She set out to 'reunite' us. It wasn't—a pleasant journey—into nostalgia."

"What, sort of a reminiscent family holiday? Reunited at long last to catch up and unify the Holmes' again? Unbelievable."

"You keep your sordid jokes, Molly Hooper. Eurus was so cleverly deranged and lost in her own mind palace that she was prepared to bring us all down, to make us all pawns in her plan, years in the making, She was so capable with her words, like a viper charming her prey, that I was able to forget that I even had a sister—among other events of my past. So psychiatrically engrossed to control others that even at the expense of us all, she wanted to be included and loved. This 'inclusion' even went so far as to be the cause for nearly everything—everything—that even Moriarty had done to us all since the beginning. She was determined to make both Mycroft and I pay for the years locked away, having control over the entire game, from the very start." Sherlock's hands started to shake, and Molly could hear his nervousness as he set the mug down. He looked down at his tea, blinking to try to come to terms with his own words and wavering to recall the fresh memories. "Eurus put us through series of tests to challenge our mental stamina and distressed decision making, putting complex pressure on each new test and also applying emotional context to break me. "

"But you're Sherlock," she stated flatly. "You bend, but you don't break. At least not in the way most people do. I guess it helps."

"What does?"

"The fact that you've always believed you're part machine."

"You don't believe that, Molly."

"You've given me doubts more times than not."

He stifled a nervous chuckle, but the smile faded as he anxiously tapped on the mug. "I guess not so much of a machine to prove Eurus' theory correct while exhibiting emotional stamina to strive to protect those closest to me that she toyed with." He mustered the strength to bring his gaze to look at her, and he felt his throat tighten when he realized she met it. "It was a game of deductions and choices, pushing me to my limits to answer her riddles and do her bidding to see how much of a heart I actually possessed, how much I would actually be able to take. You were the breaking point." Sherlock pulled his eyes away from hers; the inquiry in her expression was too much to hold. "She was the one who called you from my phone. I-I was to get you to say those words within a three minute limit, or else what I believed to be true about your flat rigged to blow would come to pass."

He shifted his weight to his feet and got up as he motioned to the three spots where, somehow, the evidence of the cameras set up to view the young woman in live time from where they were held captive last week had been erased. That did nothing to calm his racing mind that Molly was still in danger from Eurus' exacted revenge. "We were watching you on the screen. The cameras were set up there, there, and there. As we watched, she was to have me make you say those words, or—"

"Let me guess, Sherlock: it was so that she was to make you perform your little humiliation experiment on me so that you had proof—"

"–she was to make me bury you!" his voice rose, now turning to face her. He shrunk his stature back a bit as her eyes widened at his outburst. "—what was left of you…after I was to watch it happen if you failed to speak. I was not to mention the complexity of the matter, including the impending danger on your life. All these years I believed what others took me for, what you take me for; the machine without a heart. I said it first to try and ensure I would protect you. It was to end the round and save your life. But you were right, as you almost always are." He took a deep breath as he forced his eyes to meet hers as he shuffled past her. "It hurt…"

He shuffled back into the kitchen chair, shaking hands once again seeking the comfort of the mug. "Under pressure, facing that deadline—in a quite literal sense of the word—my pride was suddenly under attack waiting for you to confess those words after, in a twist of fate, you told me to speak first. I didn't want to admit it in front of an intimate audience of four. I also wasn't expecting your demand; yet I knew time was of the essence. I just didn't take into account that once I spoke it to save your life, Molly, it was my reality."

The young woman's mouth opened in shock as he continued.

"In all scrupulousness, I knew it was so from the very start of our history together. However, when I said it the second time, those words were engrained as truth as they came to a genuine clarity in speech. Watching you, hearing you on the phone with your admittance to your feelings, it was as if you were repeating what I idiotically took forever to figure out how to say… I l-love you, Molly Hooper, that much has always been true and certain…and knowing that if you didn't say it back…" He mentally drifted away, imagining the flat he now sat in charred and broken if Eurus really had rigged it: the police finding the burned body of its sole occupant, the detective being the one to dejectedly have to identify it in the morgue they could practically call home.

Molly looked down at her feet; mind racing to understand the predicament that had unfolded, and the reality that the great man she had loved from the beginning just admitted his love back. At first, she still wondered if there was an angle to his tale, but the fact that her protector's form was nearly hunched over in the corner and that he failed to look at her told her otherwise. She felt her anger and confusion fade like mist, replaced by a pang of guilt in her misguided judgment. The replay of their conversation began to make sense as she recalled hearing the tinge of fear and urgency in his voice over the phone, and she wistfully looked away again.

"So… you meant what you said…" it came out more a statement than the question she meant to phrase.

He mustered his strength to look up at her and blinked at her assertion, but just as quickly turned his head away, feeling the wall he strove so hard to keep standing over the years crumble inside as he broke down. He couldn't hold it in.

Molly, upon hearing his soft lament, looked up in astonishment to see the great man the world perceived as unbreakable and unfeeling let out his turmoil in silent weeping.

The great Sherlock Holmes, crying in her kitchen.

"I can't help but feel wrong in my thinking," Sherlock suddenly stammered with his familiar robotic but emotive-induced frenzy, "that coming to this conclusion and this state was a flaw in my ability to circumnavigate with avoidance of the ordinary existence of the average human being. This included," he sniffed, "emotional context of intimate workings of the heart. Too much has happened to us all that I now know this is far from accurate. I knew my request on the phone was going to change how we were to interact from then on. In the past if I had hurt you Molly, it was because I was an ignorant idiot, blind to the consequences of my actions and only drowning myself in the addiction to my work. Now, it seems, it is because of who I created myself to be, and how far I am willing to push the limits."

There was a pause to his outburst, and the pathologist, her heart hammering, could see the tears sliding down his pallid face as he actively sought in his mind palace to continue that which he himself could understand and explain.

"Life does indeed seek to teach perilous lessons in which the metamorphosis of the human being is found tested, tilled, and watered to thrive and endure…m-mine was in finally concluding that, at the notion of you violently taken from my life, you mean far too much to me, and never did I want anything to happen to you because of my actions. You are the only one who has ever forced me to change, to see beyond myself, while still looking inward. And that is the whole point," he pined, again bringing his eyes to hers, "you've always counted, have always read through me, seeking the best and demanding I do the same. I am sorry, Molly, that I have failed myself, failed you, so many times, and for all of the hurt I have caused. Please, forgive me. I may never be able to attain the status of the man you wanted me to be, and yet the fact is, that I want it: but if it was to be at the cost of—but losing you…Molly, I… I…"

His shoulders again started to shake as he embarrassedly obscured his tear-stained face with his hand.

The irritation she felt at his explanation melted away as clarification gave light to the past week. No wonder he was in the condition he was… In these rare moments, it was clear Sherlock did feel fear, and anger, and protective, and love… so Molly felt herself pad closer, wanting—no, needing—to show him that she still did believe in his greatness like he understood, but not in the way the world saw. She knew there would probably only be one chance to do what needed to be done, given his current state and the fact that he'd only ever been this vulnerable in front of her a small number of times. Meek and mild Molly Hooper no longer. Regardless of what he ever said, whatever others deemed their truth about him, she knew that even he needed someone sometimes to hold him together.

Gingerly he felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and another grasping on his own that had covered his eyes, pulling it down so that she stared into his face. He glanced down, his body betraying him once more as his hand, so much bigger than her own, tremored in her touch. He was shocked to look up to meet very close soft brown eyes delicately studying him.

But she didn't move, didn't speak. He was locked on her gaze, his glassy eyes searching for a deduction as her own scanned over his features.

"Molly…wh-what are you doing?" His heart (he was now definitely sure he had one) was thundering in his chest at her bold act.

"Observing…"

His eyebrows crinkled in confusion. "What?"

"You always say we see, but don't observe…"

"Y-You were never one to simply "see" anything, Molly. You were—always brilliantly—the one exception to my rule. N-never understood that bit."

She softly let go of his hand and shoulder to cup his face and continue her gaze, amazed that the king of sardonic comebacks had no answer to her gentle action, and even more surprising, he didn't pull away from her. She let out the breath she was holding.

"You're not difficult to read, Sherlock. I've only been this close to you once, and you had the same look. Uncertainty, fear, struggle. It's what makes you—what makes us all—human. As long as I've known you, you've always shut people down, shut them out; and I am sure it's because somewhere in this thick head, you are afraid of letting them—even yourself—see that you do care, you do feel, instead of thinking you are always invincible. Want to know something? You're not…" she chuckled softly, smiling. "and that is the beautiful bit. No one is ever supposed to be. You sitting here after all you state that's happened is proof of that. If nothing else, you: a wonderful, brilliant man, a human being, should know that you are of so much worth to those who love you. You must understand and accept that when pushed at your weakest, it is the strongest you have ever been because of all of us there to steady you, those who know you best. You can trust us. If anything else, once more, understand that you can always trust me, and I will always be here. To know you, Sherlock Holmes, is a danger. To love you is a death warrant. But I would never have it any other way. Can't you understand that?"

His eyes were wide, hands moving up to hold her wrists, struggling to make his mind work at her assertion. He thought of checking her pulse, observing the physical reaction of what was taking place to test the truth, but thoughts faded like mist when he realized he'd measured his own response.

"Help me…" He breathed. No deduction or air of mystery caroused his brain. He spoke what just came to him, and his grip tightened. "Help me understand."

One chance. "Close your eyes," she whispered.

Open your eyes. His own voice echoed in his head, his eyes widening in fear. The past days of the brutal games, the deductions, the suspense of choosing between Mycroft and John, of Eurus' fear-stricken gaze into his own as he realized she was lost in her own mind—memories of a family and past that he stifled in his own mind palace to quell the truth. The façade was falling to the circumstance that the great detective was, in fact, full of emotional strength in his actions. But his pride didn't want to admit it just yet. He balked in Molly's hands, breaking their stare. "No…no. Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side. Love is—"

"Shut up, you moron. You are already way past simple sentiment. Look at me." Her heart was in her throat as she delicately moved a lock of hair away from his eyes with her thumb. "I know you've never felt safe..."His eyes widened and focused more intensely at her conclusion. "You thrive on the danger, but it is also because this part of your life was always some sort of subconscious back room in your mind palace that you could never enter until this time. Always running, either to or from. But you're safe here, safe now."

"I-I don't know how to do this." He paused. "Molly…" his voice cracked. "I, can't…"

The young woman saw the tears again glaze his eyes, and she swallowed hard. For him to be this helpless, the experience with Eurus was blatantly obvious with the damage that had been done. She could see that the trauma of trying to understand and believe that a supposed blissful childhood now torn asunder had forever changed him. "There is no one else here, Sherlock, just you and I. There's no reason to have any more barricades; your pride is not in danger here. Let me in; let me help you. You said you've always trusted me."

He blinked. "That was before I was c-compromised by the truth forced out into the light, in plain sight before me."

"You have always trusted me," she repeated.

"I…I still do."

"Prove it."

He clenched his teeth at her forward order and swallowed. John's voice resounded in his head a few weeks prior. That chance doesn't last forever. Trust me, Sherlock, it's gone before you know it. BEFORE. YOU. KNOW. IT.

His best friend had meant The Woman, but for Sherlock, he believed the full spectrum of what others deemed he needed to complete his own personal humanity rested in the hands of the woman before him now.

Sherlock Holmes, the man who sought to understand and solve everything, followed doctor's orders.

He took in a shaky breath but let his eyes succumb to closed lids. He knew what she was going to do, but this time, unlike past encounters, he welcomed it.

But Molly simply stared for a moment as she held the detective, taking in the details of his face. She'd known him for 10 years. Death and drama, adrenaline and mystery, crime and consequence; it always followed them. The Sherlock she knew from even two years ago would have refused to let anyone see his heart exposed, and she always felt blessed to be able to read him. Yet here he was, the same and entirely different man. They both had matured, and she could see it then: even though his mind was as sharp as ever, the physical toll over the years was greatly etched into his face.

She studied the great man in her hands, his now fully-bared soul reaffirming her belief that there was always more to him than just the empty shell the world would potentially always assume. Regardless of what would happen after, there were two things Molly Hooper knew for certain.

She would always love Sherlock Holmes.

She needed to be the stronger one for both of them, more times than he knew.

She pulled herself down and gently brought his lips to hers, kissing him softly. The tension of his pain suddenly eased, his grip loosening on her wrists and reaching to hold her close, as he sought not to understand the workings of human hormones and the complexity of the brain through emotional and physical stimulation, but to comprehend that in that moment, he was safe.

"When did you leave?"

"When I saw her let you in." John quietly settled into his chair with a sleeping Rosie in the crook of his arm, stabilizing his tea as he sat across from the detective who pensively sat in his own lounger, fingertips at his lips in thought.

Sherlock's gaze moved to his best friend. "Rotten help you are. How did you know she would?"

"Because even though Molly truly believes as much as I do that you are a tremendous arse, that virtuous woman will always give you a second chance. You also did owe her an explanation. If you didn't, there would have been hell to pay."

"Enlighten me."

"Think of all of the future unsolved cases you would have had on your head if that one coroner refused to talk to you, much less give you permission to ever again set foot into Bart's. I would have nothing left to blog about."

The detective hummed in agreement, closing his eyes in thought.

"And how did she react to your explanation?"

"I told her the truth."

"About it all being a complete setup? A con against her life?"

"No." There was a still pause. "Not just that truth." He shifted his fingers on his lips. "I—I took the chance, John. I took the moment. In understanding the gravity of moments lost and of the passing of wasted time before a fleeting end, I told her that, I…"

A smile played at the corner of the older man's lips behind the cup as he sipped his tea and balanced the saucer methodically on Rosie's head. "Finally. I can imagine how that played out afterward then. And how does that make you feel?"

Sherlock opened his eyes, with a peaceful, reconciled certainty coming over his features that John had never seen before in his best friend; never on an assessment or confirmation of his skills at observation, never when the game was on, never on closing any case.

"Complete."