Blood II
Rating: T
Pairing: none
Word Count: 2,320
Prompt: none
Disclaimer/Warnings: The characters that lie within are based on the Sherlock characters made by the good people over at the BBC. I do not own them. Spoilers for season two, huge ones at that. Be warned. And if you haven't read Blood yet, I would strongly suggest you do.

"In vampire circles it makes you my child." Molly tries to recall how she would have acted if Sherlock asked her that question nine weeks ago. What are you to me? Her life before Sherlock is a dream.

He looks at her, his eyes gleam with the lights of London below them and she can't quite tell what he is thinking. In a lot of ways he's like her child. Sherlock refuses to hunt without her, though it was his idea. They feed once a week. Molly takes less than him because she can survive without it. Already she feels it affecting her.

They don't kill the innocent. But they'll run out of criminals, pimps and drug dealers if they keep it up at this rate. She sleeps less and the sun hurts her eyes more. Sunglasses are necessary on even cloudy days now. It is easier to do certain things. The other day Greg Lestrade almost caught her moving a corpse that weighed fourteen stone by herself. If she hadn't recognised his gait trailing toward the morgue doors and recognized the subtle beat of his heart she would have had a lot to explain.

Sherlock points to a man exiting a van outside of a flat. They're close to Baker Street. Molly wonders, briefly, if he would want to just peek in and check on John. Before she can let the scenario play itself out in her head, Sherlock grabs her at the shoulder. "There—this is what we've been waiting for."

"Are you sure?"

"One of Moriarty's men, Arthur Sullivan, I checked databases at the Thames House."

"Thames House—you broke into MI5 headquarters?"

Sherlock shook his head. "I broke into Mycroft's flat and used his laptop."

This, she decides, is better. "Are we doing this like the previous times?"

Sherlock shook his head. "You lead."

"Me?"

"You're still faster than me. You heal faster."

"That's because I've got practice. If you'd just let me show you—"

He shushes her. "If you'd just do like a good mother and prepare the meal..."

"I'm not your mum. There's a special bond between a vampire and a sire—but many people bite friends, siblings, lovers…" Her words trail off and she can feel old Molly slipping through.

"Please."

And Molly's leading the charge. She understands why he wants her to do it. But she wants him to come out and say it. On their last outing a man stabbed Sherlock in the chest with a huge knife. It wasn't silver so it essentially didn't do any harm. Still, Molly saw the utter shock plastered across his face and he wouldn't stop trembling. It's not the pain; it's not even the surprise. It's knowing that you should be dead, that something is stuck into your heart and you're not alive anymore that causes it.

She had a similar experience when she was fourteen.

Sherlock sniffs the air seconds before the rain starts. Molly grumbles as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail. The rain grows heavier by the second and Sherlock leans close. "What is it?"

"Don't trust your nose anymore."

"What?"

"Our sense of smell is so sensitive. Rain just makes us rubbish at it. Things get mixed together and body odours and old blood stains and other things run down the street and leave false trails. So just forget about your nose, go on everything else."

Molly tackles Arthur to the ground. The height of her fall breaks his legs and knocks him face first to the concrete. She digs her fingers deep into his hair and pulls him up until his neck is exposed. A vein ripples just on the surface and Molly can swear she hears the blood coursing through his body. He's a plump, ginger man with scraggly hair. A thing she (or any other woman) wouldn't give a second glance in a pub.

But she's salivating to take him now. He's able to give half of a muffled cry through his blood filled mouth before she sinks her fangs into his neck. Molly thought that this part would become mundane after doing it so often. She was so wrong. It was just different enough every time. It was like sex, except there was a clear winner.

She can't tell how long she's on Arthur, but she knows that she'll ride the last bit of life out of him before long. When she feels Sherlock at her side, she relinquishes the honour over to him. Molly stands and watches him drain the blood from the body. In the seconds and minutes immediately after feeding it's like someone pushed the slider to maximum and broke it off. She's never seen him kill before, usually he goes first. But Molly's thrilled and frightened as she watches him.

Sherlock lifts his face from Arthur's neck to indicate that he's done. The drill is the same from here. They break him down, fold him up and stuff him into the ventilation of what appears to be a derelict building that he was parked outside of.

The rain outside is impossibly loud and even the most faded of the wallpapered rooms inside of the building screams with a muted vibrancy. They search the building because Sherlock has a suspicion. Why would Moriarty's former crime syndicate be visiting an abandoned building? On the fifth floor they find out why. There are crates of guns ranging from pistols to rocket launchers. Some briefcases filled with money sit on the other side of the room. Whoever was supposed to be here vacated and left it all behind. But it was meant to be some kind of deal. Molly didn't have to be Sherlock to figure that out.

It's already too late when she smells the Potassium perchlorate in the air. The doors explode and there's a blinding flash immediately after. Several boots crowd into the room and she's unsure of which way she's facing.

The air fills with men commanding them not to move. But she hears the voice on the radio, a familiar voice, give the order. "Shoot to kill."

She's moving in a daze and Sherlock suddenly tackles her. She's still blind and he's got her cradled in his arms, dashing through the cacophony of gunfire. She swears she can feel the heat of each muzzle burst and she clutches tight to Sherlock's body. He trips against something and she's flying through the air. The rain's coursing over her body as she sails downward.

Something hot rips violently into Molly's lower torso and she yelps out. The pain's more a shock than anything else but she falls further than the floor should have been. Just before she hits the ground the realization hits her that they've gone through a window…five stories up. They land on the roof of a ragtop convertible and it's just enough to make the fall palatable.

Molly's vision begins to clear and she can hear the men in the room behind them over the dying ringing in her ears. Sherlock's there and he fared better somehow. "This way." He leads her aching body and all into the alley. From there they work their way through the city. They can't catch a taxi looking like this. So they press on.

"We need to go somewhere else," Molly says. "Just in case."

"Do you know a place?"

She nods.

The old row house is a place she remembers visiting as a child. It smells the same now as it did back then and she hates it. They shut the door and make their way through the darkness of the house toward one of the bathrooms (they don't need lights anyway). Molly leads him into the small space, whimpering as she walks.

"You've dislocated your arm and there's a pair of bullets in your lower abdomen."

"Are you okay?"

Sherlock looks at her. "Stop worrying over me. You're hurt. I can fix the arm, but the bullets—I might have to bite them out."

"You've lost your scarf," Molly says, her tone weak.

He's only half listening to her, it seems, as he prepares to tug the arm back into its socket. "If Mycroft finds it, the word will be out."

"That was Mycroft—on the radio?"

"Yes."

"Will he…tell anyone?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Still, I suppose I will need to tell him sooner, rather than later. Okay. Molly I need you to bite down on my hand and…" the second her teeth touch his hand he jerks her arm up until it slides into place.

She cries out, biting him till a little of his freshly procured blood escapes into her mouth. After the pain subsides Sherlock offers to bite the bullets out for her. She's not sure if he's kidding or actually thinks that's a good option. But she declines.

When they're sure that the heat's died down they head back to her flat. Molly leans on the bathroom sink while Sherlock digs the bullets out with some medical instruments (no doubt stolen from Bart's). He's gentle with the job, taking his time. It takes him several minutes to move the first bullet to the surface.

"You don't have to worry about dying, you know? It's tried and true. We're very hard to kill."

"Hold still."

"I know that's why you were worried about attacking first. I had something like what happened to you with the knife happen to me."

"Molly."

She's rambling again. "When I was fourteen, I didn't know what I was really. I didn't understand it. My mum and dad sneaked blood into my drinks occasionally to make sure I could still keep it down when I got older. But the first time I knew what I was—I was fourteen and a lorry hit me."

Sherlock pauses to look at her.

"It rounded a corner badly and hit me and this other girl, Cindy, while we were riding bikes. Cindy was mangled, died at the scene. I broke my back. Before the paramedics came my mother just rushed me inside and gorged me on blood. I was injured so badly that I didn't understand till later. I do remember feeling like this was it. I was dead. I felt guilty after when I realized Cindy wasn't coming back—that girl hated me and I couldn't stop crying over her. That seems so foreign now."

The second bullet comes out easier.

Molly smiles. "Hey, you're all right at that. Maybe you should have been a doctor."

Sherlock sighs. "I wanted to be a pirate." He wraps her wounds and puts the instrument into a glass of scotch on the counter to clean it. Carefully he helps her down from the sink.

"A pirate, really?"

"We all had our dreams, Molly."

She nods. "I wanted to be a princess—cliché, I know. But like a doctor-princess."

Sherlock heads out the bathroom door. "You're halfway there, you might still make it."

Molly cleans the sink off and put things back in order. Sherlock never seemed to be able to do those things, but really he's not meant to. He's too great for menial tasks. The longer she's around him the easier it is to see. Sherlock's truly special, more so now. But he was special before. He mattered.

She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and despite the shit they got into tonight she somehow looks prettier. She looks younger for sure. The bags under her eyes are gone and her skin has a soft rosy hue around the cheeks. When Kara from work asked her what she had been using, she'd just chuckled and figured it to be one of those things women did where they threw out random compliments. The truth was Molly felt more attractive and it had to be the blood. More than that, it had to be Sherlock.

He's in her blood and she's in his. She's changing for the better because of him. She never thought killing would be for the better, but it is. She slips out of her jeans and flicks the bathroom light off. She finds Sherlock out on the sofa flipping through the channels. Molly drops onto the couch next to him and snatches for the remote. "Just give it. You're going too bloody fast!"

Sherlock hands the remote over and Molly presses the channel up button. "Matt Smith and Katy Perry are on Graham Norton." He can't go out often and he's read all of her books, so Sherlock spends his spare time memorizing the schedule for the telly. It's a waste of a great mind, but its damn useful.

"Oh Matt Smith—can't miss that one. I can't believe that bastard Moffat's making us wait till autumn for more Doctor Who—it's not like he's making other shows."

"To hear you tell it, it's not like the man does anything except splash around in a big tower full of golden coins." He scrunches his face up to imitate her. "Moffat's just taking the piss out of all of us—the man works on ten episodes a year. If he was American they'd have him do twice that many…" he trails off as Molly pummels him with a sofa cushion.

Yeah, Sherlock's making everything better…and maybe she's made him better too.

Author's Note: the vampires used here are actually the same type used in my original works. That's why the rules seem slightly strange. Molly's stronger than him now because she's born like this. But as he gets old his potential to grow is much higher than hers.