Fear Slices Deeper Than Knives
"AAAAGGHHH! No no no, please no. Please!"
The shouts woke Molly in the middle of the night. Immediately she jumped up to grab the nearest object and defend herself from the attacker. She saw no one except Sherlock twisting and turning between the sheets. After a moment of confusion she understood. Sherlock was having a nightmare.
She sat back on the bed, trying to wake him by combing his sweaty hair from his forehead.
"Sherlock! Wake up. It's a dream," she said, calm but a tone of anxiousness wasn't missing from her voice.
The man woke with a jump. His immediate reflex was to grab Molly's arm and wrestle her on the mattress, thinking that she was trying to kill him. Panting, he lay on top of her, hand on her throat, murderous look on his face.
"Sherlock! Look at me! It's Molly." She was trying not to panic, but the pressure on her neck made it hard for her to breathe.
A second later Sherlock woke completely from his nightmare. Molly could see it in his eyes, the terror, the fright. He released her throat, now baring red marks shaped like his hand, and backed away to the other side of the bed. He cautiously observed her, wringing his hands.
"Please forgive me, Molly. I don't know what I was doing," he begged with a hoarse voice, lifting his trembling hand to touch her but rethinking and lowering it back to his side. He turned his back to her and put his head between his hands, rubbing his temples. His gray shirt was damp of sweat.
Molly took a deep breath. She sat up and contemplated her options for the deafening five minutes. She knew that Sherlock had meant her no harm, it had been one of the "gifts" that had come with living with the world's only consulting detective - the constant danger. She knew that there were a lot of people who wanted him dead but she also knew that there was a reason why he wasn't dead so far. She knew that he had quick reflexes and she knew that he was prepared to defend himself at any given moment.
What he had seen in his dreams must have triggered that self-defence reflex, making him attack the one person who was closest to him and a potential danger. Her.
She knew that it wasn't his fault and she knew that he didn't know that.
Molly shifted herself so she was sitting against the bed's headboard, next to Sherlock. Carefully she touched his shoulder comfortingly, so that he would understand that she was still there. He flinched at her touch but relaxed right after. Sherlock rised his head to look at her.
Molly put her other hand on his cheek, caressing his cheekbones, letting him know that all was well.
"How can you be like this all the time, Molly? You should feel repulsed by me, you should be running away." She could feel the vibrations of his voice in her bones, the self-hating words almost echoing in the quiet moonlit room. His eyes full of anger, not towards Molly but himself and the world. Never Molly.
"It wasn't your fault," she whispered gently.
"It was." Sherlock looked at the red markings on her neck.
"No it wasn't. You meant no harm."
He pressed through gritted teeth: "But I did. I wanted to kill you." For a second he looked startled by his own words. "Not you, Molly. I would never want to kill you."
She pressed her forehead against his. "That's what I meant."
"How can you love me if all I do is hurt you?"
She took his head between both of her hands, making him look straightly at her. "The only way you could truly, deeply and irreparably hurt me is if you meant to do that. But you don't. That's why you deserve all the good that everyone has to give you, Sherlock." The anger in his eyes softened a little. "Tell me what's wrong."
Sherlock's posture visibly relaxed and he arranged himself so that his head was in Molly's lap but she couldn't see his face. They often lay like that on the sofa when Sherlock was having difficulties with a case. Molly ran her slender fingers through his hair, waiting for him to tell her what was bothering him.
Finally he spoke: "Spiders."
"You dreamt of spiders?" She wasn't privy nor in disbelief. She calmly let him elaborate.
His voice hitched for a moment. "Yes," he said. "I dreamt that I was thrown in a hole full of small spiders who ate me alive."
Molly could sense that there was something else behind it. She had known Sherlock long enough to know when he was hiding.
"Tell me." She only said. It wasn't an order. It was a promise to make things better.
Sherlock turned his head to look at her, face twisted in sadness. He rose from the bed and stood in front of the bed. The moonlight reflected from his pale skin as he removed his shirt, standing with his back towards Molly.
He heard her gasp.
"Arachnophobia. The fear of spiders and other arachnids such as scorpions. The fear can be triggered by being near an area where there are spiders or their webs or seeing a realistic picture or a photograph of spiders." He turned back around to face the woman sitting on their bed. "I don't have arachnophobia. I've never had it. I'm not scared of spiders."
Molly's eyes shone with understanding. "Just one."
He nodded. "Just one."
Molly rose, stepped to him and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. During the course of their relationship Molly had never seen his back and now she knew why.
It was covered with scars.
As a pathologist she knew exactly what had created them and that conjured images in her imagination. Images she would never want to see in real life, images that made her stomach turn, made her want to cry and most of all made her never let him go.
"I will never let him hurt you again. Do you understand? No one will ever do this to you," she said, pulling away from the hug and taking his hands in hers.
His voice was empty of emotion. "He's dead."
"But you're still scared."
"I don't think it will ever go away."
"It will. I will keep you safe, Sherlock. I promise."
Sherlock believed her and one day he wasn't scared anymore. His scars remained but they were marks of not what horrors he had been through but that he had been through them and still was able to carry on.