A/N: Obviously spoilers for The Abominable Bride, ye be warned. This is part of the Schoolgirl Crush universe, and really, I suppose, is set only a day or so after the end of Full Circle. Hope you enjoy.
Honesty
by Flaignhan
"Have you told her?"
Sherlock grits his teeth, his gaze determinedly sticking to the fireplace. "You know I haven't."
"But you've been to see her."
"Yes," is his strained reply.
"Did you stay...long?"
Sherlock presses his lips into a thin line, his fingers trembling against the arm of his chair.
"Coward."
It's not a taunt. It's a judgement. He has rarely heard Mycroft sound so disgusted. Sherlock shifts his chair closer to the fire, his jittery fingers just about managing to grasp the edges of it and give it a few sharp tugs, the chair legs scraping against the floor. He doesn't need to see Mycroft to know that he has closed his eyes in displeasure at the noise.
"You need to tell her," he presses. "After everything she's - "
"Don't," Sherlock snaps, whipping around to face Mycroft. "Don't play that one."
"It's not a card, Sherlock, it's a truth." The words come out in a sigh, and Sherlock knows he is beyond Mycroft's fury now. He's in that spot that leaves Mycroft anxious while he lays in bed at night, mentally recounting list upon list upon list. He's in that spot that somehow softens Mycroft's eyes, and his voice, and the hard lines of his face.
Sherlock turns back to the fireplace, hugging his dressing gown more tightly around him, as the shivers reverberate through his bones. There is a certain type of chill that goes with a comedown, and it's all the more shuddering after a near miss. It is the type of cold that simultaneously freezes his insides, and turns them to mush, the sort that leaves his body slick with sweat and clamouring for the slightest bit of warmth. It is that chilly hand of the corpse that he nearly was, gripping his heart and his brain, in strong, clammy fingers.
It is a feeling that never fully goes away.
"You have to tell her. Before she hears it from someone else."
Not even in his addled state can Sherlock accuse Mycroft of making a threat. It's only a matter of time before either John or Mary runs into Molly, and says in that sickeningly caring way, 'How are you holding up?'.
"I can't."
"But you must," Mycroft says, his shoes clunking on the floorboards as he cross the lounge, then shifts John's chair closer to the fire (and to Sherlock) before taking a seat. He's taken off his suit jacket, and so Sherlock can only assume that he intends to stay far longer than is necessary, or desired.
"But I can't," Sherlock repeats, his voice staccato through his gritted teeth.
"You mean you don't want to," Mycroft replies, leaning forward, his forearms resting on the tops of his thighs, hands loosely clasped.
"Of course I don't want to," Sherlock growls. "How the hell am I supposed to do it?" He's vaguely aware of the volume of his voice rising higher and higher, but he doesn't give a damn. "How the hell am I supposed to look her in the eye and say 'I've let you down again'? She doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve to go through this again." His voice is hoarse, and he chokes on his next words, his lungs seizing in a coughing fit, as Mycroft, without complaint nor exasperation, fetches him a glass of water. He keeps a grip on it as Sherlock sips it, steadying his tremulous hands, then takes it away once Sherlock has had enough.
Sherlock knows he hasn't escaped the topic however, no matter how much respite Mycroft allows him as they sit by the fire. They are silent, and every possible scenario runs through Sherlock's head: Molly slapping him, Molly screaming at him, Molly telling him it's the last straw, Molly opening up a body bag one morning and finding his corpse inside.
He manages to lean over the side of the chair, the stomach acid splattering onto the floorboards, dripping from his lips in a long trail before he wipes it away with the back of his hand. His stomach convulses again, and he retches, but there's nothing left to give, not after the earlier episodes in the day. Mycroft hands him a damp cloth and Sherlock pats it against his face. The sight of Mycroft wiping the floorboards clean with some kitchen towels and a quick spray of bleach is a novelty that doesn't invoke an amused twitch of Sherlock's lips. Not today.
"I think," Mycroft says quietly, taking a seat in John's chair once more, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, "that the real question is how the hell can you let her find out from someone else? If you love her - "
Sherlock snorts.
"You do," Mycroft growls, leaning forward in his seat, his eyes glaring daggers at Sherlock. "I don't presume to know the inner workings of it, but I know that you do."
"Don't start - "
"I love her," Mycroft states boldly, straightening up, his eyebrow arched, daring Sherlock to make a derisory comment. "She's the reason you're still alive, and for that, I love her. She gave you the support you could never have accepted from your family, and as much as it breaks my heart that it had to be that way, I love her for being there for you when we, when I could not. So don't you sit there and snort." His words have become stilted now, like little poison darts, all with Sherlock's name on them. "Don't you dare, when she has given so much, and you can't even give her honesty. When you can't even tell her how much she means to you."
"You think now is the time to start...bleating on about love?" Sherlock asks incredulously. A surge of adrenalin courses through him as the spark of words ignites into the full flames of an argument. "You want me to go to Bart's with what, a box of chocolates in the shape of a syringe? You want me to hire a sky writer to say 'Sorry I'm such a worthless junkie' at five hundred feet?" He laughs and slumps back in his chair, his face aching from the pain of his false merriment.
Mycroft isn't fooled for a moment. He doesn't rise to the bait. He simply says, in his calmest tone, "I want you to do what's right."
Sherlock can feel the clunk of the penny dropping, and it hits him like a ten ton weight. That cold grip gets a little tighter, tugs him down deeper into the cesspool of his addiction, determined to drown him in it once and for all.
"You think I'm going to kill myself." His voice is weak, thin, his mouth ajar as he awaits Mycroft's response.
"I'd rather you didn't, of course," he says briskly, avoiding Sherlock's gaze.
"You want me to set things straight with her, tell her what she needs to hear, in case I..." he trails off, unable to think through the fog in his brain and the weight of Mycroft's expectations.
"You owe her the truth," Mycroft says, his voice a shade more gravelly than normal. He must notice it himself, because he clears his throat before he continues, a little more sure of his words now. "You owe her the truth about everything. About the situation now, and the situation as it's always been. It's time you told her all the things you never bothered to say."
"You want me to say goodbye? Shall I leave her a note as well, in case of my apparently imminent suicide? Dear Molly, sorry about the drugs and all that, love Sherlock?"
"You're getting away from the point," Mycroft retorts, each word coming out very deliberately, weighed down with the baggage of a twenty year long nightmare. "The point is that you need to be honest with her, or you'll lose her forever."
"What she doesn't know won't hurt her." As he says the words, he knows them to be silly, futile. She's probably already detected, from the phrasing of his sporadic texts, or his firm decline to her offer to bring round some fish and chips and watch some trashy TV shows.
"You've got twenty-four hours, Sherlock," Mycroft tells him, getting to his feet. "You either tell her, or you lose her for good."
"How will I lose her?" Sherlock sneers. "Down the back of the sofa?"
"I'll tell her you didn't have the courage to face her yourself," Mycroft says cruelly. "And then it will be up to her. She does have a line, you know."
"Yes, and every time she's drawn it I've ended up on the brink of death."
"Better not make her draw it then," Mycroft says with a shrug. He rolls down his sleeves and slips his cufflinks into place, before carefully donning his jacket, apparently conscious of the stitching. The measurements were, presumably, taken during one of Mycroft's more successful crash diets.
Sherlock feels a fresh wave of nausea sweep over him, but Mycroft is down the stairs and out the door before the first strangled retch claws its way up his throat. The few sips of water he had taken earlier make an unwelcome encore, but Sherlock's legs are so weak that he leaves the mess where it is. He settles back in his chair, draws his legs up to his chest, and slips into an uneasy sleep, his mouth acidic and dry, his insides squirming.
By the time he wakes, he has a mere six hours of Mycroft's deadline remaining. There is a cold cup of tea on a small table that has been placed next to his chair, and he has been covered with a thick tartan blanket which he is sure doesn't belong in his flat. It's two o'clock in the morning, and the orange glow of the streetlights outside pours in through the windows, illuminating small rectangles of floorboard.
He knows that he needs to clean himself up before he sees her, but his head hurts, and his limbs hurt, and his veins hurt. He briefly considers asking Mycroft for an extension, a week, so he can shake off the worst of this, the most abhorrent of sicknesses, and the least sympathetic. He pushes himself to his feet, takes one ginger step, but then his foot slides on something slick and cold. He throws out an arm, but doesn't manage to grab hold of anything. He lands painfully on the floor, the cupboards rattling as the impact spreads outwards through the floorboards. He lays there for a minute, in what he realises now is his stomach's previously rejected contents, and he knows, he knows he will not survive this without her.
He pushes himself to his feet, stumbles towards the wall, and leans his weight against it, his chest heaving with ragged breaths while he pauses. Then, he pushes himself away, along the corridor, and crashes through the bathroom door. He reaches out blindly in the dark, eventually finding the taps and turning the shower on, the shock of cold water that sprays his arm sending a judder through him. He grasps behind him for the light cord, fumbling with the string until his fingers close around it, and he gives it a sharp tug, the bright light searing his eyes as the condensation vent whirs into life.
Sherlock strips off and clambers into the shower, his hair saturated in seconds and sticking to his forehead. He takes the bottle of what he thinks is shampoo, squirts a large amount into his palm, then, leaning his body against the tiles, he roughly washes his hair, the lather slipping down onto his face, stinging his eyes.
It's the least of his worries right now.
He rinses his face under the shower head, his eyes slowly starting to clear, then grabs a bar of soap and runs it clumsily over himself, chucking it to the side when he's decided he is clean enough. He reaches out for the tiles as he steps out of the shower, his body shaking with cold, and wraps his towel around him.
He takes small, uneven steps out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. He wants to sit down on his bed, but he knows if he does, he won't get up, he'll eventually fall asleep, and wake with the deadline long past. He cannot risk it.
He opens the wardrobe and pulls out the nearest shirt and pair of trousers, tossing them onto the bed, then drying himself off. Every single action needs his full concentration, but little by little, he manages to prepare himself for the outside world.
He can't face the prospect of trying to find the matching jacket to his trousers, and so he pulls his coat on over his shirt, grabs his keys and wallet from the mantelpiece, and heads over to the door. He stumbles down the stairs, his fierce grip on the bannister the only thing keeping him from tumbling all the way down to the hallway in a heap, then he's out the front door and into the chilly night air. He takes a moment to compose himself, and, walking as steadily as he can, heads down Baker Street in search of a taxi. He flags one down, which stops without a moment's hesitation, and Sherlock knows he will be able to walk into Bart's without being waylaid by any concerned nurses.
Molly is on the nightshift, something he has ascertained from her Twitter account, which he checks, on normal occasions, whenever he is bored, and on these sorts of occasions, whenever he is conscious. Her tweet that morning of 'Food or bed?', sent at 8.43, is a typical nightshift conundrum for her. He has seen it a hundred times before, and will likely see it a hundred times more.
He wishes, more than anything, that he could recover in her flat. Like before. He might have pushed things too far this time though.
As he walks down to the morgue, he gets a vague sense of what it might be like to walk to the gallows. Not even when he had been perched on the edge of the roof of this very building had he felt this anxious. Perhaps it was because Molly had known, and Molly had been on his side.
He pushes open the door, and Molly looks up from her paperwork. She has her goggles perched on top of her head, as though they were a pair of sunglasses, and her eyebrows twitch into a frown.
He must look a state.
"IloveyouandI'msorry." His words come out in a slurred jumble, and Molly blinks.
"D'you want to try that again?" There's no humour in her voice as she stands up, walking around the table to face him, those bright brown eyes searching his face for clues to support the theory she already knows to be true.
"I love you and I'm sorry," Sherlock says slowly. He can feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck, his shirt damp at the armpits, and he pulls at his coat, trying to shake it off, as his temperature skyrockets, his mouth dry.
He can't look at her, can't bear to see the disappointment, the tears building in her eyes. He waits for the slap, for the scolding, but it doesn't come. She moves closer to him and helps him remove his coat, folding it neatly and placing it on a stool. Sherlock, his head spinning, leans against the wall and slides down it until he reaches the safety of the floor, and he hates himself. For the first time he hates himself. He doesn't hate the way he treats her, or his inability to live up to her expectations, he doesn't section off flaws and mistakes to hate, he hates his entire being. She would be so much better off if she'd never laid eyes on him, and if that had been the case he would be long gone by now.
He hears the click of the lock on the door of the morgue, and moments later, Molly is sitting beside him. He collapses into her as she wraps her arms around him and he hides his face from her, like a child, knowing Mycroft is right. He's a coward. He's a coward and a junkie and the world's worst friend. She runs her fingers through his hair, gently twisting his locks in a soothing, rhythmic motion, but her attentions only serve to make him feel worse. She must have a duty of care towards him written into her DNA, because there is no last straw for Molly Hooper, there is no burned bridge that cannot be rebuilt, there is no last grain of patience.
"What happened?" she asks quietly, her fingers still moving softly against his scalp.
"I overdosed," he mumbles.
"So far...so obvious." The words sound alien in her mouth, but she gives him a squeeze of reassurance, and he realises that she's trying to lighten things, to throw his own well worn catchphrases back at him.
"Mycroft was sending me away, for work."
"I know," she says softly. "He told me."
"He didn't expect me to make it back," Sherlock replies, and at this, the comforting motion of her fingers in his hair halts, her body still as her brain momentarily deems breathing to be a lower priority than usual.
"You thought you were going to die..." Molly murmurs, and her fingers start moving again, her lungs expanding and deflating in a steady rhythm.
That is an excuse, right there on a silver platter, waiting for him to take it and run with it, but he can't do it, not to Molly, not after all these years. He's not terrified of death in the way that other people are, and Molly knows it. He's only scared of going out as a pathetic junkie. He's only scared of being found with a throat full of his own vomit, a syringe hanging loosely in his fingers. He's scared of Molly being the one to find him.
"It's not even that," he says, pushing himself upright and forcing his eyes upon her. She, like Mycroft, is not mad anymore. The over bright eyes tell him that, the way she swallows the lump in her throat as she takes in the full nature of his current downfall.
"I told him," she whispers. "I told him you weren't ready to be out on your own." She shakes her head, and as she blinks, a tear drops rapidly down her cheek, her pale skin devoid of colour under the harsh lighting of the morgue. "I should have argued with him more but he's always so...I mean, I had no idea about what happened with Magnussen so I couldn't really..." She trails off, pressing her lips together as she refocuses her thoughts. "So what," she begins. "If not death, then what?"
"I had to say goodbye to John," Sherlock replies, his voice hoarse as he struggles over the words that he would say to no other soul on the planet, that he wouldn't even acknowledge to himself. "I had to say goodbye to John and Mary. I had to...I had to face never seeing you again."
"And you didn't get to say goodbye to me? After all these years? After everything?"
"Mycroft made his excuses," he replies, and it's true. Mycroft had certainly done that. He had denied Sherlock's request time and time again, citing that the whole thing was top secret - "because Molly Hooper, who helped me fake my own death, is a notorious blabbermouth" - that he didn't have the time nor the patience for the inevitable arguments - "which you know you'd lose" - that she had borne the weight of Sherlock's irresponsibility for over two decades, and enough was enough. Sherlock had had no comeback for that.
"I'm not mad you know." She reaches up a hand to brush against his cheek, and he closes his eyes at her touch, her cool skin calming him, and he knows, he knows he already has her forgiveness. He will always have her forgiveness, and it is something he has never deserved. "You were still sick, and all of this was put on you..." She brushes his damp hair away from his forehead. "I can understand you taking this path...even though I wish you hadn't."
"But it's still not even that," Sherlock tells her, and there's a crack in his voice now, as he edges closer and closer to the truth. He can feel hot tears welling in his eyes, and he has been here too many times before, sobbing his heart out in Molly's arms after too close a call. He wonders how many more times he will be here, whether there will ever be a last time, and, if so, what is it that gives it its finality? Will she have had enough? Will it only end with his death? Will he ever manage to control his habit, or tell himself no?
"Then what?" Molly asks, and with a gentle sweep of her thumb, his tears are caught before they make much progress. "Tell me."
He pulls away from her, burying his head in his hands, his fingers gripping his hair so tightly he might tear it out. "I was put in prison," he says, his words addressed to the floor. "For a week." His head is filled with the memory of those four walls pressing in on him, of pitiful meals being pushed into the room, of long sleepless nights on that hard narrow bed. There is a coppery taste in his mouth, and Sherlock realises he has been biting his lip so hard that he has drawn blood. He wipes it away roughly with the side of his hand, but he can still feel that suffocating sense of claustrophobia bearing down on him, crushing him.
He manages to spit out another two words. "Solitary confinement." At this, Molly understands, she must, because she wraps her arms around him as he sobs into her shoulder. She doesn't give a damn about the snot and the sweat and the tears and the blood. She doesn't care that her lab coat is damp with what could equally be spit or tears. She doesn't care that at this moment, he is at his most repulsive, the snotty, sobbing junkie who can never make good on his promises to her.
"A whole week," he garbles, his knuckles pressed so hard against his temples that he will leave bruises. He accents each word with a thud of his knuckles against his skull. "A week alone, with my head." The last two words strain his throat, and he cannot hold anything back now. His misery racks through him, spilling out onto Molly, who, as ever, takes it all on without complaint.
"But you're here now," she tells him, with that firm kindness that she must have been born with. She pulls his clenched fists away from his head, and loops his arms around her. Her hands move soothingly over his arms, the ache in his muscles relenting, just for a moment. "You're here, and I'm here, and it's going to be okay."
He nods, but he's not really taking the words in, for it is the sound of her voice that calms him, that gets his lungs back into sync with the rest of him as he starts to breathe properly again. He rests his head against her chest, the sound of her heartbeat a steady, comforting thud, like a ticking clock in the safest place in the world.
"It's okay to fail," she tells him, her words delicate and considered. "But whenever you fail, you have a choice. You can either pick yourself up and try again, or you can sit around and complain. So what's it going to be?"
He doesn't answer her, but he knows he doesn't need to. For him there is no choice. He has work to do, and addiction will only slow him down.
"You thought it was the end of the world," Molly says, "so you thought it wouldn't matter." She stills for a moment, her fingers curling in his hair, the scent of her perfume mingling with the stench of his sweat. "But here we are, the same old morgue with the same old problem."
"I know," he croaks. "And I'm sorry."
"I know you are," she says. "You always are."
"And I do..." he trails off. He's already said the words twice today, he's not sure he could handle a third, even if she deserves to hear it a hundred times a day.
"I know you do," she says, and he can feel a lift in her voice, as though a small smile has crept across her lips. After a moment, she lets out a brief sigh. "Well I'm not sitting on the floor all night," she says. "Not when there's a perfectly good sofa at home. Come on."
She gets to her feet, and holds her hand out to him. He takes it, and, with a strength that never ceases to surprise him, she hauls him to his feet.
The End