AN: What a finale! I was completely floored by the episode but felt there were some loose threads that could use some tying. Here's my attempt to wrap up the one most on my mind - the relationship between Molly and Sherlock following that explosive phone call.
Should be just a few chapters to explore the aftermath, but we'll start first with how it begins.
Please note that the following has SPOILERS for Season 4 - Episode 3. Please do not read if you have not already see it.
As Eurus says - context is everything.
For those who want a bit more - please listen to "Addicted to a Certain Lifestyle" by David Arnold (part of the Sherlock soundtrack).
There are many things she knows about him, many things Molly knows about Sherlock.
She might not have his powers of deduction, but because she's fancied him almost from the first moment they met, her feelings have meant that she notices the little details that make him unique.
Years of humiliations and grim realization have also allowed her to acknowledge his shortcomings with honesty.
Manipulative, callous, he is reckless with the affections of his close friends.
She watches as time and again he tests the mettle of John Watson, of his brother and even herself. Of her, he demands cooperation, and later, her unquestioned loyalty. Each time she does as he asks, giving selflessly to the point of foolishness.
But with each offering of herself, she gains a gift in return.
Hope, each time she is rewarded with just a bit more, that Sherlock is changing, learning to be a better, kinder person. And with each year, he becomes more like the sort of friend she is happy to have.
Odd though he has remained, her heart is a constant thing, and she takes comfort now in their mutual understanding, their respect for one another.
But this...
"Leave me alone." She croaks, voice wavering, wanting in that instant to hang up the phone, hang up on him forever.
She has withstood more than her fair share of cruelties but this feels like a step too far, a step off of a cliff edge into the heart of a great storm.
"Please, no! Don't hang up! Do not hang up!"
Panic from him, but it makes little sense.
How could he have made such a request of her?
"Why are you doing this to me?" Hurt and anger, it is a betrayal of trust to the grossest degree. She presses him, "Why are you making fun of me?"
"Please, I swear, you just need to listen to me." His anxiousness is palpable, enough that she is caught between concern for him and her own feelings.
"Molly, this is for a case. It's a sort of experiment."
His admission is all she needs for her concern to evaporate, and her response is immediate, stern. "I'm not an experiment, Sherlock."
"No –" She can practically hear him mentally backpedal, "I know you're not an experiment, you're my friend. We're friends, but please... just say those words for me."
"Please don't do this." She swallows, but her throat had gone dry, painfully so.
Gripping the counter until her knuckles turn white, she repeats herself, "J-just don't do it."
"It's very important." The voice on the end of the line is tense but encouraging, unwavering in its request. "I can't say why. But I promise you, it is."
She wants to scream, she wants to cry so badly that her lungs are burning from the strain.
"I can't say it. I can't." Shaking, she wipes one hand across her eyes, dashing the single tears that's managed to escape. "I can't say that to you."
"Of course you can! Why can't you?" And for a terrible moment he sounds just as he did all those years ago, as horribly unaware of her as he did that evening of the Christmas party.
"You know why." The words are bare whispers pushed past tortured lips.
"No, I don't know. Why?" And now she knows he is being intentionally cruel, for had he not deduced her heart on so many other occasions?
And with that realization comes anger, just enough to bite, to give her strength, "Of course you do."
"Please, just say it." He says again, voice wrung almost hoarse from the repetition.
"I can't, not to-" Her courage deserts her mid sentence.
"Why?"
Demanding, asking the question to something he already knows the answer to.
Why is he doing this?
Why?
Her eyes sting even more, filling all corners until it is impossible to see past her own nose.
"Because..." She tries to explain, but the hurt is too much, "Because it's..."
And then it happens. The pain, the words, all of it tumble from her lips like water through a cracked dam.
"Because it's true, Sherlock. It's always been true."
The silence that follows is too long, and yet perhaps not long enough. She has only just steadied herself when he says, with a calm cruelty, "If it's true then just say it anyway."
The words, for so smart a man, are so ridiculous she almost laughs, "You bastard."
"Say. It. Anyway." The words are sharp, unrelenting, as if he means to truly drive her from the cliff-edge and into the storm, though for what reasons she still does not know.
She won't go down without a fight, she won't.
"You say it." She says, challenging him, betting for once that she can stop him, stop the hurt before it strikes at the most vulnerable part of her.
"You say it first." She insists.
Please, please let him be done with it. Let it be over.
"What?" His confusion gives her courage.
"Say it." She repeats herself, raising the stakes when she adds, "Say it like you mean it."
With every word she pushes him back, aims to divert this path onto which he has thrown them both. The silence that follows is perfect, quiet, save for his breathing.
Let this be it.
She believes she has finally silenced him for good when a shaky inhale echoes through the receiver.
"I-"
One word and she feels the foundation at her feet tremble. Her heart is pounding, but it is not excitement or affection that courses so violently through her veins. Is he truly going to do this? Dread, icy and cold as death, has her squarely in its grip.
"I love you."
He speaks quickly, and thus the blow is a sudden sharp one. But though she finds herself still on her feet, she has not yet fully recovered when he says again.
"I love you."
A second time, unbidden, and it is this one that devastates. For she can tell the difference in his voice, and his softness now rends flesh more thoroughly that the shock of that first time.
Shutting her eyes tightly, she pulls the phone away, desperately grasping at the shards of her heart that are rapidly splintering in every direction.
How could he?
The world swims before her eyes as she sags in her place.
"Molly?" He is still on the line, desperate, "Molly, please."
And though she forces her eyes open, she sees nothing, feels nothing except for the raw wound in her chest where her heart once was.
And so she says the words, the truth, though she does not understand why he has pushed them both so very far.
"I love you."
She bares that most precious part of her soul even though it costs her everything.
The phone goes dead not a second later, and with it Molly's strength.
Sliding to the floor, there is not even time to hide her face in her hands before the tears begin to fall in earnest, and the sobs that she had kept locked in her lungs expand with the force to leave her shuddering on the ground.
And though the east wind, the storm, breaks later that day, it has already claimed its victims.
The damage is done, and there among the rest of the wreckage is Molly Hooper's heart.
