Hello again! So, here's what you need to know for this one. It happened after listening to Blink-182's "I Miss You" about ten+ times one day after it occurred to me on about the third play through (when I actually paid full attention to it) how appropriate it was for Sherlock and Molly. So, of course, I proceeded to listen to it seven more times! (That's normal, right?)
Right, so, pairing = Sherlolly
If you've never heard the song, or it's been a while, I wholly recommend going to listen to it now (it'll only take 3 minutes, and it's a great song) and then reading. The tone of this one was inspired by it at any rate so hopefully that's come through in some way. So, yes, do have a listen and see what you think! But I leave that completely to your discretion. Anyway, thanks for reading - enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of BBC Sherlock, we have the amazing team lead by Moffat and Gatiss to thank for that! And ACD, of course.
"Hello there."
She tensed and turned toward the deep voice in a singular, jerky motion. She didn't say anything. Blinked a few times to ensure the man in front of her was actually there and that it wasn't the long shift taking its toll on her mind. Finally, she spoke.
"How long have you been there?"
He remained silent for a few moments, eyebrow slightly raised. She sighed and shook her head slightly, as if rethinking her question.
"Nevermind. I'm sure I don't want to know." It wasn't as if she had been doing anything embarrassing, but still. The thought of that being under the impression you were alone all day when really every move and action had been observed was an uncomfortable one. Her blush must have conveyed her thoughts.
"You haven't changed," he observed, teasing. It came out in a drawled tone, however, amusement evident only to Sherlock.
Her posture mimicked the defensive edge to her immediate response. She narrowed her eyes at him and spoke.
"Were you expecting me to? I'm sorry to disappoint you." Holding his gaze proved too much after the first five seconds, however, so Molly turned back to her work.
Sherlock, in turn, sighed and drilled holes into the back of her head with his eyes.
They were still misinterpreting each other. To be fair, he had done most of the misinterpretation before. Even after 'The Fall', some part of him refused to recognize who Molly Hooper was. It had been the one thing he felt some semblance of control over, so he had continued to acknowledge her as he always had, because he could. A shadow in the background of the morgue, and his thoughts.
"That's not what-" he seemed to be floundering, but with her back to him she hardly noticed. He took a step forward. "I'm glad," he began instead. "I had worried that you might."
Her eyebrows knit together at this. Why was he here? What was his motive? And really, what did he mean by that?
Her arm had apparently decided it was time to stop coordinating with her brain, as it refused to continue its downward arc, scalpel in hand, without trembling. She gave up after another try and slowly set the tool down on the table.
"I'm not, nor will I ever be, as brilliantly observant as you, Sherlock. I can't deduce why you're here or what you want. So please," her voice was tired. She wasn't even sure what she was pleading with him for. To leave? To explain himself? To just let her go? Reluctantly, she turned to face him again.
A beat passed before he addressed her once more. "You haven't been in contact since I left after The Fall."
If he was hurt by the fact, it wasn't decipherable in his tone or expression. "We were done," she shrugged. "I did what I could; I wasn't needed anymore."
Oddly enough, it was Greg Lestrade who had kept in touch with her the most over the years. Then again, it wasn't odd at all. They were both lonely, they both needed a friend. John had found Mary. Mrs. Hudson had taken a long holiday and reconnected with old friends. Others moved on as well.
This was less like the Molly he knew. But then the Molly he knew best was an anomaly of her personality, brought out only for him. Or rather, because of him. This Molly was the one he had glimpses of in the weeks after the Moriarty events. Apparently she was more comfortable to be that Molly around him now. The thought gave him the strangest mix of both satisfaction and apprehension.
"You always know where to find me," he spoke flatly, referring to 221B.
She crossed her arms again. "And you always know where to find me." Molly really couldn't fathom why he was seeking her out again, now.
She hadn't seen him in four years. Their relationship had been officially settled a little over a year and a half ago; after he had finished his work and returned to the living, making no effort to reach out to her.
She was content with that. Molly could move on with her life. Their relationship had been peculiar, but she saw fit to leave it where it had been – something like friendship, or at least trust, and no more. She had helped in his hour of need, and it was time to push on. His silence had made that abundantly clear. Hadn't it?
"You moved," he answered with a hard stare.
She snorted and gave him a look that spoke of her complete confidence that he could have found her anytime he really wanted to. Of course, he had found his way here today, proving his point rather moot anyway. Molly had little doubt her location was but a quick phone call to Mycroft away.
"Like that was going to stop Sherlock Holmes." Her brazen words were belied by her gaze slipping insecurely to a spot somewhere past his shoes.
Realization dawned and reflected itself briefly in his features. "You were expecting me." His lips turned downwards ever so slightly as he worked it all out. "And I've kept you waiting."
Her eyes whipped back up, something hard and stony in them as they bore into his own. He wasn't expecting such a response, and the small movements he had been making across the room towards her stopped. "Why are you here, Sherlock?"
"Molly," he began in a slight warning.
"No. Don't you 'Molly' me, Sherlock. I want an answer – I deserve an answer. Preferably a truthful one. I want to know why you're here, making another strange appearance into my life, after four years of being out of it." Molly had moved on from this. Her heart was pounding in a way it hadn't for a long time. Damn it, she didn't want to be hopeful again.
Yes, she had met other guys. But none of them had stayed beyond six months. Greg and she had talked about it one night. He had called her up out of the blue, and it was clear that something fairly awful had happened that day. So she met him at a pub and proceeded to get piss drunk with him. They had giggled over the prospect of the two of them together, knowing they would never be more than friends. And then Greg had had this moment of frightening coherence for a man so pissed, and adamantly insisted that he would never feel right taking Sherlock's place. 'Would be wrong', he proclaimed. 'It was Sherlock's role, could only be Sherlock's.'
The answer drew mixed feeling from her, though mostly a tick of annoyance towards the "dead" man (dead man still ruining her love life). But she chalked it up to his feeling guilty over Sherlock at the time, and so she let it be, smiling sadly and nodding.
This time around it was Sherlock who tried to look away, but her demanding gaze refused to let him do so. "Yes, well. Maybe I've been out of your life for four years," he spoke in low tones, enunciating each word to make his speech clipped and strained in an unusual way.
The demand in her expression took a turn for confusion. "O-ok," she wasn't following.
He looked almost guilty at his next words, which came out as a sort of confession. "But you never left mine."
"Sorry?" What? She hadn't spoken to him since he left her flat in the middle of the night with nothing more than a minute long staring contest between the two in the darkness of her kitchen. How could he claim she was still there?
"I…" for the first time ever, she saw Sherlock Holmes at a true loss for words. He growled in frustration, a sharp exhale of breath that resounded in his throat. "I can't explain."
For four years she had been in a corner of his mind, unmovable. Her presence there had then leaked into other areas until for the past year he found it impossible to keep some trace of her out of every thought. It was madness! It was grace.
Closing his eyes she could see his mind whirring, remembering, working to string the right words together. "I constantly had dreams when I was hunting down the Network.," the words came out more calmly as he exhaled deeply, eyes still closed. "No, not dreams," he revised. "Nightmares."
Molly nodded, she could only imagine. And after all, she had them, too. "The Fall."
He opened his eyes and nodded once, quickly and sharply. "You were there. Always. When the darkness closed in, my savior would appear from the shadows." His intensely concentrated gaze was briefly averted as his cheeks tinted a slight shade of red at such a personal admission, embarrassed that he had needed to rely on her so deeply. But as he recalled every time she pulled him out of insanity and back into reality while he was away, he grew more confident. His steps toward her resumed, more bold this time, gaze never faltering from a pair of haunting brown eyes.
For her part, Molly was taken aback by his words as well and she reacted physically, taking a half step backwards. "That doesn't mean-"
He cut her off, voice easing back into the familiar commanding tone it wielded. "Then you were there, in my mind palace, after I finished and came back to London, and to John. For reasons I found hard to explain at the time, I couldn't bring myself to face you first, and so I waited." His voice was accusing now. "You never came. In fact, when I finally did go back to Barts after months of abysmally boring procedures and paperwork to clear my name, you were gone."
"But," he continued in the voice of a man resigned to his fate, "you weren't. You were everywhere, Molly Hooper. In my mundane items at the flat, in my conversations with John and Lestrade, in the baked goods Mrs. Hudson continued to shove down my throat, in the cat that had begun to pester Angelo while I was away." He was making wild gestures with his hands to mimic his growing frustration.
"So you see, Molly. While I may have been gone to you since our last meeting…You. Never. Left."
He was standing right in front of her now. In fact, she half wondered if he had practiced to end precisely when he was stood half a foot away. It really wouldn't surprise her. The man had a flair for drama.
Neither made a move to break eye contact, it seemed impossible to do so. But neither made a move forward, either. Instead they stood there, simply staring. It wasn't all that different from the last time they had been face to face, except that he had remained far on the other side of the room that night.
Finally, the moment did break. Molly took a step back, hands dropping lifelessly to her sides. "I'm sorry," was all she said. Sherlock searched her face for a long while after that.
She had been hurt by him, he knew that – he wasn't that thick about the more trivial aspects of human nature…anymore. Hurt not only by him but by just knowing him. Moriarty had used her. He had used her. Others used her to deal with him, then to deal with the aftermath of him. Face impassive, he nodded and left.
The rest of the day was spent sitting at her desk, eyes unfocused, mind far from the present. Long after her shift had ended, she packed up and went home.
The next day Sherlock returned, almost as if to gauge whether she would let him in or not. She had spared him a look of greeting before completely ignoring him for the next three hours as he simply sat in the morgue with her as she worked.
He was back again the day after that. And again. When Monday rolled around, he was there waiting for her to begin.
It wasn't straightforward or quick, but they slowly returned to each other's lives. She still worked in London, and Sherlock returned day after day with a determination she had only seen when he worked a particularly tough case. Sometimes for a whole day, others for just an hour or less - he was the world's only consulting detective, after all. At some point her flat became "on limits" as well and he would break in now and then and pester both her and her cat. Maybe it was his way of apologizing, or fulfilling some kind of penance. She wasn't sure, and she didn't ask.
He never did make any grand romantic gestures, but Molly thinks that she finally understands what Lestrade meant that night at the pub. She didn't expect Sherlock to be romantic, and she didn't want him to be. They fit because they didn't. And one evening, long after that afternoon he had sprung back into her life, he barged into her office and offered her his quirks and his mind, and his body and, yes, his heart – though it was strictly to only be referred to in anatomically correct terms – in a way only he could. (Essentially, she could boast that she held his aorta, left ventricle, etc.)
So, they would have Halloween on Christmas. And their home would be a mess of oddities, and she would have to deal with the occasional threat to said home from London's worst. And Molly was ok with that.
She had missed this, missed him.