A/N: A griefy nonsensical word jumble that contains spoilers for S4.
If you must die, sweetheart,
die knowing your life was
my life's best part.
- You, Keaton Henson
Look. Hold the baby. Can you feel that? She is solid and heavy and warm and alive. She is crying. Screaming. So are you.
Hold the baby. She is crying for her mother. So are you.
Molly is good. She puts too much milk in the tea and she's never not nervous, but that's good. She's good. Fine. It's familiar. You need familiarity in this new world. This world with no Mary - was there ever a world with Mary? Irrelevant, really. There is no messy blonde head on the pillow next to you. There is no one to soothe the crying baby. No one to call the crying baby the Antichrist. There is no 666. She is just a baby. Just Rosie. Rosamund. Mary.
Molly props Rosie on her hip and coos. Rosie cries and cries and cries and so do you.
The world seems too clear. All the edges have sharpened somehow. The brights are brighter and the darks are the pitchest black. Every sound echoes. Soft words, awkward shuffling, the coffin shutting with a dull thump. Echoes and echoes and echoes in the night, never ending.
You wake, sweating. Everything is too real. Too permanent. You imagine this is how Sherlock sees. Everything, all at once. But all you can focus on in this hyper-reality is the loneliness. The lack of Mary.
And the guilt. Oh, the guilt.
Hold the baby. Look into her bright eyes. So like her mother. Whoever she was. Such bright eyes, and when she smiles, oh, when she smiles the world rights itself by the tiniest fraction. It would take a million smiles to get close to where you were but that doesn't feel impossible. It feels… daunting. But right. A million smiles for Mary. A million Rosie smiles. You could spend forever coaxing those Rosie smiles out of hiding.
But it's hard. She is, of course, too young to understand that the sun has gone dark. She misses her though. That much you can tell. It's in the cry - the keening wail, the raw screech. This is not a baby's cry; this is mourning. Tiny, confused, instinctive mourning.
Hold the baby. You can't give, don't have, what she is looking for. You are not Mary. Nonetheless, hold the baby.
Shhh. Daddy is here.
Sherlock has come knocking again. Molly warns him to stay away in the most pathetic way, but she cradles Rosie just right so you say thank you anyway. You can't see his face right now - maybe not ever - without feeling the seeping warmth of your wife, stomach torn open, with her blood pumping out between your fingers.
Molly asks, again and again, what she can do. You only ask for superficial things. Some tea would be nice. Could you put Rosie to bed? Can you phone Mrs Hudson and tell her I'm alright? I'm not feeling up to talking. She does all of this, and more. She stays and sits in the quiet with you until the moon is high in the sky. You tell her to go home go home go home. She says okay but she's back the next morning, or after work, or whenever. She always comes back.
Mary doesn't. That's okay.
No, it's not.
But just hold the baby. She's here. Heavy and warm and alive. Alive alive alive.
And so are you. So are you.