When confronted with the question of what woman might love Sherlock Holmes, John Watson first volunteers Irene Adler. For Sherlock, the instant he reads the words on the bronze nameplate, the face that appears in his mind's eye belongs to Molly Hooper.
How does Eurus know about Molly? Not her mere existence, of course, as the latter had shown up to the supposed counselor's place to perform the check on his physical health. Rather, how did Eurus know Molly counted? Moriarty didn't, and Mycroft pays even less attention to her than he does to Mrs. Hudson. Just how much access has his older and supposedly smarter sibling given their unstable sister to the outside world? To her other brother's life?
Sherlock has time for all of those questions to cross his mind before Eurus brings the images of Molly's flat onto the screen and threatens to blow it up. The memory of what happened in Baker Street is fresh, and likely accounts for the pounding in his chest.
The pathologist looks wretched as she turns from the sink to look at her ringing phone. She doesn't run to answer it, doesn't look pleased at all at the name on the screen. Sherlock has heard her recorded voice many times, but they have always been recordings left on his phone. This is the first time he has ever heard her voicemail greeting.
When Eurus offers to try again, John mutters at the Molly on the screen. Sherlock closes his eyes, folds his hands, and brings his forehead down to them. Please, please, please, he begs mentally, not sure who he is talking to. Or praying to.
Molly picks up. She says she's having a bad day. (If they all survive this, they will have to compare their definitions of a bad day.) He rushes to the point, asks her to repeat the dreaded phrase after him with no questions.
"You say it first," she challenges. "Say it. Say it like you mean it."
"I - I..." It isn't coming. Why isn't it coming? He had led Janine into believing it. He had never had trouble putting on a persona for a case, never trouble with words that would get him what he wanted. Why can't he say three short words to this woman?
"I love you," tumbles out, deduction and mystery together. He realizes he loves John, too; and Mycroft; and even her—even Eurus. He knows, because he wants to save them all. He doesn't want to kill any of them. Doesn't want any of them to suffer. "I love you," he repeats, simultaneously more confident and more unsure.
"I love you," she whispers, and the countdown stops.
Eurus had been playing him, again, playing him like the Stradivarius she had given him such a short time ago. It hadn't been a race to save Molly, it had been a race to destroy her.
Emotions. All those complicated little emotions. If only somehow they could be boxed away, laid to rest.
Sherlock lifts the lid of the coffin and places it gently in position. He catches a glimpse of his stricken eyes reflected in the bronze, and Molly hadn't wanted to pick up because she was used to this—used to being used and forgotten; used to him expecting she would always be there on the very first ring, then never contacting her until the next time he needed her. If she hadn't picked up, everything would have been fine; if he hadn't needed her to be fine, he wouldn't have kept calling. It comes as a surprise how little he is surprised to find she loves him. He has been leaning on that lever for years.
On impulse, his fists crash through the coffin, battering it over and over and over again. This, then, is how much strength Eurus estimates he has, how effective his carefully crafted walls ultimately are. A splinter or two of balsa wood lodges in his hands, and he welcomes the distraction of injury.
He might never make it out alive. Molly will think his last words to her were a lie, and he isn't sure whether or not he meant them like she wanted, but he knows he meant them, just as he knows he had always been right—sentiment clouds the mental faculties like nothing else.
"This isn't torture," he tells John, "this is vivisection."
It requires a living, beating heart, vivisection. He really does have one, as Moriarty had pronounced all those years ago. It seems Eurus is attempting to accomplish what Moriarty never could—to burn that living heart out of him.
He looks up at his best friend. Of course. John knows more than Sherlock what this sort of vivisection feels like.
"Soldiers?" he asks, and he means for more than today.
"Soldiers," John affirms, and Sherlock stands.