Title: these are the secrets you keep
Spoilers: Season 2
Pairings: None.
Rating: K+
Warnings: None.
Wordcount: ~1400
Summary: "She hadn't realised it would be like this. (Or, she had, but she hadn't known.)" / The Great Hiatus, from Molly's POV.
A/N: Kitkat McRaebs is responsible for all the good bits of this story; the rest is my fault.
"He's dead," she says, and she doesn't even have to pretend to burst into tears.
"Fuck," Greg says, all the worry in his face turning to shock in an instant. And then, louder, collapsing into a chair, "Fuck."
Mike's wrestled John Watson off somewhere, which is good, because if Molly saw that broken emptiness in his eyes again, the truth might spill out of her in one long breath.
—
She hadn't realised it would be like this. (Or, she had, but she hadn't known.)
Sherlock is gone – "If Mycroft asks, tell him Norway," he'd said, and left before she could ask who Mycroft was – but that hasn't erased anything, has it? The blood on the pavement, the whispers, the guilt that stains the cool air of the morgue (scene of her crime). She performs the autopsy with trembling fingers, flesh and bone of not-Sherlock unmoving under her hands, and though she cries afterwards (during), it's still not enough to make up for the lies thick on her tongue.
The detective inspector is worn and grey, John's lost all colour, and Molly's done it all sending Sherlock to bleed red alone. She sinks back into invisibility and wonders if there's any way to start over.
—
It starts like this:
"What do you need?" she asks, and that's a promise she doesn't quite understand, won't understand until she watches John crumpling into himself; she wouldn't go back and change her choice, but she wouldn't wish it upon anyone else.
"What do you need?" she asks, and she thought it would be enough to offer up herself (silly girl; when have you been enough for Sherlock Holmes?), before she found out it wasn't just her world she'd set on fire.
"What do you need?" she asks, and she orchestrates a death and a funeral, conjures up grief to wrap around her shoulders and it still tastes like it's real, bitter as ashes.
—
"Sherlock Holmes is dead," she says to the mirror, watches a pale stranger's lips move, the truth thrumming under her breastbone all the while.
"He's dead," she says again, to a man with an umbrella off one arm, "I'm sorry." And she says the first with enough strength to give it a slanted conviction, but the second is what she means.
"Miss Hooper," he flashes his teeth, and it's only millennia of evolution making her shiver, isn't it; but she is afraid. "My brother is not dead, and I need to know where he is."
"You're his brother?"
"I was," he says. "And I may be again, in time."
"What's your name?" Of all the things Sherlock asked, she can do this one – do it without etching pain deeper into anyone else's bones.
"Mycroft Holmes," he says, unhesitating.
"Norway," she offers the word like a gift, a prayer. "He said to tell you."
—
"Why did he do it?" Greg asks, hovering round the morgue with helpless hands. And isn't it strange, the way blame tugs all the sounds out of shape, but it's aimed squarely at him and that's all wrong.
"I don't know," she says, looking away, at her feet, at the walls, at things that don't hurt quite so much. "Sometimes it happens."
"But."
But.
There's something plaintive there, almost edging onto disbelief, circling around the hollow places that Sherlock left behind; and Molly thinks almost desperately about the wrong body under a tombstone (wrong, wrong, wrong).
"I." She bites down on her lip. "I can't," she finally says instead, "I can't talk about this, I'm sorry—"
"God, I didn't realise—" Greg starts, stricken. "I know you—I mean, I shouldn't have mentioned—are you all right?"
And that's so unfair that Molly thinks she could cry.
She swallows down all her words and apologies and has nothing else to offer. Greg leaves eventually, chased away by the silence, and Molly doesn't watch him go, just slides to the floor afterwards with her back to the wall and nearly transparent hands clasped around her knees.
—
It goes like this:
She's never used her phone much, really, but these days it buzzes insistently against her dresser some nights, and though the numbers change every time the message is always the same.
"News?" it asks her, black pixels against a sickly glowing screen, and each time she types out "He's fine."
"He" is John, and he's certainly not fine, none of this is fine, but it's the only possible choice in a fractured space of answers. So she gives it, presses send, watches the message go through and settle into certainty.
And Sherlock will know that she's lying, but he doesn't say it and that's (just barely) enough.
She puts the phone back and falls back onto her pillow, stays awake a while longer; and her breaths come ragged as she wonders exactly when things – she – might start to fall apart.
—
"John," she says, and then again, louder when he doesn't respond, pale under the fluorescent lights at Barts.
He turns, blinks, says nothing.
She grasps for words and settles with "How are you?", before realising too late she doesn't have the right to ask that.
His mouth moves in a faint attempt at a smile. "Good," he says. "Fine."
"Right, okay," she says, while her heart settles into a familiar tattoo of guilt. "Listen," she says, trying to gather the remnants of her courage, "if there's anything I can do for you—"
If there's anything you need, anything at all...
But John's shaking his head, in quick, uneven jerks, and he mutters, already half-turned, "I—I have to go."
She says an unhappy "Bye", which he might hear, and "I'm sorry", which he doesn't.
—
There are times her mobile stays silent for too long, and Molly wonders into the darkness if Sherlock Holmes is truly dead.
But if he were, what would that change?
Nothing, really.
—
And then, when she least expects it, it all ends like this:
Sherlock comes back with a bullet in his shoulder and a memory stick in his pocket, and Molly finds out when she sees him on the evening news. He looks beyond tired, like he might break any second, but his expression is still the same, snarling sharply at a reporter.
John has one arm around him. She can't tell if he's holding Sherlock up or just holding on, but the end result is this: John Watson has one arm around Sherlock Holmes, fingers curling firmly around the jut of his shoulder.
Molly turns off the television. Says to no-one in particular, "Sherlock Holmes is alive."
Toby lets out a meow and lightly leaps out of the room.
—
Some days later there's a body in her morgue, and with it come frazzled officers, Sherlock, and John. Sherlock gives her one look, attempts a stiff smile that's somehow still more sincere than anything he's ever given her, and turns his gaze towards the dead man instead.
John aims a tilted glance at her, until she feels like she can't ignore the weight of it any longer. "Look," she says, willing her voice steady, "I had to do it, I'm sorry, I couldn't—"
"Molly," he interrupts, "I know." And the flow of her words cuts off as if sliced with a knife. "It's—well, you—Sherlock—" He flounders, hands flying in confused motions. "Thank you," he says finally, and the sincerity of it spills and settles, like warmth to ward off the constant chill.
"You're welcome," she says, faintly, automatically. "But I—"
"John," Sherlock's voice cuts in, imperious as ever. "We're done here."
John hesitates.
"We should have drinks later," she says, and for once the words fit in her mouth smoothly, like they belong. "And talk about it."
"Yes, all right," he says. "Let's."
He gives her one last grateful look and follows Sherlock out, and finally — for the first time in much too long — Molly lets the truth sink into her bones.
—
"It's unbelievable, isn't it?" says Greg, leaning against the wall just outside the morgue. "Sherlock Holmes, back from the dead."
"At least he's not, I dunno, a zombie," Molly offers. "Er, I mean—"
Greg gives her an incredulous look and then suddenly, gloriously, bursts into laughter. Molly can feel her own lips twitching upwards, and then they're both giggling helplessly, like they might not ever stop.
This, she thinks, is good enough.
Fin.
Reviews are very much loved.