Written for Sherlolly Appreciation Week Day 2: The Reichenbach Fall.

Disclaimer: This piece was partially inspired by the song "New Rules" by Dua Lipa. In addition, the idea of coming up with a list of rules to get over heartbreak is sadly not my own. I know it's from a book, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called!

Thank you to my amazing friend MLN for beta-reading this. How you keep putting up with me, I don't know! :p

"So… this is goodbye?"

He's standing in front of her, his presence like a moonbeam against the early morning darkness. She's in her pajamas with daisies on them and he in a black suit under his Belstaff. It's 4:37 in the morning and he's already prepared to take on the world. Molly looks at him, how painfully beautiful he is, and her eyes start to sting.

"Yes," Sherlock says. He avoids meeting her gaze. "This is goodbye, it would seem."

And the silence that follows his words makes the three feet between them seem like an entire ocean. They both know what comes next. But by the way they're standing, rooted to Molly's floor like statues, neither one of them wants to believe it.

Sherlock is the one who moves first. Taking a breath, he holds out his hand for a handshake… then pulls it back and stands awkwardly for a moment. There is a strange, perplexed expression on his face as he examines her one last time. And before she can say anything, his arms are around her in the most awkward yet tender embrace she's ever received. She's breathless.

"Thank you, Molly, for everything." he murmurs, the words warm on her ear as he holds her close. The sentiment that bleeds into his voice makes Molly's eyes fill with tears. She knows it now: the day Sherlock Holmes leaves her will be the third-worst day of her life, behind only the day he 'died' and the day her father died.

"When will you… be back?" she chokes out, barely able to form words as they separate.

"I don't know," he admits truthfully. "Dismantling Moriarty's network will be the most dangerous case I have ever taken. It will take me a long while, if not the rest of my life."

And something about that sentence makes her feel sick.

She doesn't expect to feel so sad after preparing herself so thoroughly- she had known it was coming for a week now. He'd only been using his apartment for a temporary bolthole while he planned how best to take apart James Moriarty's vast spider's web, after all– but for both of them, it seemed to be a little more.

A series of memories from the past week flashes through her mind: him standing in the kitchen, leaning against the wall and talking to her as she got ready for work. Coming home in the evenings to find he'd ordered takeaway for both of them. His presence beside her in bed– and how, even when the nights began distant and cold, they always ended up tangled in each other's arms by morning. Since that night he'd jumped, he'd somehow managed to worm his way into her life as though he'd always belonged there. Molly knows now that the wound his departure will leave is going to take a long time to heal.

"You remember what we discussed?" Sherlock asks, pulling her out of her thoughts and back to the painful present. Molly nods, suddenly too overcome with emotion to speak. If she opens her mouth, she just might cry.

And that was not something she and Sherlock had discussed.

Over the past week, Sherlock had been giving her little assignments to continue after he was gone. Rules to abide by to keep the knowledge of his survival secret and the two of them safe. She'd kept them all written down in purple ink– which Sherlock had turned his nose up at– on a sheet of paper that was tucked underneath her pillow.

But there was another beside it. She'd made rules for herself, too– not to keep herself alive, but to get through the coming weeks, months, years, without Sherlock Holmes. Because Molly Hooper is a stickler for rules, and she refuses to cling to the memory of him and grieve like a lovesick girl.

There are four of them to start with, and not crying is the first. So she swallows her tears and looks up at him, taking one last look before he vanishes forever.

He clears his throat, breaking eye contact with her as he ties his scarf. "Good. Thank you." And before either of them can say anything else, he reaches for the door, trying to make a clean break.

But she can't let him go yet. "Sherlock– wait." He freezes, turning slowly to look at her, as though he's not sure the words she'd uttered were real or imagined. Before she loses her courage, Molly forces out the words and stammers, "I… you have asked me for so many favors over the years. Please, can I ask you for just one in return?"

An expression of surprise creeps onto his face- but then he blinks, and just like that, it's gone. "Of course."

In her mind's eye, she looks him in the eye and begs, don't leave. She wraps her arms around him and forces him to stay. Or at least to take her with him. Because she doesn't want to be without him, this man she loves. Doesn't want to live in a world where Sherlock Holmes is all but dead.

But in real life, she takes a shaky breath and whispers, "Be safe. Please."

Sherlock's only response is a forced smile. He leans towards her and Molly freezes, her whole body tensing. "I will miss you, Molly Hooper," he breathes, and then presses the gentlest kiss to Molly's forehead.

Molly's whole world comes to a grinding, screeching halt– but reality does not. He turns, coat swishing, the door squeaking as he pulls it open, and just like that he's gone.

Almost as if he'd never been there in the first place, save for the tiny spot on her forehead where her skin is still warm.

1. I will not cry when you leave.

Molly thinks that this rule will be the hardest to follow. Because the second he slips out that door, barely more than a shadow with his dark hair and black Belstaff, she feels her eyes start to burn. His last words to her, the feeling of his lips on her forehead, seem to linger, and it just makes everything worse.

It is so cruel, Molly thinks, how someone can be so full of life and alive in front of you one second, and gone forever the next. It is not unlike death, the way Sherlock disappears. But Molly has seen death, knows it almost better than she knows herself– and this, knowing that he is unreachable yet still alive, is almost worse. The pain of death remains on her like a second skin when she leaves the morgue, dull and heavy. But the sharp ache she feels in her chest right now is new and ugly and it hurts. She does not have much experience with life and the living. She is paying for it now.

She lasts a meager six minutes and forty-two seconds before she breaks. She counted. Half of her is angry, hating herself for already breaking that first rule. The other half of her is surprised that she lasted this long. When she finally cries, it is not the silent, cold tears she sometimes finds dripping down her face after autopsying a pregnant mother or a child. They are hot, loud sobs, and she has to press her face into a pillow to keep the sound from travelling through the wall and into the flat next door. She wonders what Sherlock would do if he saw her reacting like this– all this sentiment, this rawness and emotion– but it only makes her cry harder. He would hate it. He'd probably shoot her a glare and say something horrible, just like always… but she would rather have that, an insult, than the deafening silence now ringing through her flat.

She cries for around fifteen minutes, more than double the time she lasted without. And once that first rule is utterly and thoroughly broken, she removes the folded piece of paper from under her pillow and draws a shaky line through it with her purple pen.

2. I will not think of you every time I see John, Greg, or Mrs. Hudson.

Molly had been wrong before: it was this rule that would be the hardest to follow, not the first. Because John Watson and Greg Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson are walking reminders that Sherlock is gone. That she may live the rest of her life without seeing the man she loves again.

The first time she sees John after the death is at the funeral, and she is barely able to keep herself from running to him and blurting that Sherlock is alive. He looks like a corpse on her table– face unshaven, skin sallow, rings underneath his eyes like dark crescent moons. He tries to read a eulogy, but he barely makes it halfway through before he can't speak anymore. When he opens his mouth and the words don't come out, all he can do is put his head in his hands and cry. No one knows what to say. Even Sherlock would be dumbstruck, Molly thinks sadly.

Broken.

Now that Sherlock's gone, Anderson and his team handle most of the forensic evidence at Scotland Yard and Donovan's usually the one to come to her if a post mortem is needed. But Greg stops by the morgue sometimes on a particularly difficult case. It's strange for them to see each other in a situation sans Sherlock, yet he still makes an effort to pop in for a chat and see how she's doing. After a particularly difficult homicide case of his was solved in part thanks to her, he even asks if she'd want to go out for coffee.

She says yes. But it hurts to hear him say it because all she can think is that Sherlock would have solved it in half the time, and done it without asking her on a date, but it still would have been better than this.

Broken.

It's not that she doesn't like Lestrade. It's that she likes Sherlock more– loves him– and imagining someone taking his place in her life hurts too much to even consider. Greg buys her a latte and they sit silently at the Starbucks table, trying to ignore the Sherlock-sized elephant in the room that's wedged between them.

They do not go out again.

Mrs. Hudson calls Molly every once in a while. The conversation between them is sparse– mostly she asks if Molly would like to come over for dinner. She begs off every time. Mrs. Hudson is an absolute angel, but the thought of stepping inside 221B Baker Street, a place that oozes Sherlock, makes her feel like she might throw up. After a while, Mrs. H stops asking.

Broken.

Molly crosses out this rule, too. Many times.

5. I will not ask your brother about you.

For the first month he's away, she calls Mycroft's office once a week. Sometimes she has to stop herself from calling once a day. No one ever answers, but she keeps trying anyways; she's desperate for information about him. Wants to make sure he's safe.

She knows it's not healthy to be obsessing over it like this. That she's preventing herself from moving on without him. But she wants to be the first to know if something changes– if he's hurt, if he's coming home, even if he's… he's…

She doesn't let herself think the word.

Molly tells herself that she's going on with her life. That the only reason she picks up the phone and dials the number she knows by heart now every Wednesday– at precisely 3:00– is because she wants to offer her help. If he even needs it– not that he would. By the time it's been two months since he left, she can recite the voicemail message from his assistant's desk line in her sleep.

Everyone says that the more you tell a lie, the truer it becomes. But Molly lies to herself every day, every time she picks up the phone, and the nagging weight of the truth never leaves her. She shouldn't. She really, really shouldn't do this. Because every week, it only ends in hurt when she picks up the phone and receives an answering machine in response...

Molly finally breaks and adds this to her list of rules on the day she calls and someone picks up... only to tell her that Sherlock Holmes's whereabouts are currently unknown.

6. I will not listen to interviews you gave to help me fall asleep.

The emptiness on the other side of her bed feels like a gaping wound in her side. Sherlock had only lain there for several days, but she'd grown used to the soothing feeling of his back pressed against hers, how more often than not they woke in each other's arms. She tries to replicate it by stuffing two or three pillows under the duvet, but it's not the same. Molly used to sleep in the middle of her bed, but now she stays firmly on the right side. Even in his absence, her brain remembers that the left is his. She wonders if it will ever stop feeling like he belongs there.

She's never been the best sleeper, but ever since he left those weeks ago, falling asleep has been impossible. Her mind is always running at full-speed, buzzing with the stress of the next day's work and worries about the consulting detective. What little sleep she manages to get is filled with dreams of him. Sherlock steals her attention, in day and night, and there's nothing she can do about it.

On the nights she worries most about him, she gives up on sleep completely. Because it is infinitely more painful to wake up and realize he's not there than to go to Barts running on empty.

After going three days in a row without any sleep, Molly Hooper feels like death. She needs rest and she knows it, but she doesn't want to dream. She swallows a Benadryl tablet after she brushes her teeth, hoping the allergy medication will induce a black, empty sleep and knock her out. But when she lies down- firmly on the right side of the bed- her eyes still aren't heavy. Today was a hard day at work, and Sherlock's absence hurts even more on top of that. Feeling the emptiness beside her makes her heart twist. She misses him. She needs him. Badly. And she knows that even with the Benadryl, she won't be able to sleep unless she does something about it.

So she pulls out her phone, her finger hovering over his name in her contacts. Just hearing his voice, knowing that he is safe, would be enough. Molly debates calling him, but she doesn't know if he even has a phone on him to avoid being tracked. Giving up on that, she opens Safari; the next best thing to hearing his voice in real time would be a recording of it. YouTube is full of video interviews he reluctantly gave before his "death". Molly picks one about the Baskerville case and sets it on her nightstand before closing her eyes.

"Once I had complete access to the Baskerville facility, it was all rather obvious," Sherlock says to the camera, his baritone voice dimmed by her tinny phone speakers. He hates talking to the press, she can tell; the tone of his voice is bland and uninterested at best. But they are his words, and with the sound of him talking in the background, she can almost imagine it's him working out something in his mind palace or whispering 'good-night' to her from the other side of the bed instead.

When she wakes up in the morning, a full eight hours later, the playlist of interviews is still going. It's the most rested she's felt since before he left. But she also wakes up with tears dripping down her face and a heavy lump in her throat.

It is these feelings that make Molly get out of bed, go straight to her paper, and add a sixth rule to her list.

9. I will not read your website when I miss you.

Night shifts are the hardest. Working is the easy part; when she's cutting into cadavers and investigating livers, hearts, brains, she doesn't think. At least, not about him. But during the thirty minute breaks she gets every few hours, her mind runs wild. During the day, she can leave the morgue and return to the surface of Barts Hospital for some social interaction. But at night, Molly is utterly alone, save for the bodies on her table, and there is not a soul there to distract her.

She would skip her breaks if she could. But Barts is required to give them to her for the purpose of labor laws, so she makes the best of them. Mostly, she uses the time to listen to music and eat the snacks she packs herself, because the canteen closes at two and doesn't open again until six. It doesn't do much to stop her from missing Sherlock, but the music is distracting and it blocks out the more upsetting thoughts.

One day, when she just cannot get him off of her mind on a 3:30 AM break, she impulsively pulls out her phone and goes to his website: The Science of Deduction. She devours every single word– even on the dull posts about 250 different types of ash, or wool, or something– because they were written by Sherlock Holmes. It's not until she reaches the very first entry that she realizes she's gone long past her allotted break time. Two hours past it.

It's half past five in the morning, and Molly Hooper has slacked off on her job for the first time in her life. She wants to feel guilty about it, but she can't– all she feels is slightly less hollow, because the blog posts made it feel like he was there in the Barts Hospital morgue with her, talking her ear off about something or other. But nothing can completely take away the ache of losing someone that you love.

She shakes her head, closes the tab, and slaps on a pair of latex gloves. Back to work. Just as always. No matter how it made her feel, she can't afford to let that happen again– so on her next break, she turns off her phone completely and opts for adding another rule to the list instead.

12. I won't wear the scarf you left in the lab.

Time goes on. Weeks. Months. A year. The pain remains, but dulls with time, feeling less like a knife to the heart and more like a healing, throbbing scar. She still loves him, still misses him, but reality has set in and she realizes that, for better or for worse, she may never see him again. It is time to accept it.

When Molly opens her locker for her annual spring cleaning, she finds Sherlock's blue scarf, shoved inside from the day of his suicide. She desperately wants to put it on, to hold it to her nose and see if it still smells like him. But the past months alone have made her stronger. She resists the temptation and deposits it in her purse, telling herself that she'll drop it off at 221B later, with all the other things of his that are collecting dust. She doesn't need it. She doesn't need it.

To prove that to herself, she adds it to her list of rules. She still carries it with her in her purse after all this time. Using her locker as a desk, she writes. Her script is sloppy and the pen catches on the bumps in the metal.

Like all the others, she breaks it. This one takes her six days instead of six minutes… but, inevitably, she succumbs. She's resurfacing from the depths of the morgue for a lunch break when it happens– the heartbreak. She walks into the canteen and all she can see is pink. Pink hearts dangling from the ceiling, pink-frosted cupcakes at the dessert counter, nurses in pink uniforms, and tables set for couples with pink flowers as centerpieces.

Then she realizes: it's the middle of February. Valentine's Day. The explosion of red and pink hurts her eyes and makes her chest tighten– and when she sees all the happy couples surrounding her, she can't breathe. All she can think of is how badly she misses the man she can't stop loving.

She's crying in the middle of the canteen, and she's never been more mortified in her entire life. But all of her co-workers are too absorbed in their lunch dates, their happy relationships, to notice that she is alone and hurting.

"Don't cry, dear," a nurse from the ICU comes up behind her, patting her shoulder gently. "You're not the only one alone today. My husband's in the army, deployed in Iraq until April. Is yours on duty, too?"

Molly wipes her running nose with her lab coat sleeve. "Y-yes," she stammers, because she doesn't know what else to say. "And I don't know when he'll come home."

The woman clicks her tongue pityingly and offers Molly a sad smile.

When she goes back down to the basement, she locks herself in the morgue and lets herself listen to some sad music while she does paperwork. The macabre of her job easily pushes the fact that it's Valentine's Day out of her mind. But not even the music or her tears can hide the feeling of emptiness that is gnawing at her stomach. She misses Sherlock again. She's never stopped, really. Seeing the canteen just unearthed the emotions she tried so hard to hide.

She remembers, suddenly, that she still has his scarf tucked in her purse. In a moment of desperation, she forgets every rule, every promise she's ever made to herself, and she yanks it out and buries her face in it. It's chilled to the touch, but soft, and even after over a year apart from its owner… the smell of Sherlock lingers like a hint of the finest cologne. Eyes shut tight, face in the scarf, it almost feels like he's beside her. And suddenly she can breathe again, just a little.

She wears it to work every day and sleeps with it stuffed under her pillow until the smell of him– old books and warm tea and a hint of nicotine– fades.

3. I'll make sure that no one knows I miss you.

She doesn't see her friends very often anymore, but she makes the routine phone calls once a month. One to John. One to Mrs. Hudson. One to Greg. They're often strained and awkward and leave Molly feeling hollow, but she promised Sherlock she would look after them. She does it for him. Always him.

John always picks up on the third ring, answering with a heavy, groggy voice and a thick, "Hello?"

"John! Hi, it's Molly. Molly Hooper." she says in her happy voice. Pitch higher, words quicker, energy forced into them like injecting drugs into a vein. She always feels the need to include her last name. Because maybe they've forgotten about her since she last called, maybe there's another Molly in their phone, maybe they haven't saved her number… "How are you doing?"

"All right." John mumbles, his words slurring together as if he's just woken up. "Working a lot. Night shifts at the surgery. You?"

Even though John can't see her, she fakes a smile when she says, "I'm great! Great. Doing great."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

She might pick up the phone for Sherlock. But the saccharine-sweet voice on her end of the line? She does that for herself. Because she remembers they way they looked at her at the Christmas party, in the morgue, the lab, all those times she was rejected… She doesn't want to be known as heartbroken, pining Molly Hooper. She doesn't want to be pitied. The pain of missing him is for her and her alone.

So she tries to act happy. Some days it works. Most days it doesn't– but she keeps faking it regardless.

When Meena asks Molly if she wants her to introduce her to someone, every part of her screams no. No, she doesn't want to go out with anyone new. No, she doesn't want to love someone else yet. But she says yes, because she made a rule that no one would see her missing Sherlock, and damn her if she broke this one, too.

"I know he's not Sherlock Holmes, Molls…" Meena says, her voice trailing off. The words dissolve into silence and the hissing of the curling iron, hot against Molly's hair in the bathroom of her flat. Molly freezes. She knows. "But do you promise you'll try to have fun?"

She would try to look happier, that's for sure.

"Promise," Molly says through a mouthful of bobby pins, even though she's dreading the whole thing.

Before her date arrives that night, Molly slips the list- now creased and bent almost beyond recognition- out of her purse and draws a quick line through number three.

Another one broken.

4. I will find someone new and move on.

A year and a half after Sherlock's death, only one of the original four rules is still unbroken. But Molly hasn't added to the list in weeks, hasn't even looked at it in months… because, a year and a half after Sherlock's death, she's almost happy.

Her happiness's name is Tom, and he is sweet, and kind, and caring, and doting, and everything Molly never knew she wanted in a man. He has a dog, the cutest little Australian Shepherd, and she's met his whole family and they go for dinner at their favorite pub every Friday night like clockwork. She adores him. For once in her life, everything seems… steady. Normal. No interruptions. Nothing and no one constantly turning her life upside down.

They're walking to one of these Friday night dinners, hand in hand and laughing about something that isn't funny, when Molly notices that they're passing a churchyard– the very one where Sherlock Holmes's grave stands.

Sherlock. She hasn't thought about him in days. Weeks. Part of her is relieved at that, the fact that he is no longer ruling her life… but guilt knots in her stomach. Is he safe? What if he needs her help? She'd gotten so caught up in her new life, how could she have forgotten…?

She knows that Sherlock is very much alive, and that the black marble stone is nothing more than a symbol, but something makes her stop in her tracks and look towards the gates. "Tom, let's stop off here for a moment, I have something I need to do…"

Her boyfriend looks confused as they veer off track and head into a graveyard, but follows her nonetheless. "Is this where your father is buried?"

She shakes her head, scanning the markers for one in particular. "A friend. A very old friend."

Sherlock Holmes. The consulting detective who barged into her lab demanding body parts, wreaking havoc with cases and turning her whole life on its' head. Always running in and out of Barts with some mystery or another. Sherlock Holmes, with the knife-sharp wit, a stone-cold heart, and intelligence to rival Hawking himself.

But that is not him, not the Sherlock she knows. He is the man she'd fallen for. The one who told her she counted, that she'd always counted, who kissed her cheek at Christmas and apologized. Who'd shared her bed for only six nights yet somehow never left her flat. Who came to her when he most needed a friend.

By the time they reach the black stone tablet bearing his name, Molly is crying. She is a fool if she ever truly believed she was over Sherlock Holmes. She still loves him, she always has, and she misses him so much in that moment that her whole body throbs with the ache of his absence.

How could she have lied to herself for so long? How could she have thought she no longer loved him when she still slept with his scarf clutched to her chest during the nights she spent alone? When she woke in the morning in Tom's arms and her first thought was that is was someone else holding her?

And the little life she's built for herself comes crumbling down around her in the middle of that graveyard. Maybe she's never truly been happy, she thinks to herself. In hindsight, it all looks like a forgery, a cheap imitation of what she wishes she could truly have. Staring at the gravestone, locking eyes with her reflection and the distorted image of Tom beside her, Molly realizes– when has she, the quirky pathologist with a fascination about death, the woman who spends her days cutting up cadavers, ever liked normal?

She's not sure she wants to answer that question herself.

Because no matter what she tells herself, she still hasn't moved on. And it doesn't feel like she ever will.

"Why are you crying?" Tom asks her, almost bewildered as he pats her shoulder. Molly shoves her face into his chest and lets hot tears– tears of sadness, of guilt, of shame– flow freely.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, "I'll try harder. I'm sorry. I promise."

Tom only nods and holds her, rubbing her back occasionally. But that promise was not made for him– it was solely for herself. A vow that she would not, could not, break that fourth rule again.

That night, Molly blacks out this rule with a Sharpie, obliterating it completely from existence. The thought of admitting that she'd broken it makes her wish she had never added it in the first place.

13. I will not look at Tom and wish that he was you.

Molly keeps her promises. She tries to have fun, she tries to be happier, she tries to love Tom with all of her heart. For a while, it works– she pushes Sherlock Holmes out of her mind and her heart, leaving her feelings for him in a dark corner of her closet along with his scarf. She is able to walk into Saint Bartholomew's Hospital and think of something besides the memory of him falling from the rooftop. She is able to walk to their Friday night dinners without looking at the churchyard. She is able to kiss Tom and love him and cherish him for exactly who he is.

But then, on their one-year anniversary… Tom gets down on one knee.

And Molly Hooper barely breathes as her eyes well up and all she can say is yes.

She loves Tom. She'll happily spend the rest of her life with this man. But when he proposes, a tiny part of her can't help but wish that it was him instead. The thought enters her mind and she immediately regrets it, because she pictures Sherlock Holmes standing in front of her with a ring and she feels more in that imagined moment that she had in reality just seconds before.

She feels like a despicable person when Tom looks at her with such love in his eyes and part of her wishes that he could be someone else.

She adds this to her list immediately.

But even this rule is broken.

A few days later, they're sitting on her sofa watching telly, his arm around her, when he flips to the news and suddenly it's all over: suicide of detective in vain? Sherlock Holmes is not a fraud.

She starts to cry. Tom doesn't notice the way she stares at the screen like she's seen a ghost. Doesn't even realize they're talking about someone she knows. And she cries even harder at this because she wishes it was Sherlock beside her, because he would deduce her and know immediately what was wrong.

And Tom, just beside her yet so far away, has no idea.

"Molly!" he finally exclaims, when Molly's grip on her emotions slips and she can't help but let out a single, loud sob. Her face turns red as he looks her over, eyes wide with confusion and concern. "Are you all right?"

She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, surely smearing mascara all over her face. "Yes. I'm fine." No, I'm not, of course I'm not, can't you see that?

Tom reaches for her, taking her hand in his and pulling her into his arms. But Molly shoves him away, a flash of resentment burning through her– it's not his embrace that she wants, and she hates both of them for it. "What's wrong? Is everything okay?"

"Yes." It's a lie and they both know it. She wraps her arms around her torso as the tears drip down her cheeks. "Would you… would you just give me a moment?"

Tom nods and doesn't follow her as she walks away.

In the privacy of her room, Molly shuts the door behind her and goes straight for her pillow, fishing the list out of the soft fabric case for the first time in weeks. And with a shaky hand, in the same purple pen, she crosses out the final rule and sobs.

Two years. Thirteen rules. Every single one of them broken.

Molly Hooper is a stickler for rules… except, it seems, for when it comes to Sherlock Holmes.