ETA: Now with Brit-picking courtesy of the lovely allofmyheart!

Chapter 2

It was an odd thing, Molly thought, to be walking down the busy London street with Sherlock Holmes, the world's only resurrected consulting detective, by her side. He strode down the pavement with his familiar purposeful stride, long legs eating up the distance so that she nearly had jog to keep up with him.

Anyone else would have earned irritable looks from the oncoming pedestrians who had to change their course to avoid colliding with him as he took ownership of the centre of the pavement. But the crowds simply parted around Sherlock like the ocean around a steaming frigate. They didn't seem to notice him otherwise. Molly wondered if they would be so oblivious if he were wearing his deerstalker. She rather thought not.

Sometimes she understood Sherlock's misanthropy. He was a flash of singular brilliance in a world of muted, watery colours. He could think circles around them – all of them – but he was forced to be in the world among them, able to see the desert in a grain of sand when the rest of them couldn't make out a thing beyond the end of their own noses, and weren't interested in trying, anyway. She thought it must be a lonely life, whatever he might say.

Skipping aside to avoid colliding with a distracted businessman on his mobile, Molly took the opportunity to look up at his bold profile.

Lonely before; lonelier now.

She had known Sherlock for several years before John Watson had come along and had – not a 'humanising' effect, he still hadn't ever been that – but a way of calming and refining him. Sherlock Holmes was a live wire in need of grounding, and John had been that for him – focusing his drive, guiding his energies, giving a damn. Hopefully, he would be all of those things again. Molly felt a pang in her chest and hoped that she was right about the good doctor's ability to forgive his friend.

"Well, this is me then," she said as they arrived at the stairs that led down to the Tube station. "Thanks for the escort." She smiled, pink-cheeked and breathless from scrambling to keep up with him. "Off to face your reckoning now, are you?" For no reason that she could name, she was reluctant to say goodbye to him.

"What? Oh, no." Sherlock stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the collar of his coat turned up against the brisk autumn wind. He glanced around almost as if he was unsure of where he was. Molly was certain he knew that quite well, and was instead merely deducing which of their fellow pedestrians were having beans and toast for their dinner based on which way they carried their briefcase. "No, I'm not going back to Baker Street tonight. Mrs. Hudson is out for the evening and, while John is in, he is also with his…lady friend. Not the most ideal time to come back to life, I should think."

The flicker of annoyance on Sherlock's face almost made her laugh. Gone for more than two years, returning with nary a word to anyone and still perfectly capable of being put out when people had the audacity to make inconvenient plans. She didn't even bother to ask how he knew the particulars of his friends' daily schedule given that he'd been in another country until the day before.

"Oh, well, you can stay at mine tonight, if you like. I have a bed – or rather I have two beds – one for me and one for you." She gave a nervous laugh, and wished that she could kick herself for opening her mouth in the first place. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. "There's a guest room, I mean. I had a flat share for a bit, but she – she got married and well, now I have an extra room. And it's, uh, got a bed – that you can use – tonight, if you like." She gave him an awkward, wobbly smile and then rushed on. "I mean, if you don't – you know – have a place, but I'm sure you do. Sorry, I just – I just thought – "

"Thank you, Molly," Sherlock said, heading her off with a short incline of his head. She could see the tension on his face as he laboriously worked out the social norms required of him in the situation. "That would do nicely."

"It would?" It took a long moment for her to realise he had accepted her offer. She covered her discomfiture with a cheerful smile. "Oh, right, well, that sounds – good. Off we go then!" She turned toward the steps to the Tube station, making incredulous faces to herself until she realised he could see her in the reflective surface of the advert stands. She desisted with a wince.

The train ride was largely a quiet one. Sherlock seemed introspective, but it was difficult to know what was really going on behind those icy blue-green eyes. He watched out the windows as London flashed past them in a dark and light-streaked blur. Had he missed the city? Had he missed his friends? Could Sherlock miss? Was even that too emotional of an entanglement for him? He was as much a mystery now as he had ever been; more so, even. So much could happen in the course of two years...well, to other people, anyway. Not much had happened to Molly during that time, but then nothing much ever did.

Two years ago she had been getting up, catching the train, doing her shift at Barts and then coming home to an empty flat. Two years from now, she imagined she would be doing much the same thing. How had so much time gone by with no appreciable difference in her life? She had the sudden flash of her life, twenty years from now - getting up from the same bed, getting on the same train and going to the same job - and then, for just a split second, she hated it. Hated the monotony, hated the unending sameness of it all.

And then she looked up and saw Sherlock watching her, and a smile spread across her face just as the train pulled into her station.

Molly jogged up two flights of stairs with Sherlock on her heels like an overgrown puppy. She wished pointlessly that she had time to dash in and tidy up before she let him in, but she merely took a deep breath and pushed through the door, careful to block the gap with her body until she could ascertain that Toby wasn't waiting to dash between her legs and escape out into the corridor, again.

"Alright then," she said, attempting to be airy. "Here's mine." She dropped her bag on the side table and darted a quick look around the room, wondering what he would deduce from the comfortable chaos of her flat. She was tidy by nature, but, with only herself to please and no one to say otherwise, her furnishings were a diverse hodgepodge of pieces that had struck her fancy regardless of how they tied in with the rest of the room. She knew it gave the room a messy, slapdash air, but she liked it. It felt cosy – lived in. Posh as Sherlock's flat had been under all the mess, she had no doubt that he would hate her eclectic disorder.

"Oh, I forgot –" She seized her leftover breakfast dishes and darted into the tiny kitchen with them, absurdly embarrassed for Sherlock to see the dried-up eggs and toast she had wolfed down on her way out the door that morning.

When she came back into the sitting area, Sherlock had removed his coat and was on her sofa with his fingers tented and pressed against his lips, sitting nose to nose with her cat. Toby stood on the coffee table, leaning forward in order to better examine their guest. Sherlock was, of course, examining him right back.

"I've met your flatmate," he said without looking up. Toby's tail swished back and forth in curiosity and then, with one last flick, he turned his nose up in dismissal and leapt silently to the floor.

"He owns the place. I just live here," Molly said with an affectionate smile at Toby's retreating back.

"It's good that you have company."

It was a very un-Sherlock-like thing to say, and Molly gave him a puzzled look, which he did not appear to notice. She wondered suddenly what had happened to him in the past two years. How much had he seen? How much had he faced on his own?

"Um, it is," she said. "It's nice to have someone to talk to." She gestured awkwardly down the hallway with her thumb. "Do you want me to show you the room?"

Molly always felt diminutive around Sherlock, physically, intellectually or otherwise. Just now she felt very small indeed as she led him the few steps down the narrow hallway to the second bedroom. He took up a lot of space

She nudged the door open and stood out of the way.

He seemed larger than usual in the small confines of the room. It was almost ridiculous to think of him tucked underneath her old flower sprigged duvet, the coiled-spring of his body relaxed finally in the abandonment of sleep. With a massive force of will, she managed to push that mental picture out of her head.

"Sorry, it's not much, but it should do you for one night anyway. The reprieve before the storm and all that." She laughed.

He gave her a puzzled look and she stuttered. "Oh, I just meant – sorry –"

"No, no. It's fine. It's more than sufficient." He turned restlessly in the enclosed space and then stilled abruptly and took a deep breath. "Thank you, Molly," he said. She could see the effort it took for him to look her in the eye. "You've always been so much kinder to me than I deserve."

She blinked at him, completely at a loss. "Tea!" she blurted at last and then blushed. "Sorry, I mean I'm going to put the kettle on. Would you like some?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and headed back to the kitchen, wondering if she would ever feel completely at ease in that man's presence.

The familiar steps of putting the kettle on to boil were soothing. She had regained her equanimity, however temporarily, by the time Sherlock rejoined her. It was only a matter of time before he knocked her sideways again, but she would enjoy the reprieve while she could.

"You don't have any luggage, do you?" she asked.

"No," he said without looking at her. He was examining the interior of her kitchen with the same deceptively mild curiosity that he applied to every situation, no doubt catalouging the truly pitiful number of ready-meal containers that were stacked up in the bin or the nearly empty white squares on the American Short-hair calendar that hung slightly askew on the side of her fridge. "There was nothing I felt compelled to bring home with me directly. I had a few things shipped, but they won't be arriving for several days."

Molly nodded in understanding, but inwardly shook her head in wonder that a grown man wouldn't think to pack an overnight bag. "Right. Well, I have a spare toothbrush that's yours if you want it. I'm afraid I haven't anything to offer you in the way of pyjamas." She was blushing furiously, but he seemed not to notice.

"Not a problem. I rarely sleep clothed." Having presumably concluded his assessment of her kitchen, if not the entirety of her life since had last seen her, he rounded on her with an expectant look. "Now, what about dinner?"

Later, after their orders of beef with broccoli and Szechuan chicken had been reduced to empty, sauce-splattered tins, Molly sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in her least ratty dressing gown, with her final cup of tea for the night, and eyed Sherlock speculatively over the rim of her cup.

"What?" he asked, crossly. "Why are you goggling at me like that? Do I have something on my face?"

"I just don't think I've ever seen you eat so much at one time. You must've been famished." She cocked her head to the side and examined him for a change, noting the way his shirt hung looser on his shoulders and his even more prominent than usual cheekbones. "You've lost quite a lot of weight, haven't you? You haven't been eating well." She wasn't sure why, knowing his habits, but she felt her heart clench, all the same.

"Oh, excellent deduction, Doctor Hooper; gold star." Sherlock rolled his eyes in barely suppressed annoyance. "You know I never eat much when I'm on a case."

"No, but this wasn't just a case, was it? This was a mission." She narrowed her eyes and studied his face, refusing to flinch even when he furrowed his brow and glared at her. "You've been living hard altogether. It's not just the eating. You haven't been sleeping either. And you've been in danger – a lot of danger." Without thinking she reached up to touch the fading bruise that wasn't quite concealed by the dark sweep of his hair. He jerked backwards and she let her hand drop with a shake of her head, unable to push away the pained sympathy in her eyes even though she knew he wouldn't appreciate it. "Was it as important as all that? Moriarty – Jim was already dead."

"But his syndicate was alive and kicking." Sherlock stood abruptly and moved restively around the tight space. "Cut off the head and the body will die, but Moriarty wasn't the head of anything. He was a cancer, a disseminated idea that grew and spread and reached malevolent fingers into a hundred different dark places. His network suffered when he died. They retreated, but not to lick their wounds and scatter like rats. Oh no, they withdrew to regroup, to gain a firmer foothold, to bide their time until the moment was right to re-launch their enterprise, only this time, without Moriarty's failings."

Molly watched Sherlock pace furiously. "His failings?

He gave an unpleasant laugh. "Oh, certainly. James Moriarty was a genius. He was shrewd and cunning and brilliant and his moral compass didn't exactly point north – there would have been nothing to stop him. He could have toppled world governments if he'd wanted to, but he was bored and that was his downfall. That was why he came after me particularly, the challenge, the high of finding a worthy adversary to pit himself against. What fun is it to defeat an opponent when you already know that his skill is below yours? Moriarty was willing to lose, to die, just to find the one person in the whole world who could outthink him."

"And he did. He found you."

Sherlock stopped in his pacing and gave Molly a searching look. "Yes. Yes, he found me." His gaze lingered on her for a moment, shrewd eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "But that was his downfall – the game. He simply couldn't resist the desire to play. The players he left behind have no such compunction." A fierce gleam shone in his eyes and his loose fingers curled into fists. "Had."

Molly was almost taken aback by the intensity on his face. She had seen him focused and intense, determined and even, on a very few occasions, actually angry. This was something entirely new, and not just a little bit terrifying, to behold.

He saw her expression and softened, relaxing the rigidity in his posture with visible effort. "It doesn't matter anymore. It's over now. It's done." He dropped back onto the sofa and steepled his fingers in thoughtful contemplation. "The organization that Jim Moriarty left to carry on after his death is destroyed, the pieces are scattered." His voice dropped an octave. "I won."

Molly hesitated for a second and then pushed to her feet and bridged the distance between them before she could think twice and change her mind. He looked up with a puzzled frown and drew back, but she was determined. With shaking fingers, she leaned forward, brushing the curly hair from his forehead, and pressed a gentle kiss beside the dark smudge on his otherwise flawless brow. She felt him startle beneath her touch, but she lingered for a moment and whispered. "Thank you, Sherlock. I – thank you."

Embarrassed by her own effrontery, she turned then and gathered up the tea things without looking back at his surprised face. "I'm just off to bed then, alright?" she called over her shoulder, anxious to put some distance between herself and that moment of temporary insanity. "Let me know if you need anything!"

She closed the door to her bedroom and leaned against it, feeling foolish. And then she smiled, if ruefully. It certainly hadn't taken long for her and Sherlock to fall right back into their usual routine – him acting all mysterious and enigmatic and her acting like a fool. Some things, she decided, would never change. She sighed and started getting ready for bed.

A/N: Thanks so much to those of you who took the time to stop and review the first chapter. Your kind words are much appreciated and gratefully received. I will always respond to registered comments, but some days that will happen more quickly than others. Concrit is, as always, welcomed and encouraged; Brit-picking is coveted and Cumberbatches will be given fierce cuddles.

My continuing thanks to the lovely and talented Katie F for schooling me on all things grammatical and teaching me to, at last, recognize a run-on sentence - most of the time, at least. I genuflect in your general direction.

Thanks for reading!