Disclaimer: I own nothing. Like nothing. Nada.

Author's Note: So, this is my very very very angsty fic. Like WHOA, angst, that I was talking about on tumblr. There will be a total, of, I believe six chapters. Maybe seven, but I'm aiming for six because, it's a good number, yeah? LOL. Seriously though, happy holidays everyone and I apologize profusely if this story makes you sad! It's just…the angst…it calls to me. Anyways, I sincerely hope you all enjoy it! Please, heed the warnings. The triggers are listed below and they are for all chapters. I have tried to encompass them all but I'm sure I've missed some, but please, heed the warnings.

Warnings: angst, smut (all sorts of smut, oral, fingering, hand-jobs, vagnial, rough sex), coarse language, bullying, murder, talk of murder, talk of suicide, talk of autopsies, allusions to infidelity, violence, threatening one's life, drug use, mentions of rehab, induced vomiting, Sherlock being kind of a douche. There are more, I know there are, and I will add them as I remember them.

So yeah, I sincerely hope you all enjoy, as always, reviews are greatly appreciated and any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Title is taken from Bon Iver's Holocene.

And at once I knew (I was not magnificent)

Part two

She hears the commotion before she sees it (before she's inevitably sucked into it). She's in the supply room in the morgue, pretending to take inventory (she's counting to ten and praying to a God she stopped believing in, that everything worked, that Sherlock did put his trust in the right person) when Doctor Saunier comes barreling through the doors. "Molly?" She hears him shout, his voice echoing through the empty morgue.

She takes a deep breath, clutches the clipboard to her chest, hands gripping it so tightly, her skin stretches and pales across her knuckles. "What can I do for you…David? What's wrong?"

Doctor Saunier's face is as white as his hair. His eyes are sympathetic as he stares at her. "Oh, Molly. There's been a jumper off Bart's roof."

Molly pretends to frown, her heart speeds up. "I don't understand…" she trails off.

Doctor Saunier takes a step towards her and lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It was Sherlock Holmes. Molly, Sherlock Holmes is dead."

The thing is, it's not hard for her to act realistic at hearing the news. For nearly a decade, Molly has watched families and loved ones come in and out of the morgue identifying dead family members and friends. She watches as their faces morph into disbelief, denial, guilt, anger all at once, only for the prevailing emotion to be grief. A sense of melancholy so strong, it almost suffocates her. She watches them break down into sobs, she watches as they plead (some of them looking at her, begging her to do something, anything, just not this, please, not this, and Molly is helpless to do anything but stare stoically ahead and pretend to not be affected by their grief.)

She remembers the day she got news of her dad's death. She took the rest of the afternoon off and walked up to oncology, where the doctors and nurses gave her wide berth and whispered their condolences. She walked into the room and stared at her father's lifeless body, the ghost of a smile on his face and Molly sat next to him, curtains drawn, hand over her mouth, silently weeping (she was never one for a show.) She collected herself half-hour later and gathered his belongings.

(It wasn't until she got home, pictures of her dead and gone mother and father on every stand, does she start sobbing. They were gut-wrenching sobs, almost choking her as she came to the realization that minus Toby, she's alone. She's all alone and maybe, just maybe, she always will be.)

She lets shock waft through her body. She drops the clipboard and registers it clattering to the ground; she staggers backwards, Doctor Saunier, catching her by the elbow. "I'm fine." She wheezes. "I'm fine." She looks up at him, her eyes watering, her breath labored. "I need…I have to…it has to be me."

Doctor Saunier shakes his head, "Molly, you shouldn't. You know you shouldn't."

(They talked about this, she and Sherlock did, and Sherlock told her that if Doctor Saunier persisted, to tell him that she'll go to Mike Stamford and get permission from him, but Molly was adamant at that being the last resort.)

"He trusted me." And when he looks like he's going to protest, Molly takes a deep breath and tells him the only truth she's able to, "I loved him." (Love. Always love. Never past tense.)

Doctor Saunier closes his eyes and nods slowly, still wanting to argue. "For what it's worth…I am sorry, Molly."

"Keep everyone out please."

His hair is matted with blood (some of it fake, some of it real, his blood, taken from the night before), his body is scattered with cuts and bruises. She stays still, staring at his body until she realizes that she's been staring enough. She takes off his clothes, gently, delicately. She's a professional. She's done this a thousand times before, so she keeps her eyes on his face and watches as the blood washes off his body and down the drain, staining the water and metal slab red.

When she's done with Sherlock, Molly glances over at the next slab over and bites her lip as she stares at Jim (Moriarty.)

(There is a part of her that will traitorously always remember him as Jim. Jim, who loved her cat, Jim, who loved watching Glee, Jim, who loved laughing, Jim, who loved kissing the spot on her neck. Not, Moriarty, Consulting Criminal, murderer and the reason why Sherlock had to fake his own death.)

She feels guilty that she's not as gentle with Jim as she was with Sherlock, but Molly can't bring herself to care.

(Because if she does bring herself to care, she'll start to come to the realization that everything, everyone, she touches and loves, dies in one-way or another.)

John comes barreling into the morgue and it takes both Molly and Greg to restrain him. He's yelling, begging and pleading, sometimes coherently, most of the time, incoherently, not that Molly can blame him. She's barely holding on to her sanity as it is. "John, please." Molly begs.

"No." He says, his voice hoarse from the yelling. She looks at the window and sees a few doctors milling around, necks craning to get a look at the man they all hated. It fills her with disgust. Their morbid fascination with a death they know nothing about.

It angers her to see Sherlock so scrutinized, even in death (despite how fake it may be).

John wrenches out of Greg's grasp and makes his way over to Sherlock. "Please." He says, "please. Don't be dead. Just…don't." He looks up at Molly and Molly grips the counter behind her. "Molly, please, there has to be something…anything?"

She shakes her head, her eyes stinging. "I'm so sorry John. I'm so sorry."

He composes himself quickly, straightening his shoulders and wiping at his face. "Me too." He stares at Sherlock for a moment longer and then exits the morgue, Greg doing the same, squeezing Molly's shoulder before he leaves.

(It's only when she's alone and placing both Sherlock and Jim's bodies in separate drawers, eyes straying to the clock, that she realizes John walked out of the morgue with a slight, almost unnoticeable, but still there, limp.)

"Your father," a voice behind her says, "he has cancer. Prostate. Dying. Your mother has been dead for decades, since you were five. You had your appendix taken out seven years ago. You burnt your finger this morning on your toast. Studying pathology because you like the calm of the dead and not the chaos of the living. You like having the answers, which is exemplified by the fact that you are at the top of your class, quite a feat, for someone so young, yet, undoubtedly alienates and intimidates your other classmates. You have one, no two, very close friends, no siblings and no extended family-"

Molly blinks at him, hands gripping the bench behind her with tight hands. She rocks on the balls of her feet, staring at the man with blue-green eyes and dark, wildly curly hair. She watches his lips as they move rapidly with words and she can't help but think how brilliant he is and how utterly gorgeous he is. (Enough to make her heart stutter, enough to make her blood boil and enough to pique her curiosity.)

(She wonders if he's as lonely as she is, spewing deductions about everyone and everything he sees.)

She's heard (been warned) of him. Of the man with the Belstaff coat and a mouth that manages to run a mile a minute ("almost always with some insulting, the bloody bastard.") "Wow." She breathes. "Neat."

He looks almost pleasantly stunned at her admission and his gaze almost (almost) softens. "Hm…that's not what most people say."

"What do they usually say?" She asks him. (She'd ask him anything, if it meant having him near her, if meant keeping him talking, not only because his voice sends shiver down her spine but because of his intellect, because his intelligence is unparalleled to anyone's she's ever met.)

"Piss off."

Molly lets out a bark of laughter. "I've no doubt." She's afraid she's going to go into cardiac arrest with the way her heart is beating, so she counts to ten and tries to get her heart rate back down to normal. "Molly Hooper." She introduces herself, outstretching her hand, "currently a student."

It takes him a moment before he puts his hand in hers and her breath catches as his cold hand encloses around hers, his thumb pressing against her pulse point, lips almost (almost) quirking up in a barely there smile, as he undoubtedly feels the thundering of her pulse. "I know. I'm-"

"Sherlock Holmes." Molly finishes for him, with a slight smile on her face. "I've heard about you. You're a detective for the Yard."

He looks a bit put out and bit insulted, "the world's only Consulting Detective."

She nods and shrugs, "although, you did get something wrong. My father has lung cancer. Not prostate."

"There's always something."

(It's not until later, when she's describing the encounter to her father, that she realizes he didn't let go of her hand during their exchange, instead, keeping it clasped in his, his thumb stroking her pulse point.)

It's just after midnight when she hears the telltale signs of him waking. She grabs the handle on the drawer and pulls it open. His eyes are open, staring at her and she gives him a smile, body relaxing. "Hi." She says.

He doesn't say anything as he gets up, the sheet slipping away from his body, leaving him nude.

She makes a squawk of noise before thrusting a bag of clothes in his hands. She turns around to give him privacy and she hears him grunt with pain. She turns back around and walks towards him with shaky hands and helps him put on his sweater and zips and buttons his trousers.

She's blushing scarlet when she steps away from him. "Mycroft is waiting outside."

He nods and before he leaves he looks back at her, "Molly." He says, his voice hoarse, "thank you."

"Always." She says. "Always."

(It isn't until he's gone that she grips the morgue slab, vaguely recognizing it as the one Sherlock was in, and starts weeping.)

It's morning by the time she gets back to her flat.

She nearly shrieks when she sees Sherlock lying on her couch, Toby curled on the armrest, resting peacefully. "Sherlock." She hisses, hand at her chest. "What are you doing here? Not that I mind…because I don't…but you're supposed to be in another country right now."

He waves a hand, "I can't fly with my injuries."

(They both know he's lying.)

"I need to heal, Molly." (Please let me heal. Please heal me. Please fix me.)

(And because she already killed this man earlier, she figures the least she can do is bring him back to some sort of semblance of life.) "Okay." She says.

There is loud and insistent banging on her door. Molly groans, looking at the clock and frowns when she sees 3am shining brightly at her. She thinks she's imagining it, thinks that maybe, she's left the telly on, but one quick glance and she knows that the flat is silent and the only noise is indeed coming from outside her flat door.

Grabbing the baseball bat (a gift from Mary "well, now that we're not living together, you've got to have something to defend yourself with, since you won't have my crazy arse self with you") she makes her way to the door, jumping when the knocking sounds again and looks through the peephole. Her mouth drops, eyes widen, as she struggles to undo the locks. She barely drops the bat before Sherlock Holmes stumbles into her arms and practically drags her down to the floor with him.

She shuts the door with her foot and holds onto his dead weight while locking her flat door. She eases him onto the ground and grasps his face in her hands. "Sherlock?" She asks loudly. "Sherlock." His head lolls to the side and he smiles sleepily at her. "Oh god." She says. Her mind racing, her body panicking. She peels his eyelids open and sees how dilated his pupils are. "What did you take? Sherlock, what did you take?"

He's mumbling incoherently and she manages to only catch snippets. "My mind." "Rest." "I just want peace." "Too much." "Are you going to fix me?" He scratches at his left arm and Molly scrambles to wrench off his Belstaff and pull up the sleeve of his shirt, cursing at the bruise forming on his vein. "Heroin?" She hisses. She drags him to the toilet and murmurs her apologies as she shoves her fingers down his throat.

She almost retches as she feels his puke on her hand and arms. He retches and she sits back, washing and washing her arm again as she keeps a close eye on him. She kneels back down and rubs his back and hair, already matted with sweat. "It's okay." She whispers. "I'm here. You have me. Always."

The next morning she wakes up to voices, she looks around her room, to find Sherlock's spot empty and she stumbles out of the room and into the sitting area, where Sherlock is sitting, arms curled around his legs, talking to a man holding an umbrella and a young woman with dark hair picking idly at her nails.

"You need rehab. And this time, you will complete it. Or I will ensure you will never touch your trust fund."

"I hardly need rehab, Mycroft. And why you insist on surrounding me next to bumbling idiots talking about how their addiction is not their faults but that of society is not only cruel and unusual punishment but it's tedious."

"Sherlock, you go to rehab or your little game of playing detective will be over."

"He's right you know." Molly speaks up and then wishes she hadn't, when three set of eyes turn to look at her. "You…you almost died last night."

"Everyone dies, Molly. Don't be sentimental."

She shakes her head. "No. You almost died here. In my flat and I will be sentimental because that's…that's who I am. You almost died, Sherlock and I can't…you can't…you have to live. You're too…special not to." She whispers the last three words, feeling foolish and childish admitting it to them (him.)

The woman appraises her, staring her up and down and then with a quirk of her lips, she goes back to examining her nails.

"I can…I'll take care of your experiments. Everything will be…everything will be as you left it. But you have to…you have to get better because I can't…Sherlock…I can't watch you almost die again."

(Within the hour, Sherlock is out of her flat and out of her life for three months.)

(Its only years later, she realizes that she not only watched him die again, but she's the one who killed him.)

Chapter two is more of a transitional chapter. I apologize if it's for shit. The real stuff (*ahem smut ahem*) begins in chapter 3. But yeah, I am having such a blast writing and I am so grateful and thankful that you guys seem to like it so far!

Like seriously, HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME AND AMAZINGBALLS AND OHMYGOD I LOVE YOU ALL.

A HUGE THANK-YOU goes out to: MizJoely, readxme, Renaissancebooklover108, daisherz365, AdaYuki, SherlockSteph, steelvenommum, Smells like Old Spirit, AsteraceaeBlue, hummingbirds13, ReelaReela, Sienna Maiu, Katya Jade, BenAddict Holmes, Aquitaine85 and PurpleYin, if I missed anyone, I apologize profusely, but know that I love you all. Thank you so much to EVERYONE who has followed and favored this story, your support means the world to me.

Hope you're all still with me. It's only about to get bumpier!

Again, thank you all so so much,

MAD LOVE AND RESPECT,

BB