Deceptions
Chapter Three
Turning the key in the lock, Molly Hooper knew he was gone even before she had stepped into her flat. It wasn't just because he had told her he would be gone by the time she returned from his funeral, but she could feel his absence like some uncanny sixth sense was coming into play, a heightened awareness only he could trigger.
Slowly unbuttoning her coat, she stared mournfully across at the sofa that had been Sherlock Holmes' makeshift bed for the past week. She had initially offered him her bed, making the usual fool of herself as she had blurted that she didn't mean with her in it, of course, and that she could sleep on the sofa. But when Sherlock had insisted that the sofa would be quite adequate, it was without his usual derision, and was almost tender. Their relationship had shifted massively since the planning and completion of his fake suicide.
A ghost of a smile shivered across her lips but she quickly admonished herself, thinking about John.
He had looked so broken at the funeral. Fighting so desperately to keep it together. She had barely been able to meet his eyes. She felt so guilty, so culpable. Had longed to tell him that Sherlock wasn't really dead. That it wasn't his body being lowered into the ground.
"Take care of him for me, Molly," Sherlock had said, the closest to pleading she had ever heard him. "Be a friend to him."
Remembering his poignant words made her think back, over the past week. The most difficult, yet the most cherished week of her life. She had never expected Sherlock to ask her for refuge, but time had been short, he had been thinking on his feet, and had little time to plan anything but his elaborate suicide. Of course she had said yes. A little too quickly, if truth be told.
But romantic notions aside, she had kind of known what to expect. She wasn't totally naïve. She knew what Sherlock was like. And she hadn't been far off her assumptions.
He barely talked to her the whole week. He was lost, deep, in his thoughts. Brooding, so intensely and so darkly, that it almost frightened her. And yet it hadn't been anything personal towards her. She knew that. There had been something about his manner that hadn't excluded her, it had just asked for her understanding. To give him space.
She understood Sherlock more than he realised.
So she brought him mugs of tea, and regular meals, what little he ate of them, and for the most part, kept to her bedroom, so as not to disturb him.
At one stage, for a frustratingly brief interlude, he did rouse from his deliberations, asking her to buy him some cigarettes. She had hesitated, remembering his ongoing battle with the nicotine patches, thinking of what John might say, but Sherlock had implored her so endearingly with those beautiful insightful eyes that she had finally relented.
She sniffed the air as she made her way to the bedroom to rid herself of her morbid black funeral attire. The flat still smelt slightly of his cigarettes. Normally, she would hate the fact, but it reminded her of Sherlock, his lingering presence. Not quite gone yet.
He had sent her out to acquire other things too. A swish, bang up to date mobile phone that he said Mycroft would reimburse her for, and clothes and a wig that he could use as a disguise. The only snatch of humour he had expressed during the whole week was to remind her to buy a wig for a large head.
After she had showered, changed, and made herself a much needed mug of hot chocolate, she curled up on the sofa, snuggling back into the plump cushions for comfort. With a little stirring of butterflies, and a larger rush of sadness, she thought back to what had happened last night. The last night he had spent at the flat with her.
It had been about three in the morning and she had desperately needed a glass of water. Though she wouldn't admit it to Sherlock, the daily build up of cigarette smoke was starting to give her itchy eyes and a dry throat. As she had returned to her bedroom, glass in hand, she had realised that Sherlock was not asleep. In fact, he had been slumped forward with his head in his hands.
For a few long moments she had simply stood like a statue, compelled to watch him, unable to turn away. His heart-wrenching silhouette, highlighted by the yellow glow of the lamplight outside the window.
But little escaped Sherlock Holmes, and he had known she was there, turning his dishevelled head of Byronic hair to peer up at her, his eyes glistening in the darkness.
"Molly," he whispered. "What am I going to do?"
His words had taken her aback. Not just because of their content, or the fact that he was asking her, but the defeat lacing through them so strongly. This wasn't the Sherlock she was so familiar with. The Sherlock who was never in any doubt. Who was always one step ahead.
"What follows the fall?" he murmured cryptically, as if it were a riddle that needed solving.
Their eyes locked and she had smiled with uncertainty. "You get up again?"
He looked away and she wavered between staying and going. Sherlock had never been one for company. She was just about to do the latter when he spoke again.
"Molly, can I ask you a question?"
Surprising herself, she had padded across to the sofa in her bare feet, and tentatively sat down beside him, her glass cradled in her hands, resting on her knee. He hadn't seemed to mind her intrusion.
"Yes, of course," she had returned quietly, hoping he couldn't hear the pounding of her heart.
He didn't answer her immediately and time suddenly seemed tangible in the half-light around them. As if it were an actual presence, and like Molly was also waiting with baited breath.
"What does it feel like?"
She frowned her puzzlement. "What does what feel like?"
"Grief," he asked thickly.
That word hit her hard.
She had told him about her father dying. How Sherlock reminded her of him. The way he possessed the same sadness in his eyes when he thought no one was looking. She believed it had been the catalyst for Sherlock to confide in her, to ask for her help.
"You're thinking about John, aren't you?" she guessed, and he looked at her sharply, in surprise, as if he might have underestimated her.
"Yes," he confessed.
She bit her lip. "It's…"
She thought of her father. How much she had loved him. The pain of seeing him slowly deteriorate, become a hollow shell of the strong vivacious man he had once been.
"Tell me, Molly," he begged in that silky deep baritone that always turned her insides to mush. "Please. I need to know."
She found herself blinking back tears. For her father. For John. For herself. But most of all, for Sherlock. Because she realised, for the first time in his life, he was floundering. He had begun to care and he didn't know how to handle the aftermath.
"In the beginning you can't believe it's real," she started softly. "It's like…like you're caught up in a dream…the world becomes a blur and sometimes…"
Her emotions snagged in her throat.
"…Sometimes you have to blink really hard just to bring the world back into focus."
He seemed so still beside her, almost as if he wasn't there at all.
"And then, wham, it suddenly hits you. That it's not a dream. That it is real. That they're not coming back and you're never going to see them again. Never going to see them smile, or hear their familiar voice, or feel the warmth of them close to you." She swallowed. "You realise that they're gone. Gone forever. And it hurts so much."
It was only when a tear splashed into her glass of water that she realised she was crying. When Sherlock reached down and gently eased the glass from her hand, leaning forward to place it on the coffee table, she looked at him in astonishment.
"I'm sorry. I've made you cry."
She shook her head adamantly. "It's ok. It's been a bit of an emotional week." She quickly wiped the dampness from her face. "Mum kept everything of dad's, you know. All of his clothes are still in the wardrobe. You can still smell him on them." She forced a shaky smile. "And his golf clubs are still in the corner beside the front door. He loved his golf, dad did."
She felt her heart race as her anger rose. It was always the same when she thought about her grieving mother, made a widow far too soon. It was a new, more recent facet of her grief.
She blinked back a fresh haze of tears. "And after the pain comes the anger."
"Anger?"
"Anger that he was taken. Anger at a so called God. Anger that we didn't deserve what happened."
It was this anger that made her brave all of a sudden and she quickly looked at Sherlock, really looked at him, desperately searching the sharp lines and contours of his shadowed face. "This isn't forever, is it? You're not going to be dead forever?"
When he didn't answer she shook her head in a panic. "But you can't. You've got to come back eventually. What about John?"
That was when he had said those fateful words :
"Take care of him for me, Molly. Be a friend to him."
And the only way she could translate it, was that he wasn't coming back.
