The tea in the canteen is rubbish but Molly needs caffeine and the coffee is worse. She'd jumped at the chance to come in when a coworker took ill (even though it was a lab tech and she's only cleaning slides) but the rigorous pace she'd set for herself over the last week has caught up.

She stares at the lunch she hadn't gotten a chance to eat during her first shift and considers binning it and opting for an Aero bar. Her text alert goes off as she's digging for change in her bag. It's from Sherlock.

—If anyone asks it's okay to tell them—

She's typing the word "What?" as another text comes in.

—Well, maybe don't tell them everything.—

Molly types out a reply, telling him to turn down his morphine drip, but Mary Watson walks up to her table before she can send it. The other woman looks worried, but not devastated, which helps relieve the gnawing feeling in Molly's stomach slightly.

"Mary! Wha—"

"Sherlock's left the hospital against medical advice. Went out the window, actually," Mary says. She sits down at the table opposite and fixes her enormous blue eyes on Molly. "Has he contacted you?"

Molly learned a lot about lying during Sherlock's extended absence. She resists the urge to glance at her phone, to look down at her hands, to blink.

"No."

"Do you know any place he might have gone? Greg and John are looking into some of his known bolt holes. No luck so far though.

So this is what Sherlock's text meant.

"Just the spare bedroom…well, my bedroom." She mentally kicks herself over how that must sound. "We agreed he needs the space," she ends lamely. She takes a sip of her tea, barely managing not to grimace at the foul tast, as Mary looks at her with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow.

"So he kicked you out of your bedroom?"

"Yeah. This was right after—everything. He hasn't been over since he's been back. Wasn't really appropriate, with Tom, you know."

"Right," Mary says slowly, still looking steadily at Molly. "Well, I'll tell John to stop by your place just in case. You'll let us know if he contacts you?"

"Yeah. It's not likely, though. I went to see him earlier and it didn't go well. He thinks I'm still angry at him."

"Aren't you?" Mary says.

"Furious," Molly says. "Er, I have to get back to the lab now. Please let me know when you find him."

"Of course," Mary says and leaves the canteen, phone already to her ear.

As soon as she's out of sight, Molly returns to her phone.

—Mary just asking about you. Told her about staying w/me sometimes. You should really go back to the hospital. Please.—

—Don't worry. I will, later—

—How much later?—

—That depends on my client. Now do stop texting me for a moment, the alert could compromise my position.—

"What the hell are you doing?" Molly sighs. She bins her entire lunch and the tea and bypasses the vending machine on her way back to the lab, appetite thoroughly destroyed.

She's at an all-night diner picking at a basket of chips and attempting to get past the first paragraph of a book when she gets the text that Sherlock is back in hospital and stable. After sending a "thank you" in reply, she reads through the paragraph one more time without comprehending it.

"Fuck it," she says finally, shoving the book in her bag along with her phone and throwing down a few bills for the chips. It's a short tube ride to the hospital and there she is again, standing in the doorway of Sherlock's bloody hospital room.

He's awake, his smile when he sees her slow and easy.

"Molly Hooper."

"That's my name."

"Yes."

"What the hell were you doing out there?"

"Client, case. Couldn't wait and it involved field work. Your safety would be compromised if I told you more."

"Does it have to do with the other case, the one where you relapsed?"

"Tangentially, yes." He pats the bed. "Now, come here, please."

"No way."

"You know you want to." She shakes her head. "Please?" he says, his voice pitched low and soft. "I've read that human contact can be very good for healing."

"Where did you read that?"

"Women's magazine. Come here."

"I'll hurt you."

"Impossible."

So she does what she knew she would do as soon as he first asked. She crosses to the bed and lowers the railing and, as gingerly as she can, climbs in beside him. He groans a bit as he scoots over to give her room. She rests her head on his shoulder and places her hand gently on his tummy.

He smells of sweat and soap and iodine. Cigarettes, too.

"You've been cleaning slides," he says.

"How do you know?"

"Slight smell of ethanol. Your fingertips are dry and your eyes red from the fumes. Setting a bad example, Doctor, not working under the hood or wearing your safety goggles."

"It's ethanol not ether," she says. "Harmless."

As she settles in beside him, her body molding to his, Molly lets herself remember the last time she laid like this with him, in her bed, right around three years ago now. After she'd let him smoke a cigarette in her room, he'd fallen asleep with his head on her chest. She still doesn't know how she didn't wake up when he left, how he'd fucked her into such oblivion that she hadn't registered the force of his leaving or the cold left when he'd extricated himself from her.

Sometimes she thinks she dreamed it all, anyway.

Sherlock puts his hand over hers and that's her breaking point. He feels her stiffen and must know she's going to bolt, so he wraps his hand around her wrist (his thumb and forefinger overlapping she's so small.) She doesn't struggle so as not to risk dislodging his IV or upsetting his wound, but the energy has to go somewhere. She starts to cry.

"Molly, don't," he says, kissing the top of her head. "What's wrong?"

"Everything. I tried so hard, Sherlock. I promise. I tried so fucking hard. It hurts so much and it's never going to stop hurting because you're never going to stop hurting me."

"Oh, Molly."

She manages to break away from him and sits up. "Don't. Don't say anything unless you're going to tell me why you did it."

"Why I relapsed?"

"Why you left without saying goodbye."

"Earlier this evening? Secrecy was somewhat the goal."

"No, you prat. When you left London. Before."

"How was I to know you were talking about something that happened three years ago?" he says.

"You're supposed to know everything." She sits up and gets a tissue from the table by the bed. Sherlock watches her and she has no idea how to decipher his expression, but prays it has nothing to do with pity. He puts his hand on her knee and caresses it with his thumb.

"I didn't say goodbye because I didn't want to hurt you."

"Didn't want to hurt me?" She laughs and chucks the tissue into the bin. "And leaving some bollocks note saying you're sorry wasn't hurtful?"

"I have a bad habit of blundering into saying hurtful things to you. I wanted to avoid that. Why are you just now asking me this? I've been back over a year."

"I thought it didn't matter anymore. I thought I was over it."

Sherlock moves his hand from her knee to her hands, folded in her lap. He takes one of them and tugs on it. Molly takes the hint and resumes her former position beside him.

"I'm sorry," he says into her hair.

"I wish I could believe that," she says.

"So what are we going to do about this?" he asks. She doesn't answer for a long time, listening to the steady beat of the heart monitor and the rasp of his fingertips making circles on her arm.

"I don't know."