AN: A real long chapter, but there was lots of stuff to get through. The next couple chapters are probably going to be shorter (I hope) so they'll get out faster (cross fingers). Though I do have to update Swaplock before I can work on this one's next chapter. While airport layovers suck, being stuck on a plane itself lends to plenty of writing time! That said, this chapter is completely unbeta-ed as I have no idea when I'm going to get good internet coverage again. See you guys after Thanksgiving!

For the record, my headcanon of Molly being a surgeon is completely from the wonderful wellingtongoose of tumblr who knows way, way more about British medicine than I do. Go check out their tumblr and read their posts on the series! They're fascinating!

Also, I would once again like to thank everyone to took the time to review and who put this fic on their alerts like. While I'm terrified of disappointing you guys, I'm glad to know that you're enjoying this. I would especially like to thank Rocking the Redhead, katdemon1895, RedRibbonsGirl, shepweir always, hipkarma, SassyVeeDub, Anna Haruno, Emily, Empress of Verace, T. Z. Townshend, Zora Arian, Inuhana, SerenityMoonPrincess, lostmypen120, CreamCrop, varjaks, animefan0000012345, Cumberbabe, SpencerReidFan89, magicstrikes, Calicar, Guest, Lono, cim902, Guest, broomclosetkink, Mossy Stone, Jeannie, Lady Nuit, , loulouflowerpower, Nocturnias, Aerelon, cry-to-the-moon, Charlie, Kataraang0, AnyaMaia, DaAmazingMeepers, The Optimist And The Pessimist, PoisonLights, and EliseHart. You guys are the best!

~Enjoy!


"Jesus!" Carl gasped as he opened his flat door. He stared down at his big sister and, yawning, rubbed at his eyes. "You look like shit, Mols. What happened? Are you alright?"

Clutching her suitcase and Toby's carrier, Molly sighed heavily. "I'm fine, it's a long story, and I'm really not up to it right now," she said, awkwardly shifting her weight from side to side. "Can I stay with you? Just for a day or two until I figure a few things out?"

Shrugging, Carl stepped aside to let her in. Closing his flat's door he went to the cupboard to fetch a spare pillow and a blanket for his sister. "Are you sure you're alright, Molly?" he asked, rummaging around for a blanket that wasn't ancient or full of holes. "I've never seen you look so run down before."

There was no answer. Glancing over to his sofa Carl saw his sister had already passed out, her face slack with exhaustion. She had curled herself up into a tiny ball, her head resting on her folded arms, as she snored ever so slightly. Molly hadn't even taken the time to release Toby, Carl noted and freed the cat from his carrier. Didn't look like she had remembered to bring her pet's food or litter box either, but that would be alright. She'd left both behind when she'd moved out last month.

Draping a blanket over his sister's shoulders, Carl smiled as Molly moaned slightly and huddled tighter under it in her sleep. "This isn't over Mols," he warned her quietly, turning off the lights and heading back to his own bed. He was right.


Despite herself, Molly couldn't stop thinking about Sherlock. The way he stood in the flat after she'd slapped him. The way his eyes had been glued to the floor. The way she thought she'd heard him cry after she'd left him behind. It wasn't fair. He'd been horrible to her, disturbed her sleep and frightened her silly, but she couldn't stop thinking about him, broken and alone again in her now empty flat.

She found herself wondering if he was still in the flat as she cut open corpses. She wondered why he had been so desperate to frighten her off as she filled out paperwork. She wondered why he had chosen Barts to kill himself, why he had felt the need to prove his intelligence to the world by faking cases, wondered if Mike had been right when he said that Sherlock hadn't been a fake at all. However, most of all she thought about his eyes after she'd slapped him. Dull, sad, lonely. Whoever had left him, whoever he was missing, Molly wondered if there was a way to reunite them. Or was the person Sherlock was waiting for dead too? Did Sherlock even know? Why was he still in her flat anyway?

Finding herself at the library every day after work wasn't a surprise. Finding herself there during her lunch breaks wasn't either. It was when she started going there on her days off that she realized she had a problem. She had a laptop at home with Carl after all. She could be doing this in the warmth and safety of her brother's flat, but there he would ask her what she was doing. Here she was just another faceless nameless Londoner, obsessed with a topic that she researched endlessly.

Her eyes glued to the library computer screens, she read every article that mentioned his name. Her headphones plugged into the jack she watched every youtube video, interview, and news report she could find about Sherlock's cases, disgrace, and death. To her own surprise she shed her shy persona and called the reporters who had covered the case, asking for their research and sources. She lied to their voices and faces, telling them she was doing this for a book, for a follow-up report, anything so long as it convinced them to hand the information over. She didn't tell them it was because she was obsessed with the ghost in the flat she still paid for. The flat she hadn't even laid eyes on for nearly two months.

"Why are you keeping that place if you're not going to live there?" Carl asked, his voice annoyed. The charm of his sister living with him was starting to wear off, especially since she had stopped with the cooking and cleaning. She was filling his tiny flat with stacks of papers on some dead bloke she hadn't even met and seemed to live in a world that revolved around work and research. It wasn't healthy. He told her that as he asked her why she was doing it.

"I just want to know why he looked so sad," Molly said. Her fingers brushed the last picture ever taken of Sherlock Holmes.

It was from security camera footage showing the man's last walk to the roof of St. Barts. There, he would shoot Richard Brook and clumsily make it look like a suicide before jumping off the roof. All the news reports she read, all the reporters said, how cruel he had been that day. Terrorizing that poor man, murdering him. Molly thought he just looked sad. Wrapped in his big black coat, scarf carefully tied around his neck, he looked like a vulnerable and scared man hiding in cloth armor. As he had opened the door to the stairwell he had paused, closed his eyes, and taken a deep breathe. He didn't look like a man who wanted to murder someone and die. Molly thought he looked like a man who wanted to run away and live.

Nearly three months into her search she found the answer she had been looking for. It was a Friday, well Saturday by the time she was done, and three in the morning. Carl had gone to bed hours ago as Molly had sat on his couch, reading lamp on, papers spread all over the floor. Taking her glasses off, she rubbed the bridge of her nose and slowly closed the file. Scratching Toby under the chin she felt her eyes well up with tears.

"It was all a lie," she whispered to the empty room. Saying it somehow made it real so she said it again. "Richard Brook was a lie. Sherlock Holmes was real. Oh god," the tears began to fall, "he died over a lie."


It had been a good lie. Utterly complete until you tried to dig under the surface. However, the surface had been enough for the reporters who knew the story and the spin they wanted to give it. The story about the disgraced fake genius and the way he had fooled everybody, except for them. The reporters had wanted to be heroes. Kitty Riley had wanted to be a hero. Respected and praised and honoured for the story she had broken, truth be damned.

Richard Brook had been a lie. The news articles, carefully backdated, claimed there had been television shows and movies he had appeared in. The same news articles waxed poetic about Brook's skill, his evident charm and charisma. Yet it was obvious that none of the reporters had ever seen the DVDs of Brook's shows. Obvious that they were recycling the same tired quotes without ever going to the source. Molly knew that the DVDs didn't exist. She'd tried to order them from the internet only to find that every site that listed them claimed they were sold out. She hunted through forums and chat rooms asking everyone she could find if they'd ever watched his children's show, ever seen it aired. Some people, of course, said they had, that they had loved it. Yet, when she pressed for details they gave her nothing.

On one of her days off she lied her way into the BBC studios with a press pass she made in photoshop and laminated at a nearby FedEx. She sweated bullets as she was lead through hallways and offices to find the people she hoped would be able to reveal the truth. The listed producer for the show was long dead – heart attack – as was the director – stroke – but the cinematographer? Unlisted and there was only a few people it could be and they were all still alive. She just needed to find the person who had worked on the show and ask them a few questions.

The answers she got were all the same. Each man was flattered that Molly had come down to talk to them, they so rarely got attention when the actors, producers, and directors sucked it all up. She started out slow each time, asking them about their work and their careers. It transitioned easily to asking them specific questions about past shows.

Each and every time, each and every time, she asked them about Brook's show The Storyteller she got a kind smile and a shake of the head. "I didn't do that one," they'd say. "That was someone else."

She bought the DVDs for the medical drama Brook was supposed to have joined. Watching the episodes over and over until Carl yelled at her to stop, she scanned every frame for his face, eyed every crowd. He wasn't there.

She got in contact with the Mountford Agency. Brook had been a client but only long enough to get his image into their casting calls. He'd transferred in from a different agency they told her. No one knew which one.

He was in all of the actor's guilds but no one knew how he had earned his card. Using the mortuary at Barts she got ahold of his death certificate and lying through her teeth again, it shocked her how good she was getting at it, she tried to use it to get his birth certificate. It didn't exist. Risking her career and criminal prosecution she got ahold of his NHS number. It was a fake.

Sitting in her brother's flat, scratching Toby under the chin, she told the empty room that Richard Brook was a lie. And if Richard Brook was a lie, what did that mean for James Moriarty?


A week after turning her research firmly onto uncoding Moriarty, a woman appeared outside of Molly's work. She gestured to a black towncar and asked Molly to get in. The large burly men who mysteriously appeared behind her let Molly know that this wasn't an invitation she could refuse. They took her to a café just down the street from Carl's flat. Safe territory. If she could get away she could run home and be safe in ten minutes. The thought made her relax.

A man was waiting for her. Tall, tired, and thinning on top he'd shaken Molly's hand, invited her to sit in the otherwise empty café, and bought her a cuppa. As she stirred sugar into her drink he told her the reason he'd brought her there.

"I want you to stop digging, Miss. Hooper," he said. Somehow Molly wasn't surprised that he knew her name. "You're just dragging up the ghost of an old issue that is better left dead and buried."

She smiled at his words. She couldn't help it really. Thinking of the ghost in her flat and his sad blue eyes she smiled. "I'm just trying to find the truth. The truth wouldn't hurt anyone, it just sets you free."

"A noble sentiment," the man sneered. Sighing slightly, he looked away. "Sherlock Holmes is dead, the truth won't help him anymore. Those he knew, those who loved him, already know the truth such as it is and the rest of the world doesn't matter. Besides, you have your own safety to think of."

She froze, staring at him, wondering if he was threatening her. "I don't understand."

"Richard Brook was a lie," he said and she was struck by how real the words felt coming out of another person's mouth. "That means James Moriarty was real. Moriarty broke into the Tower of London, the Bank of England, and Pentoville Prison on the same day, at the same time. He arranged for my brother to kill himself before committing suicide." Leaning over the table he'd smiled at her darkly, meeting her wide shocked eyes with his tired ones. "Don't you think that the ones he left behind would be watching to make sure that no one undid their leader's final work?"

He'd left soon after that, but not before making Molly promise she'd no longer pry.

Sitting alone at the table, Molly had stared into her cold cup of tea and thought. She'd never considered that her project could be dangerous. Never thought beyond the desire to know, to find out the truth.

Walking back to Carl's flat she realized how foolish she had really been. She might have been able to find out the truth about Richard Brook, seen through the lie, but she was no closer to figuring out what kept Sherlock locked up and lonely in her flat. What had she even discovered about Sherlock Holmes during her research? He was brilliant and he was sad. He had blue eyes that glowed in excitement and went glassy when he was bored. He had a thousand, thousand different smiles that he would flash at any camera, but none that would reach his eyes. He had a friend, John Watson, who was now in Africa and who never answered any of her e-mails. He had a landlady, Mrs. Hudson, who'd moved away and whom Molly was too shy to bother. And now she knew he had a brother. There hadn't been anything in the papers about him.

Letting herself in, she picked up her research and stacked it up in neat piles. She cleared the table of her mess and made the couch look presentable again. Doing a load of laundry, both hers and Carl's, she started dinner. It was just about ready when her brother came home.

Gazing around his tidied up flat, Carl looked at her with hopeful eyes. "Is it over?" he asked. "Are you done with it then?"

She smiled at him and nodded, uncorking the wine and pouring it for them. "I'm done," she promised. "There's nothing for me to find anyway."


Two days later she found herself outside the Baker Street flat, key in hand. She stared at the door, breathing heavily, as she fought with herself on whether to go up or not. It was her flat, she reminded her trembling hand. Her flat, she was the one who was paying for it even though she hadn't been there in months. It was her furniture up there and her clothes in the wardrobe. Her pictures were on the walls. Ghost of Sherlock Holmes be damned, this was her flat and she wanted it back.

Schooling her resolve with anger she opened the door and stomped up the stairs. Opening the door to her flat she froze. She'd walked into a disaster zone. Her curtains had been torn to shreds and her sofa ripped to pieces. Cloth and stuffing covered the floor intermingled with broken glass from her picture frames and dishes. Stepping into the room, glass crunching beneath her shoes, she looked at the destruction with horror. Someone had broken the light fixtures, shattered the lightbulbs. The wallpaper had scratches in it as if someone had been trapped and been trying to claw their way out. Her cupboards were open, all her dishes smashed. Going into her bedroom she found the room torn apart. The curtains here were also tattered, her bed thrown against the wall, the clothes she had left behind and the beddings scattered on the floor.

Why had she thought it was a good idea to come back here? It wasn't worth it. The ghost could have the flat. Breathe hitching in her throat she made a run for the front door only to scream when she saw Sherlock waiting for her on the stairs. "You're back," he said, walking towards her as she stumbled back into the sitting room. "I didn't expect you would be."

Feeling tears spring to her eyes, she furiously blinked them back and tried to mentally regroup. Sherlock was standing in the doorway, blocking her escape. He stared at her unflinchingly, face impassive. Once again he was dressed in the big black coat and scarf, but this time he wasn't bloody and his face was unmarred. She wished that he had appeared to her looking dead again. She was so much better with the dead than she was with the living.

No. That wasn't true. The last few months had proved that she was fine with the living too. After all, she had lied and wiggled her way into plenty of people's lives and time to gather her research without any of them realizing. If she could handle pretending to be Richard Brook's widow, sobbing to a stranger in order to try and get his birth certificate, she could handle one sorry ghost.

Pulling herself up to her full height she nodded firmly. "I-I'm back."

"Molly Hooper." Sherlock said her name slowly, carefully. Like he was trying to taste the words. Shaking his head slightly he sighed, crossing the room to the windows and stared out it, ignoring her completely. "Leave. Now. And don't come back this time."

For a moment she considered it. Then she clutched her hands into fists and marched up to Sherlock. He flinched ever so slightly as she approached and she wondered if he was worried that she would slap him again. "Richard Brook was a lie." She said the words and this time they felt solid. "Moriarty was real."

He turned towards her, surprise in his eyes until he managed to get ahold of himself again. "Who told you that?" His voice was slightly hoarse which was odd. He wasn't alive, there was no way or reason for him to get choked up.

"No one told me, I figured it out for myself," Molly told him, confidence starting to fade. "I started doing research after-after you frightened me out."

"Why?"

Molly opened her mouth to answer but found that she didn't have one. Not a proper answer anyway. With Sherlock staring down at her, she felt like she had to try and give him one anyway. "You looked sad," she finally said. "When you thought I was leaving you looked so sad. N-Not because it was me that was leaving you, but because you were going to be alone and I thought-"

The room went frigid. "You thought what?" Sherlock shouted, eyes suddenly ablaze.

Taking a menacing step towards her, hands clenched into fists, he did it again. He made the room feel as if it was full of invisible birds and Molly felt herself choking under the weight of their feathers and stares. She tried to step back, to get away from him, but she fell under that terrible weight. Glass cut her hands, her legs, and blood started to flow, but neither of them seemed to notice.

"What do you know, Miss. Molly Hooper?" Sherlock sneered above her. "What do you know about my life, about what I went through? Little Miss. Molly Hooper from Liverpool and, more recently, Edinburgh. Put yourself through Uni, didn't you? Wanted to be a doctor. Wanted to help people in ways that people never helped you. What was the matter Molly? Was Daddy a drunk? Did Mummy pop pills to make the pain and shame of living in council housing go away? No, you just grew up thinking how nice it would be if people cared more about helping rather than hurting."

"Stop it," she gasped, fighting for breath. She felt as if there was ice filling her veins and as if someone was sitting on her chest. The weight was too great, her lungs wouldn't work properly.

Sherlock ignored her words, kneeling down next to her instead. His eyes were like ice blue diamonds as he trembled slightly in rage. "And now you're a surgeon at Barts. Doing what? Something disgustingly heartwarming I suppose. Pediatric surgery? Gynecologic? Well? Which is it? Tell me!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed. "You're hurting me!"

Sherlock's eyes widened and he threw himself away from her, scrambling backwards until he hit the wall. Instantly the weight was gone. The feeling of birds, their feathers and cold stares, vanished and Molly gasped. Clutching at the floor, not caring that she was being cut by the broken glass there, she focused on breathing. When she finally looked up Sherlock was in the corner, knees tight to his chest and his arms around them. His head was bowed and Molly thought he was shaking.

Chest aching, she got to her feet, brushing glass and fabric from her clothing. A thousand tiny cuts dotted her skin, some of them quite deep and she whimpered slightly at the sight. Taking herself to the remains of her sofa she sat down and, steeling herself, began picking the bits of glass out of her skin. She dropped the bloody shards to the ground, wishing she had antiseptic, gauze, or even better light, but felt too weak to go in search of them right now.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said quietly from the corner.

She looked up at him. "I'm a histopathologist at Barts," she said quietly, going back to pick out the glass. Sherlock looked up at her slightly and she continued. "I don't do surgery on the living at all, just on the dead. I'm trying-I'm trying to find out why surgeries fail. Why some patients go into shock where others are fine. I want to discover new ways to do procedures so that people are less likely to die during them. Even though I've been trained, they hired me as a pathologist as that's what I mostly do. I run lab tests for other people and do autopsies. Carl, he's my brother, he says that what they're paying me is a crime. With all the work I've done, with all the time I spent getting accepted into the Royal College, I should be getting paid three times as much. But I don't care. I like my job, what I do. If I manage to determine a procedure that would save even a few more lives, I would consider it a career well spent."

Sherlock met her eyes for a moment before he looked away. "Boring," he said quietly. "Dull. Why did you tell me that?"

Shrugging, Molly picked out the last of the glass – that she could see at least – and got to her feet. She was still bleeding. She'd need to stop by the chemists on her way back to Carl's and pick up supplies. Needed to come up with a proper excuse as to what had happened as well. "You wanted to know what I did. That's what I do." The door was right there. She walked towards it.

"Are you leaving then?" his eyes were cold on her back as she slowly made her way to the door.

"Yes."

"Coming back?"

"Never again. I'll end my lease early and be out of your hair, I promise."

The room chilled around her and the door to the stairs slammed shut before Molly could reach it. "No," Sherlock said, his voice firm.

Eyes wide, Molly whirled to face Sherlock as she went pale. "I don't understand. I promise I won't come back," she said quickly, edging away from the specter. "I'm sorry I came. Just-just let me leave again and I promise-"

"You were right," Sherlock interrupted. He said the words loudly, cutting through her budding panic as he stood and slowly walked towards her. She backed away, hand resting on the doorknob which was ice cold and wouldn't budge. Stopping in the middle of the room, he looked her in the eye. "I am miserable and dead and alone. I am waiting for someone who'll never come back. He swore he'd never come back and he's the type to always keep a promise. Richard Brook was a lie. Moriarty was real. And you-you figured that out on your own. So you're right. It's just me up here, desperately alone and I-" He looked away from her, a piece of broken glass on the floor suddenly becoming fascinating to him. She could see that he was trembling again as he quickly looked up at her and then away once more. "I don't want to be alone anymore."

Molly stared at him, her shoulders tight as she fought the desire to run. "What are you trying to say?"

"That I'm sorry for attempting to frighten you out. I'm sorry for all of this just now," Sherlock said, his eyes coming up far enough to stare at her chin. "I understand that you have found my actions repulsive and frightening, but I would like to offer you the chance to stay. If you still wish to that is."

She stayed silent watching Sherlock as he fidgeted, opening his hands and closing them over and over.

"I can do better," he blurted out, meeting her eyes. "If you don't leave, if you tell me what to do, I can do better. I know I can."

"There will have to be rules." Molly couldn't believe she was saying this. That she was deciding to stay after all. She had wanted her flat back, but Sherlock's pain and rage frightened her. And now she was telling him she was staying?

Sherlock seemed shocked as well. He stared at her, eyes wide, and nodded slightly. "Yes," he said quietly. "Of course. Rules. No more frightening you I suppose."

"The thing you do with the birds and the wind. Never do that again."

He nodded. "I won't appear to you as I seemed when I died anymore either."

"I couldn't care less about that Sherlock," Molly said. She slowly took a step forward. "I see death all the time. It doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the state of this flat. You're going to help me tidy it up and never do anything like this again."

"I don't want you bringing people over," Sherlock said. He watched wearily as Molly got closer. "I refuse to be a show for your friend's amusement."

"I want Carl to be able to come over for dinner sometimes."

"I will tolerate your brother. No friends though, no lovers. As for the cat-"

"Toby stays," Molly said firmly. "No violin after 11PM and you don't touch it until I wake up in the morning. You can play it all day if you like, just not when I'm trying to sleep."

"The room at the end of the hall is my bedroom and I want you out of it."

"Not a chance." Molly grinned at him and was surprised when Sherlock smiled tentatively back. It didn't reach his eyes, but it was a start. "No spying on me when I'm in the shower or getting dressed."

Sherlock scoffed. "Why would I even want to see that? I want my skull back on the mantle."

That threw Molly for a loop. "What skull?"

"Mr. Fellows," Sherlock said with a smirk. "He's in a box upstairs. I want him back on the mantle."

A skull on the mantle? She could handle that. After all, she could tell Carl she'd nicked it from work to make him go pale. "I think that's a good start. Do you have anything else to add?"

Sherlock looked pensive for a moment. "I like my coffee black with two sugars."

"Can you even drink coffee?" He glared at her slightly and she sighed, giving in. After all, he was making so many concessions for her. What was a skull and an extra cup of coffee each morning? "Fine," she said holding out her hand.

Wincing, Sherlock took a quick step back, his own hands going into his coat pockets. He stared at Molly's hand as if it were radioactive or housing a venomous spider. "And don't touch me," he added quickly. "Don't ever touch me. The heat of you… It burns."

It made sense, when she'd slapped him he'd felt like ice. Nodding, she withdrew her hand. "We have a deal then."

Sherlock nodded, eyes going to the floor once more. "If you wish for me to tidy up the flat you're going to have to leave again. I'll need to do the thing with the birds and the wind."

He was smirking at her, she realized. Smirking, teasing, and looking at her from the corner of his eye to gauge her reaction. She smiled back. "Does that even have a name? Can all ghosts do it?"

"I wouldn't know," Sherlock said, shrugging slightly. "I've had little experience with ghosts."

Gathering up her things, Molly headed for the door. She left Sherlock in the sitting room and shrieked slightly when she opened the door to find him suddenly on the stairs again. "That!" she gasped, hand on her chest as she glared. "Don't do that anymore either!"

Ignoring her, Sherlock walked down the rest of the stairs and leaned up against the wall by the front door. "You will be returning."

It wasn't a question, but it needed an answer anyway. "Yes."

"When?"

While his face was impassive, his eyes were so desperately lonely that Molly felt her heart break. "I'll start moving back in tomorrow," she said, going down the stairs. "I probably won't be able to move-in properly until my next day off on Saturday though. I'm going to need to buy new furniture first to replace the stuff you wrecked."

Looking away, some place on the ceiling vastly more interesting than her glare of reproach, Sherlock crossed his arms. "There is a perfectly serviceable sofa in the upstairs room. Two comfortable chairs as well, along with a bookshelf, and some rather more stylish accessories. I know where they would fit."

"I'll take a look at them tomorrow then," Molly said. She had a sinking suspicion that all the things Sherlock mentioned had once been his and all he really wanted was for her to recreate his flat. "If I like them I'll get Carl to help me move them down."

Sherlock nodded slightly and looked at her. His eyes sucked her in, raking her form as if he was looking into her very soul and seeing her for the very first time. And then he smiled at her. "I will see you tomorrow then."

"Yeah, tomorrow."

Sherlock vanished and Molly stepped into the street, locking the door to 221 behind her. It was fall bordering on winter outside, but compared to the chill of the building it felt scorching. Her cuts finally came to life, starting to ache, and her legs threatened to give out from all the stress. Groaning, Molly rested her head against the door and wondered what she was getting herself in to.

From up above came the sound of a violin. The tune it played was neither happy nor sad. If anything it was content? Maybe hopeful?

Molly smiled and pocketed her keys.