Thanks so much for the reviews, every single one means a lot. Hope you're still enjoying this, I'm really starting to enjoy writing these characters now... more to John come in subsequent chapters, be patient, I promise he will appear :-)
As the grief and pain of the past few days began to sink in, Molly realised just how exhausted she really felt. She was fighting her eyes, begging them to stay open for fear that if she were to sleep, Sherlock would be dead again when she awoke.
"You're not leaving tonight are you?" she finally asked, though she knew he'd think her pathetic, but the courage to do so came from her now desperate need to sleep.
"I hadn't really planned ahead. I just need to think."
Molly stood up surprisingly quickly for someone who felt so drained of energy. Her brain seemed to have jumped in and told her it was now or never. This could only play out two ways, either Sherlock Holmes was going to disappear and to the world be dead and in that case, she probably would never see him again, or he was going to go back to his normal life at Baker Street and they'd go back to – whatever it was they had before. Him occasionally acknowledging her existence and her being pathetic enough to crave that acknowledgement, however crass and rude it was. So she could lay her cards on the table – as if he didn't know everything she felt anyway, or she could march off to bed and never see him again.
The feeling of her heart being ripped from her chest left her with no doubt that she no longer had the any choice. Her mind and heart had teamed up against her and made the decision without her consent.
"Don't go Sherlock. Stay here, if you want I mean. Stay with me, well not with me, but just stay. I can help you, not that you need help, I know you don't need anything but Sherlock we can get through this together. I know we can. Please, just stay."
Sherlock longed for 48 hours ago, when such a rambling, such a desperate plea from anyone, including Molly would have made him feel nothing but the need to get away from the maniac as quickly as possible. Now he could see so clearly how the only maniac in the room was himself. He'd thought he had everything so clearly marked out, but for the first time in his life, sentimentality had overridden a perfectly good plan and instead of sitting somewhere in South America right now, he was here, watching Molly seemingly fall apart.
Why had he come here? He'd said goodbye to her already.
"I can't stay."
Here tears were silent as they slid down her cheeks and crept into the corners of her mouth, filling her mouth with salt. In the back of her mind, somewhere there was still some sane part of her that realised she probably wouldn't even be crying if she wasn't so tired, at least not until after he'd left. She could feel reality slipping away from her, it wasn't just that she was physically tired, but she was emotionally drained too, and for the first time in her life she really thought she might faint.
She'd trained as a medical student for seven years, then spent the past five cutting up dead bodies, and never once had she even felt the slightest bit queasy, and yet she'd spent one afternoon with Sherlock and she was ready to hit the floor.
"Maybe it would be better for me to go now."
With that Molly started to audibly cry .
"Sherlock no please. You can't die twice in one day. I mean I know you were never really dead, but when you said goodbye to me at St Barts, when you walked away, it felt like you really were gone, and gone forever . I'm rambling, sorry, God I'm so tired! Please just stay with me for tonight, let me sleep then in the morning I can help you. You said you needed someone to talk to; I can listen to you, to your ideas. Just stay tonight, just tonight, please."
Sherlock was sure without even the slightest shadow of doubt that just a few short days ago he'd have simply been able to just walk away from Molly and all her silly female hormones. But tonight seeing the pain in her face, the exhaustion in the body, he felt real pain that his actions had cause her to hurt this much.
She really did look like she might faint, he moved to her side to support her, he really hadn't thought her so meek, but then she'd probably never helped anyone stage their own death before. He put one arm around her waist to better support her weight and walked her into her bedroom.
Once she was in bed he pulled the covers over her and sat down. Almost without his consent his arm outstretched towards her face, as she'd already began to drift off, and his hand brushed slowly down her cheek. He knew that he would never be able to explain why he'd just done that, or why he felt he had to be here right now. After his supposed death he'd thought only of John and Mrs Hudson, but now he knew that he needed Molly to be safe and well too.
He stood to make his way back into the living room but Molly turned to him, lifting her head off her pillow to look at him, a simple movement which seemed to drain what little strength she had left. "Please promise me, please don't leave tonight. You see I had this friend, well he wasn't really a friend, bit of pig really, always being rude to people, making these deductions that make people feel 2 feet tall, but he died today. I'm grieving for my friend, this guy, a great guy really called Sherlock Holmes."
"I promise I won't leave tonight." He tried to summon a smile.
"I don't believe you." She said tersely. "Making promises doesn't mean anything to you."
He walked back over to her bed, kicked of his shoes and lay on top of the duvet she was wrapped under. He turned to face her back and wrapped his arm around her.
He'd never admit it to anyone, least of all himself or perhaps he didn't even recognise how good it felt to be comforting someone in his arms. He couldn't yet understand why he let out a sigh of relief as Molly relaxed into his arms and started to fall asleep.
Whether she heard him or not, he'd never know, but to the woman wrapped in his arms he whispered, "I made a new friend today, this great woman called Molly Hooper."
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