Five Doctors and the Detective
Disclaimer: Only the story name, chapter titles and a few OCs belong to me. I do not own any part of the BBC's Sherlock, much as I wish I did :) Neither do I own the myth of Orestes and Iphigenia, which is best outlined in Aeschylus's Oresteia.

Notes: Anything in Italics is a character's specific, word-for-word thought, or in certain cases, a dream or a memory.

Shout-outs: balloons and chocolates to my beloved followers, including my new readers: Mythx, abc11111, come-along-to-221b, InterMoon, WhoNeedsTheLimelight and phntomphansunite! Your support sends me over the moon! Also, great big bear hugs to my reviewers, especially Renaissancebooklover108, Anatomydoc, Kataraang0, AnonReviewFairy (Guest), and my lovely, wonderful, insightful Angela Robin. These guys wrote the sweetest things on the last chapter that made me just want to cry tears of joy! Finally: this little fic here is now over 1500 views! I am unbelievably flattered and grateful that so many have taken the time to read Five Doctors, and totally overwhelmed that my silly tale here has reached so many people! :) Hugs and gush to anyone who's invested their time in my work!

Summary: In which Sherlock is working harder than ever to understand human interaction, and other stuff happens, but I can't really find a clever way to say it while being vague and non-commital :)

Please enjoy!

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Chapter Seven: Orestes and Iphigenia

In the week following that fateful day at the morgue, Sherlock made a very concerted effort to understand his sudden need for human interaction. He went about it in his logical way, conducting experiments and gathering data. He found himself going with John to the tailor's for final fittings of their suits for the wedding. He started lingering at Lestrade's office after cases to try, and fail miserably, his hand at casual conversation, electing instead to go to the shooting range with the Detective Inspector since he was at least much more familiar with guns than with social niceties. He had tea with Mary Morstan, in a feeble attempt to welcome her into their odd little "family" of so many strange members, during which he received an obscure lecture about everything and nothing. He would even sit with Mrs. Hudson for an hour or two in 221A, watching crap telly and doing his best to hold his tongue and pretend to enjoy it. Finally, he also made a little more space in each person's room in his mind palace for odd, insignificant personal tidbits, since this was something people did in regards to their friends, according to Eloise.

However, the larger parts of those seven days he spent alternately with his Egyptologist and his pathologist. Somehow, making extra time to spend with those two very intelligent and very important young women seemed like much less of a chore than it did for the others. But he was learning, and they were helping him, in their own ways.

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He had settled into a kind of routine with Eloise. In the early morning, he'd go to her flat and they'd have a cuppa in comfortable silence. She would then go to her piano and play whatever came to mind, sometimes composing a melody out of the air that drifted away just as quickly into the ether. She remarked that when she composed in front of the keys she could never remember any of it when she finished, but when she sat down to write anything she was absolutely rubbish. Now and then, Sherlock would bring over his violin and she would convince him to play a harmony with her.

Then the pair would retire to her sitting room and discuss whatever their nimble minds happen to find interesting. That was definitely a new experience for him: having an intricate conversation with someone who could not only keep up but challenge and counter him at every turn. He supposed, of course, he could have had such talks with Mycroft if he could stand his brother for more than five minutes, but obviously the Egyptologist's company was infinitely more tolerable.

Always, the conversation drifted towards Molly. Sherlock was still in uncharted waters when it came to her, and Eloise had become a sort of mentor for him in matters of the heart, since he was so determined not to injure his pathologist anymore. Day by day, she informed him on the workings of human emotions, specifically those of women. She was a strict teacher, however, and if he dared to question why something mattered so much, she would remind him quite pointedly that in this sitting room, she was mistress and he the novice floating abandoned in a sea of the everchanging feelings of mankind.

And little by little, Sherlock would carefully brush and lift from the dirt ancient relics of her past that had lain undisturbed by human hands for uncounted years.

He learned that her only living relative was her old Granddad, who lived in a small country chateau he'd purchased in France, reportedly for the fresh air and the flowers. The old men's watch Sherlock had noticed that first day was his; he'd given it to her as a gift for earning her doctorate. He was justifiably proud of her respect and ardor for antiquities and their preservation. She visited him as often as possible, and loved him desperately, since he was all she had left, considering her father had died of cancer a year after she graduated from uni and her mother only months after her wedding. She had no living siblings, but could count 5 stillborn or miscarried brothers and sisters, much to her sorrow. Her family was relatively old and as such had a fortune to its name that one day would belong to her. She planned to invest some and use the rest to fund archaological societies and her own digs in Egypt.

Her late husband was Derek McAvoy, a decorated soldier who had perished in Afghanistan. After his death, his best friend, Gregory Philmore, had always spent his leave with Eloise, wherever she happened to be, watching over her and caring for her as a sort of homage to Derek, until he was shot three years later. Gregory hadn't any family either, and so when the news came, the Army had sent with it his tags and a crisply folded flag. She kept both Derek's and Gregory's medals in a shadowbox over her fireplace, and their flags hung over her bed, side by side.

Sherlock was very sad to learn that he was her only friend in London, considering he was merely an accolyte at the shrine of friendship, and still absolutely terrible at comforting people. Most of her friends had moved to America, a few had died unfortunately young, and her five-year absence had not provided her the opportunity to befriend anyone other than coworkers she rarely saw or archaologists from other countries. She had claimed not to mind, saying that she was really a very solitary creature anyway, content to while her days with her dusty relics and her taciturn cats.

She'd named her daughter Verena, and slept every night with a blanket Eloise's mother had crocheted for the baby. She confessed to him that not a day passed that she didn't wish she had the chance to meet her daughter, but was somewhat relieved she hadn't
had to raise her child without her husband. With a wistful voice she said she believed she wouldn't have been strong enough to see his face, hear his voice, look into his eyes everyday and still be the mother their child would have needed desperately.

Eloise had even told him the significance behind the names of her cats, a brother and sister named Orestes and Iphigenia. While they were still kittens, Iphigenia had disappeared, and since she was so young and fragile, the Egyptologist had given up the search after a month, thinking the little cat to be dead. Orestes had fallen into what she could only describe as a depression, and whenever he wasn't sulking, he ran madly about her flat as if pursed by Alecto herself. Six months later, Iphigenia had appeared outside her door, alive and well and yowling for a bowl of milk. The pair reunited, Orestes ceased his dashing about and became a cat of leisure.

Fears, and hopes, and dreams. Her mother had suffered from juvenile arthritis that began when she started college. Eloise had always been frightened of that particular part of her genetics. It had not exhibited itself yet but it still could. She would lose everything she held dear, her piano, her writing, her archaological work. She told him that she'd always dreamed of finishing her days as a book store owner, tending a little shop in Manchester on the street where she'd lived with Derek.

Yet she did not part with these artifacts lightly, always insisting for one of his own in return. At the end of their visits, she would see him to the door and place her soft hand on his cheek, while telling him to be careful with Molly and not to be a stranger.

What he did not tell her was that her newly added room in his mind palace was modeled exactly after her sitting room and its adjoining study, since those were the rooms of her flat in which he spent the most time. And what he would never tell her was that she sat on her sofa between Derek and Gregory in their military dress, her husband's arm around her shoulders and his best friend's hand in hers. Her parents stood smiling behind her, her dear Granddad was seated in her favorite armchair reading the evening post, and all of her friends were gathered around her piano, laughing and singing. Whenever Sherlock would enter her room, she would look up and smile with all the happiness he knew she had deserved but hadn't been allowed to experience, and cradle the pink bundle in her free arm as soft, waning sunlight streamed through the windows, filling the room with a peaceful glow.

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From 220B, he would either go to the Yard, to John and Mary's house, or to Bart's. He would visit Molly at her lunch hour, which she had taken to spending in her office. He had decided this time slot carefully, after counsel from Eloise, so that they would be away from the laboratory setting, which would reassure Molly that he was there to see her and not to elicit any favors. She had viewed his lunchtime visits rather hesitantly at first, but by the end of the week, he would find her opening her office door to him promptly at 11:30 before he could even knock, with a lovely smile on her face.

In another calculated move, he would not stay past lunch to continue reaffirming his presence as strictly social and not work-related. His afternoons were spent either flying through cases, watching shoddy dramas with Mrs. Hudson, or sitting in his chair at Baker Street, absently playing his violin as he contemplated every single facet of his life at present.

But his evenings were reserved only for Molly. Precisely as her shifted ended, Sherlock would send her a polite text asking if he could come over to her flat for a while. Another tip from Eloise: "Seriously, Sherlock. ASK if you can see her at home, don't just barge in unannounced. And better yet, you're not dead anymore so stop BREAKING into her flat!" As with their lunch dates she had answered with hesitance at first, but she carefully warmed up to the idea that he wanted to be an actual part of her life.

He would arrive promptly, thirty minutes after she'd returned home, and knock on her door. Molly would usually answer within 15 to 20 seconds, fussing with the sleeves of her jumper or tugging the side-braid she always wore after hours. He would follow her to her little kitchen table and they would have their customary coffees before they found some perfectly normal thing to do. Well, normal by their standards.

One evening Sherlock spent an entire two hours slowly naming every bone in her body in every language he knew, and in turn she mimicked on him the incisions and examinations she made while doing an autopsy. Another night, she insisted that he read to her. She handed him her well-loved copy of Pride and Prejudice, and he'd read a chapter or two before asking her to read a passage of one of her papers. The next day, they passed a few hours lost together in music. He'd brought his violin and with her low, gentle voice she weaved a simple harmony through the chords of his instrument.

Later in the week, she came home with a documentary on the decline of the Victorian Era. The pair of them sat on her tiny sofa, totally enraptured. But by the end of the four-hour feature, Sherlock looked down to remark on the film and found her fast asleep, head resting sweetly on his shoulder, her small hands loosely wrapped around his forearm. He frowned, worried that he'd bored her before reminding himself that she had indeed worked a 12-hour shift that day. As delicately as possible, he eased away from her so that he could lift her small frame without waking her. He silently walked to her room and tucked her into her bed after removing her shoes. He made sure that all of her windows were latched and all the lights were off before he pulled on his Belstaff and scarf. Taking her keys from the table in the entry way, he locked her door and slipped the key ring through the mail slot. And he simply went home.

They never felt the need to spoil anything with useless chatter. He had memorized every trivial, miscule, infinitesimal detail of Molly Hooper, and only one other person knew him barely half as well as Molly did. Moreover, she knew exactly how she felt about him and about herself, and he could only work out such things in the quiet of his own mind, so why should they trifle with half-hearted conversation? And they were getting on so well.

But there was still such reticence in her at times.

He'd lift a hand to brush a lock of hair from her eyes and she'd shy away with a nervous smile. She would do her best to sit as far away from him on the sofa as possible, though she'd always end up next to him. Little things like that.

Those little things told him she still didn't trust him. She was nearly there, but not quite, as if a small part of her still believed that at any moment he was going to turn cold and leave her forever. That left Sherlock engrossed in the saturnine irony that she was pushing away from human contact just while he suddenly found himself starving for it.

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Author's Note: I don't even know what to say about this fluff. Comments are definitely appreciated since you know of my constant battle to reconcile canon-Sherlock with character-growth Sherlock in my story. Thank you sooooooo much for reading! I adore all of you! And interested parties will be glad to know I'll have the next chapter up in a day or two :)

Much love and thanks,
-The Queen of Fragile Hearts.