AN: Sorry for the wait. The only reason I can give you this final chapter today is because of the patience and skill of my beta reader, Yvanthe. She took the mess I handed her last night and helped me refine it until I had what I hope is a satisfying conclusion to this story.

Sadly, even Yvanthe's great skill couldn't prevent me from adding a bit of cracky humour.

Thank you to everyone who has commented, kudoed and clicked on this story. You made continuing to write fanfic easier.


Sherlock carefully opened the door to his bedroom and slipped inside. He was a little disappointed by the fact that his guest was already awake, but still approached Molly Hooper and asked after her night's rest. Molly stifled a scream and reflexively threw a pillow in his general direction. Thankfully for Sherlock and the tray he was holding, it fell short of the mark. Molly clutched her chest as he came further into the room, sidestepping the pillow, and set the tray on the night stand. Sherlock cleared his throat and slid his hands in his pockets.

"Problem?" he asked casually as he stood looking down at the frazzled woman.

"Yes," Molly took a calming breath, "you really need to stop sneaking up on me. You're worse than Toby."

"I am nothing like the satanic feline that has taken possession of your flat," Sherlock said coldly. The very idea that he was in anyway similar to that four-legged fiend was offensive.

"You still haven't forgiven him for that scratch?"

"No," he insisted, "I haven't and I would thank you not to compare me to that demonic creature again."

"It was a tiny little mark and you were trying to poison him!"

"It wasn't poison. It was a sedative I've been working on for months," Sherlock said, his irritation morphing into enthusiasm. "It's really quite fascinating. I designed it to self-adjust to individual metabolic-"

"You drugged him. He scratched you. You're even," Molly cut in. Turning her attention to the tray, she asked suspiciously, "Why did you bring me breakfast in bed?"

"John always prepared breakfast for the women he invited to stay over."

Molly blushed deeply, but smiled as she said, "I think that's a bit different."

"How?" Sherlock asked, but Molly busied herself with the glass of milk. Sherlock moved the tray to straddle Molly's lap and sat on the edge of the bed as she ate. He pinched bits from the plate which seemed to please Molly. She was always trying to feed him up.

"Mmm," Molly hummed around a mouthful of sausage, "this is marvelous!"

"I imagine everything tastes marvelous after weeks of eating my mother's concoctions."

Molly giggled, "How did you and Mycroft survive to adulthood?"

"We developed cast iron stomachs," he said wryly, "Our father wasn't above smuggling in food from the neighbors, which probably explains Mycroft's obsessive fondness for cake."

That comment earned Sherlock a full laugh, the remnants of which lit the edges of Molly's sleep rumpled face even after she continued to devour breakfast. Her hair was a fright, the pyjama top was far too large, there was rheum crusted in the corners of her eyes and a smudge of jam on her chin. Sherlock rather liked the sight of Molly Hooper sitting in his bed, in his clothes, eating food he prepared.

Without thinking, he used his thumb to wipe away the dot of jam on Molly's chin. Molly froze and watched intently as he licked the sweet substance from his finger. Sherlock watched her watching him and catalogued various biological responses. The dilation of Molly's pupils and the slight hitch in her breathing was quite fascinating. A pleasing shade of pink slowly spread from her cheeks, down her neck and disappeared down into the dark shadow of her cleavage.

There was a now familiar fluttering in his stomach when Molly suddenly looked up and caught his eye. Sherlock had long ago mastered the appearance of complete apathy, but Molly had, in turn, mastered the ability to see through that mask. He wasn't half as unaffected as he pretended and Molly could see that very well. In that moment, Sherlock was as drawn to Molly as she to him and this, Sherlock mused, made the woman dangerous. The parameters of their interactions had changed without Sherlock noticing.

Sherlock pulled away and stood up abruptly, stalking over to the small window that looked out onto a brick wall. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his rumpled trousers, making mental note of the fact that he had been in the same clothing for more than two days now. Usually, after the successful conclusion of a case, he saw to his personal grooming immediately. This time he had been too anxious to get to Molly and far too tired once he had.

Too much had changed in those two days. Sherlock never liked change. Being out of control of his life was the only circumstance he detested more than change. There had been little under his control since he made the choice to kill Magnussen. Deception upon deception had been revealed, so many that he began to question his own intelligence. How had so many people been able to deceive him so thoroughly?

Irene Adler's betrayal had cut deep, but his hand in making that betrayal possible was a far worse fact to contemplate. He hadn't said it the night before and knew Molly would not expect it, but he owed her an apology. One of the constants in his life was the recurring need to apologize to Molly Hooper for some "act of total bastardry," as John liked to say. That at least had not changed.

Sherlock became slightly lost in his own mind and therefore didn't notice Molly setting the breakfast tray aside or hear her bare feet on the carpet. He didn't know she had moved until he felt a warm touch between his shoulder blades. She was doing it again: offering him comfort and forgiveness where he deserved derision. He turned to find Molly standing much closer than he had expected. With Molly barefooted, the height difference between them was even more pronounced.

"Sherlock," Molly started, but Sherlock quickly pressed the tips of his fingers to her mouth and gave his head a shake. When Molly nodded, he moved his hand down to her throat, thumb resting against her jugular vein and fingers gently curling around the side of her neck.

"The Woman caught my attention immediately. I think we both know how difficult it is to capture my attention," he began, resisting the urge to stop when he saw the flash of hurt in Molly's eyes. Allowing himself to acknowledge he had emotions was always uncomfortable. Speaking of those emotions was beyond distasteful, but Sherlock owed Molly this small act of penance. "I don't think it's putting too fine a point on it to say Irene Adler changed my life." He felt Molly's swallow beneath his palm. "Sentiment, physical attraction and emotional attachment were all aspects of human nature that I found useless to the work. I was quite the expert at expunging those human characteristics from myself. My goal was to become completely detached, to be a truly unbiased observer capable of using data to draw conclusions without the taint of emotional context."

Sherlock moved his thumb along her neck in soft strokes. "I had it all locked up in a tidy little Pandora's Box. John, and a few others had begun to pick the lock, so to speak, but Irene used a crowbar to rip the lid off, if you'll forgive the metaphor," Sherlock said with a slight curl to the edge of his mouth. Molly smiled. "I knew what she was," he continued more seriously, "At the risk of sounding narcissistic," he paused and met Molly's wry look, "sounding more narcissistic, what attracted me was our common characteristics. I had never met anyone who could match me deduction for deduction and I found that…" Sherlock trailed off as he searched for the proper term.

"Totally hot?" Molly supplied with a smile that was only slightly strained.

"Alluring," Sherlock said, giving her a side glance. He fell silent again, watching Molly's deliberately casual expression. "I thought I understood her completely. When she revealed herself to be another form of Moriarty…" he swallowed and refocused his gaze to a spot above Molly's head.

"You aren't like them, Sherlock."

Sherlock laughed bitterly, but didn't respond.

"You're not," Molly said firmly, reaching up to take his face in her hands and force Sherlock to look at her. "You know why you're different? You make that choice. You choose to use your mind to solve crimes, not commit them. Every day you wake up and, whether you do it consciously or not, you choose to use your mind for Society, not against it. It takes a lot of courage to do that, Sherlock, to keep making that choice every day, especially when there are so few people who really see that struggle."

Sherlock stared at this woman who never failed to maintain utter faith in his character, even when he wallowed in his own contrariness. Her small, fine-boned hands were warm on his cheek and the skin of her throat was soft beneath his fingers. His hand almost spanned the woman's neck. It would take little to squeeze the breath from her or twist in just the right way to snap her spinal cord. Molly knew this, yet she hadn't once tried to move his hand or step away. Sherlock felt his chest tighten with a wave of affection for her. He felt another urge, one that occurred so rarely that it took the detective a moment to identify.

"Molly," he said, his voice unintentionally dipping an octave. Molly's shivered. "Molly, kiss me."

Molly's eyes widened fractionally and her cheeks puffed out in a way that always reminded Sherlock of Mycroft's goldfish comment. "You want to kiss me?" Molly asked, obviously trying to clarify that she heard what she thought she heard.

"Yes," he started, his eyes tracing the curve of her little mouth, "but I'm overanalyzing the desire to do so. I'm calling up references to the material I used when I was pretending to date Janine and combining that with past experiences to calculate a predictable outcome. I'm overthinking, Molly. You need to kiss me first."

Molly, as always, obliged Sherlock's odd request. Pulling him down, she placed one chaste kiss to his lips, then another and lingering longer the second time. Sherlock began to respond the third time, matching Molly's movements with his own and settling into the kiss, allowing instinct to take over, however briefly. Molly pulled back first.

Molly blinked at him, dazed. "Wow."

"Really?" Sherlock asked, surprised and smug all at once.

"Mmm hmm," she confirmed with a nod. Her eyes fluttered and came into better focus. "You?"

He stopped to consider and realized something quite surprising. "My thought processes stopped."

"What?"

"My mind was quiet. My thoughts just stopped." Sherlock sounded every bit as amazed as he felt.

"...that's good….?"

"That's extraordinary! My mind is never quiet, Molly, not ever. There are days when it's bearable, but most days it feels as though my brain were trying to claw it's way out of my skull. All that stopped while I was kissing you, all that was in here," He tapped his temple, "was you." He gazed at Molly as though she were the most interesting puzzle he had ever deciphered. Molly didn't know exactly how to respond.

"Oh! Well that's- mmph!"

Whatever Molly was about to say was cut off by Sherlock suddenly wrapping his arms around the woman and pulling her into another kiss. Sherlock would have been surprised by his own enthusiasm had he been able to think. When they finally came up for air, Sherlock said, "You cleared out everything."

"So…," Molly panted, "I'm like the char woman for your mind palace?"

"Exactly!"

"Molly Hooper, Mind Palace Parlor Maid."

Sherlock paused and gave her a calculating look. "You would look interesting in a maid's uniform."

Molly's eyebrows rose. "Are you flirting?"

"Not on purpose. I'm extraordinarily bad at it."

Molly's grin was met with a soft look from Sherlock. With a sigh, she stepped out of Sherlock's embrace and began chattering about needing to get dressed, call St. Bart's, and a series of other completely mundane things. Sherlock gave her a sardonic look and fetched her suitcase, setting it on the edge of the bed and turning to his wardrobe.

Molly opened the case and let out an amused, but undignified, snort. When Sherlock turned to ask what she found so amusing, all he saw was a pair of twinkling brown eyes dancing above a photograph of himself, aged six, dressed in a large hat adorned with a scarlet plume and holding a wicked looking recreation of a cutlass. The look on his face would have been menacing had it been on the visage of the older version, but on his younger-self, it just looked disgustingly cute.

Sherlock knew, logically, that his mother had regaled Molly with all sorts of embarrassing stories complete with photographic proof, but actually handing over such evidence to Molly was completely unacceptable. Molly's obvious delight just made it worse. Disgruntled, he pulled out the only weapon he had to combat such villainy. Reaching atop his wardrobe, Sherlock retrieved a smaller snapshot. He turned it and mimicked Molly's pose, gratified when she gasped suddenly.

"You nicked that from my flat!" Molly exclaimed, indignant. "That was in my baby book!"

Sherlock just grinned broadly above the snapshot of a tiny Molly Hooper wearing a pink bandana around her head, an improvised pirate's costume and brandishing a musket made of paper tubes and rubber bands. There was a tiny pink eyepatch hanging over her right eye. She, too, had attempted to look fierce and the missing front teeth did add to her attempt to look tough, but apple cheeks and a set of tiny dimples completely ruined the effect.

"I propose an exchange of hostages," Sherlock said seriously. Molly tried to glower back, but those dimples had not disappeared in the 30 years since the photo was taken and she looked as fierce as the baby pirate in the photograph.

"On three?" Molly suggested. Sherlock nodded in agreement and slowly approached. When he was within striking distance, he snatched the offending photograph from Molly's hands and held both images out of her reach.

"That's not fair!" She complained as she tried to liberate the photos. Sherlock used his free arm to grab Molly about the waist and hold her flush to him. Her struggling stilled.

"What made you think a pirate is ever fair?" Sherlock said, "We take what we want."

"There's a double entendre about booty in there somewhere," Molly breathed

"One of us really should make a risque comment about walking planks and such."

They fell silent and stared at each other for a few seconds.

"We're really terrible at flirting, aren't we?"

"Complete rubbish. I don't expect that to change."

"I don't know, maybe if we practice?"

"I'd much rather practice other things," Sherlock said and added an eyebrow waggle for effect.

Molly beamed at him proudly. "That was a good one!"


Sherlock + Molly = Awkward Flirting, my real OTP.