Thank you for the kind words and indulging my neediness with reviews! Another chapter, earlier than planned so I hope it's okay, just to say thanks...

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Molly bounced up and down on her toes outside the door to 221b the next morning while John fumbled for the keys. He handed off the baby carrier to Mary, and she rocked tiny Lizzie back and forth to keep her in the same deep sleep. The baby had fussed all the way on the tube and had just dropped off at the street entrance to the flat.

Molly saw nothing but the shut door. Sherlock couldn't possibly be up; it was only 8am. Last night, most of what happened had fought its way clear of hazy memory, and with Lestrade and Mary and John filling in the details, she knew exactly how close she had come to dying. If Sherlock hadn't cuffed himself to her, she would never have survived. She just wanted to hug him, kiss him, hold him… all the things she'd been wanting since she woke up in hospital with Mycroft watching over her. Watching over her in the big brother sort of way that recalled Orwell rather than guardian angel. Even now, four agents had followed them to the flat from John and Mary's. Mycroft was still watching.

John triumphantly flung wide the door and motioned Molly forward.

"Sherlock?" His coat hung by the door, so Molly knew he must be home somewhere. She rushed through the flat to his room and pushed the door open while John and Mary poked around the kitchen to locate the kettle.

He lay face down on the bed, immobile, naked and only partially covered by the duvet. Molly caught her breath. She used her whole body to push the door to his room quietly closed, her back tangled in the bathrobe on its hook on the door. She took a tentative step towards the bed. Then, even in the dim illumination of the bit of overcast morning light that slipped past the blackout curtains, she could make out his steady breathing, the rise and fall of his back. She grinned stupidly to herself for a moment; she realised how scared she had been. She unzipped her boots and tugged down the velvety black leggings that Anthea had left for her at Mary's. When she was down to her bra and knickers, she approached the side of the bed.

He moved like a panther, one arm shooting out and hooking around her waist, the other covering her mouth to stifle any screaming. He hadn't even opened his eyes. He pulled her down to the bed and then rolled her until she was pinned beneath him. Finally, he blinked open his eyes, and they were absolutely serious.

Molly felt tears forming. Stupid, she told herself. You're fine; he's fine. She tried to think of something sexy to say, to distract him. "You're alive," was all that came out.

Sherlock frowned at the tears. "Yes, we both are. But I still need to hear it from you." He leaned himself down over her, so that she had most but not all of his weight holding her against the bed, and kissed her. Molly immediately smoothed her fingers into his hair and sighed. After a few minutes of his tongue rediscovering ever part of her mouth and lips, he pulled away. Sherlock interlaced his fingers behind her head and held her still beneath him. He filled her field of vision, and she could not look anywhere to escape him gazing straight through her mind. "Tell me what they did."

Molly told him everything she could remember, in much greater detail than she had told Greg. He questioned her more exactly than Greg had, he made her show him where the men had touched. There had been three men, the same three that Sherlock had seen later. She still had fading bruises on her hips, where they'd held her down, and on her breasts. She cried a bit when she had to explain about the man penetrating her with his finger; it had hurt and scared the hell out of her. She told him about Irene; explained how Irene had distracted them away from Molly with a whirlwind temper. Then Sherlock had begun to wake, and the men had dragged him away to the room where he'd been cuffed to the wall. There had been talk of other men, but she didn't see anyone else. She could not remember any mention of Tom.

Sherlock did not move from his position above her for the entire discussion. When he felt he'd heard everything, he started kissing her again, in that same desperate way he had after Moran's attempt to murder her. This time, Molly didn't need to cry. Sherlock's kisses moved down her jaw and her throat, and stalled for a long time at her breasts. He kissed every bruise, telling her that he loved her, and how sorry he was that she'd been hurt. He spent so long licking and sucking on her breasts, that they both finally heard the noise of tea and conversation coming from the sitting room and kitchen.

Sherlock released a nipple from his mouth. "Is someone else here?"

Molly gasped. "John and Mary brought me home! God, they've been out there this whole time. And Lizzie!" She blushed. "You kind of made me forget everything."

He grinned at her. "I can hear Greg's voice, too, and Mrs Hudson." He ran his fingers up and down her chest and abdomen. "Just one more thing, then we'll go face them." He disappeared beneath the duvet, trailing his tongue and fingers southwards. Molly dropped her head back against the pillow and bit a corner of the duvet between her teeth to stifle any sounds she was about to make. When his tongue made contact with her core, she added a pillow over her mouth and just screamed into that as Sherlock drove all other thoughts from her overcrowded mind.

…

Molly re-emerged from the bedroom with Sherlock a good hour after she's entered it. Mrs Hudson was topping up the teapot in the kitchen.

"Molly!" she cried, and rushed to give the pathologist a big hug. "Oh, look, you've brushed your hair out so beautifully that no one would guess what you've been up to. Can't say the say same of him…" Mrs Hudson nodded toward Sherlock, who was still buttoning up his shirt.

"Oh, um, well thank you, Mrs Hudson," Molly stumbled, smiling.

"You two done shagging?" John called from the sitting room. "Even Lizzie woke up with all the racket." Molly felt the blush that had been forming since she walked out of the bedroom door deepen and spread.

"Shut up, John," Sherlock replied imperiously, sliding a cufflink into place. "You're making my pathologist go all warm and red…" He stopped to run his fingers over Molly's embarrassed face, trying to work out how far the blush spread, his finger trailing down the neckline of her top. "Hmmm… we'll be right back." Sherlock swept Molly up over his shoulder and strode purposefully back towards his bedroom. He had just kicked open the door when a voice cut through the chorus of laughing from the sitting room.

"Brother mine, do set down Dr Hooper. On the floor right there, not the bed, thank you," Mycroft ordered in his calm voice from the doorway of the flat. Sherlock turned back towards the sitting room and slid Molly down his body and gently onto her feet. He rearranged her hair and her top, spending slightly more time smoothing her top over her breasts than was strictly necessary. Molly shot him a cease-and-desist look. She accepted a cup of tea from Mrs Hudson and sat on the leather sofa near Mary and Lizzie.

Greg finished chuckling to himself long enough to speak to Mycroft. "Any news? I clipped an ankle monitor to Tom just to be sure, so we can find him easily enough if necessary."

"It seems that the cult does extend beyond the three members that we… eliminated," Mycroft spoke evenly, hanging up his coat. "I have established a connection between Tom and Andrew Severn, the one who called himself Father. They knew each other at university. Severn was a religious studies student, but never completed his degree. I know they kept seeing each other, but I still don't know if Tom intended for Molly to be hurt." Mycroft leaned over to give Molly a kiss on her cheek in greeting. "Are you hurt, my dear?"

"Oh, God, make this horror stop," Sherlock cried, dramatically throwing himself into the seat on the sofa next to Molly and brushing Mycroft away from her. "I'm trying to convince her to move in here and your sudden display of … is that your imitation of affection? …is off-putting in the extreme. Stop stalking my girlfriend."

Sherlock still had not asked his brother why he shot those men, men who had evidence to offer, men who were effectively already detained.

Mycroft stood back from Molly and the smile faded from his face, but just a little, such that only Sherlock would have noticed. He levelled his gaze directly at Sherlock. "Why hasn't she moved in already? You're already married."

Everyone stopped breathing. Sherlock tightened his grip on Molly's hand where it rested in his lap.

John recovered first. "What?

"Mycroft," Molly laughed nervously. "That's ridiculous. We're not married. In fact, Sherlock asked me the other day, and I said no…" Everyone sucked in another breath at this. "He was just asking to keep me off the cult's hit list, so I wouldn't be the unmarried girlfriend," Molly quickly explained. Sherlock's grip on her hand tipped into slightly painful in its intensity.

"You were married six months before Sherlock 'died', enough time to convince a judge that it was a real relationship should he actually have died. So no one would question the inheritance."

Molly shook her head. "No, I never agreed to it, or signed anything."

Mycroft smiled at her, more softly, "I assure you that your signature is on the necessary documents. You are legally and legitimately married to Sherlock. It was all carefully backdated."

"But I was engaged…"

John shook his head. "I didn't know about this, but that was never going to happen. None of us thought you'd go through with it in the end."

"It's true, dear, Tom was a complete sop. We all knew you'd come to your senses," Mrs Hudson agreed. She gave Molly's arm a pat.

Greg added, "There was actually a Plan B in place to arrest him on minor drugs charges if you didn't dump him in time." Molly stared at him in shock. "Just to disrupt the wedding, not to stick. It was for your own protection."

Molly attempted to stand up. Sherlock tugged her back down next to him. He wound an arm around her shoulders and managed a stern grip on her upper arm, rooting her to the sofa. "Inheritance?" she managed to whisper, as though each of Mycroft's words were taking time to sink in individually. She looked into Sherlock's eyes for an explanation, only to find him staring resolutely at Mycroft.

"Yes," Mycroft continued merrily, "When Sherlock died, he needed to protect his considerable personal wealth, and the easiest way was to pass it on to a spouse. No tax, no questions. You simply inherited everything. And he was most concerned that he might actually die while taking down Moriarty's network, and that you would need protecting. It was all quite genuine and touching," he finished in his most clinical voice.

Molly couldn't quite process what happened next; she had been off in her own mind, trying to calculate Mycroft's words, make the dates and motivations fit, and so she missed Sherlock's initial move. He was slower with the leg injury, which gave Mycroft time to react, so the damage they inflicted on each other was more even than it might have been otherwise. Mary had moved Lizzie out of the way of the fists and the feet and the headbutting; John and Greg had to circle a few times before they were able to get a proper hold on Sherlock and drag him off. Bloody and shaking, Sherlock looked up at Molly.

"Molly, please, please, please…" he said. "I just wanted to make sure you would be all right if I died. I didn't intend for this to go on for so long."

"Why would I need money, Sherlock, if you died?

"Because if I died I would never have the chance to marry you, as I have always intended," he said. "I wanted you to have the money. And I wanted you to know how I had always felt."

"You were going to let me find all of that out after you were dead?" Molly gasped.

Mycroft sat up and wiped the blood away from his split eyebrow with a fist. "I told you that asking the woman is traditionally the first step."

Sherlock dove for him again, but Greg and John had his arms locked securely behind his back. Molly let out a sob and back towards the door. She worked her coat free of the hook with shaking hand and yanked open the door. Then she disappeared down the stairs.

"Impressive," John huffed out in an incredulous laugh. "Only you would be able to so utterly balls up such a romantic gesture." He dropped Sherlock's arms, sensing that that the fight had gone out of his friend. "How do you intend to fix this?"

Sherlock stood up straight and brushed himself down. The pain in his leg only strengthened his resolve. "Fix what? I wanted her to marry me, and she has. You once told me that Molly never expects an apology from me." Sherlock grabbed the clean kitchen towel that Mrs Hudson held out to him. "No if you'll excuse me, I need to go fetch my wife back home." And with that he dove down the stairs and onto Baker Street to search out Molly.