When the crate was opened (with copious amounts of noise), they found the doctor and the consulting detective snuggled together in the corner, like two lost little boys, despite the stifling heat.
They hadn't woken to the scraping and yawing of metal, and for a moment, both Mary and Lestrade feared the worst. But she shined her torch on them, and saw they were still breathing. She sighed in relief and closed her eyes, thanking every god she could think of.
She and Lestrade crouched in front of them, checking them over. "Dehydrated, a bit overheated… Where's that damned ambulance?" God, she'd been so worried.
In theory, they would probably be OK. They'd probably found them fast enough.
She put her hand on John's forehead and pulled his eyelids back. God, he didn't look good. "Love, can you wake up for me?"
Lestrade likewise tried to wake Sherlock. But with a kick. "Hey-no rest for the wicked. Come on. Get up."
"Someone needs to call Molly. She's beside herself. John...wake the hell up. This isn't funny."
zyx
Sherlock had a generalized fear about hospitals. People died in hospitals. He didn't want to die in one.
Which is why, when he woke in a hospital, he briefly thought he had died, and was now forced to haunt one for the rest of eternity. As one does.
It had only been a passing thought. Especially since consciousness didn't last long. He opened his eyes for just a second. Molly was there, and so he probably wasn't dead-dead and would just die of MRSA later or something.
A second later, he was back asleep.
"Well, he was almost awake," Molly sighed.
Mary hugged Molly supportively, then squeezed her shoulder. "Almost is a start."
Molly's shoulders still crumpled and she went back to her knitting. It was something to do. Something for her hands to do, other than wringing themselves raw. He was fine. He WOULD be fine. He was just being...stubborn. With this not-waking-up business.
John had come to fairly quickly. Sherlock was just… she didn't know. She stared at the cannula bringing oxygen to his nose, and the gauge on the wall, it was up to six percent, the highest they'd put it. She didn't know if she was actually angry with him, or just upset. Or worried. Or any of those other feelings that seemed to be so confused right now.
They were just supposed to be tying up loose ends on a case. A case that Mary had practically solved for them. They weren't supposed to disappear for two days and end up unconscious in a shipping crate. She wanted to kick him.
Swallowing that down, she forced herself to look at her knitting, not the oxygen tubing. She was making him a jumper, and she would force him to wear it. In front of people.
zyx
Mary was gone, when Sherlock woke the second time.
"Hi," Molly whispered once Sherlock looked awake enough to care that she was around. "You are one very lucky consulting detective," she said, kissing his cheek.
"Yeah? That dehydrated?" He looked at the wires and tubes.
She slid her hand under his, letting him hold her so it wouldn't hurt the IV running into his vein. "Raised core body temperature, dehydration. Exposure to natural gas. You are grounded until further notice."
He frowned. He hadn't smelt anything. Must have been natural-natural gas. Or an even bigger part of the conspiracy. He'd be looking into it further. "Natural gas?"
"Yes, be thankful it was only a minor exposure, or you both would have been on my autopsy table."
It might have explained why his brain just couldn't work out a way out of their situation. and the super cuddly talk about feelings and other things he didn't like. Blaming things on gas leaks was his new favorite excuse. "How's John?" It should have been his first question, but he'd gotten distracted by the whole gas thing.
"Fine. Better than you. Up, almost around. He's going home tonight."
"Me?"
"I need to let them know you're awake so they can look you over properly."
Sherlock groaned. "I want to go home tooooo."
She kissed his forehead. "You're going to have to get looked over if you want to go home. I think you wouldn't have been as bad off if you didn't always wear yourself into the ground on cases. Sleep wouldn't kill you. Nor would a meal or two."
"This again." He rolled his eyes.
"Yes, this again." She pressed the button for the nurse. "You know you're not immortal, right?"
"I suppose. If I must be."
She put her hand on his cheek as the nurse came in. "Yes. I know. It's terrible. But if you'd like, I'll be mortal with you."
He smiled, despite the presence of the heavy-set nurse who had started asking him question before Molly slid her hand from his cheek to make room.
zyx
Sherlock picked at his food. He should have been hungry, he hadn't really gone in for the hospital food, but it just didn't look appetizing.
"If you don't eat that, we're both going to be in trouble," John noted.
He poked at the noodles. "You could eat half and make it look like I ate-no. Ok." The look on John's face was enough to tell Sherlock that that plan was straight out. "Are you grounded too?" he asked, an annoyed arch to his eyebrow.
"Grounded? I was told I was on a very short leash. And that that leash was actually a chain. And it was bolted to the wall of our flat."
"I didn't know Mary was into that sort of thing," Sherlock smirked.
"Oh shut up." He pushed the plate closer to Sherlock. "Eat your damned food before we both get in trouble."
His shoulders slumped as he leaned over the table just a bit further. "Do you remember a time in the not-too-distant-past where we didn't answer to anyone, and if we wanted to get shot at or kidnapped or nearly beheaded, it was all fine?" He forced himself to swallow the noodles he'd twisted around his fork.
John rolled his eyes, putting one foot up on the coffee table. He liked the new one better. It was a better height for using inappropriately as an ottoman. "Were we ever? We'd just have Mrs. Hudson in here telling us off."
"Oh yeah. I used to tune her out a lot. She might have been yelling about my behavior or the bins or who knew what, I didn't know."
Smirking, John remembered old times. "Yeah. She was yelling at us for being stupid."
"Oh. Ok. I believe you." He swallowed another twisted up ball of noodles, practically whole. The sauce was ok. It was the noodles themselves that he found annoying. "But isn't it somehow worse now that we're attached?"
"We did almost die of a combination of dehydration, overheating and gas exposure. I think our respective partners are bound to be just a teency bit annoyed with us. Me more than you."
"Why do you think that? I mean, when I got home from the hospital yesterday, Molly was back to twisting my ear. Literally. I was afraid it was going to come off."
John rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes. Your precious ears. In case you have not noticed, I have a tiny child at home who would rather have her daddy in one piece. And a wife who will tear me into pieces if I worry her like that again."
Sherlock swallowed another mouthful of unchewed noodles. "I mentioned you leaving behind a grieving widow and child. See, I remembered them when we thought we were going to die."
John squinted at him. "Why am I even friends with you?"
"No one else would ever have us?" Sherlock only gave half a shrug.
"Fair point. Finish your goddamned noodles."
zyx
"We really don't have to go this weekend. I was only recently almost killed," Sherlock plead as Molly tossed his bag of toiletries at him. "You're being mean! I almost died!" he declared in a mock-scandalized voice.
"Look at it as… getting this over-with." They'd already put it off twice already. Now mummy was calling Molly. At work. "We'll show up late today and leave early tomorrow."
He looked at the clothes she had set on the bed for him. "That's still close to twenty-four hours. That's forever in mummy-years."
"The woman must be a saint," Molly muttered.
Sherlock's head snapped up. "WHAT?"
Molly shrugged. "Well, first, she pushed YOUR over-inflated head out of her body. Which demands respect. And then she let you and your brother grow up. There's a reason why rats eat their young. You and your brother are two prime examples of those reasons."
"I almost died recently!" he tried again.
She folded a hand-made jumper and put it in her own overnight bag. "Look, I'm going to be there the whole time. If she starts giving you a panic attack, I will step in and distract her."
He picked out a proper shirt to take with him and set the other choices on the chair in the corner. "Thanks. I think."
"Let's just get it over-with, ok? And look on the bright side. All of my family's dead!" she said too cheerfully with a smile. "No, sorry. Let me try that again. "I don't have anyone to introduce you to, so there's no pressure on my side. I just have to prove to your parents that I'm… I don't know." She had absolutely no idea what his parents wanted or expected for their son.
"No I think you had the right tone the first time," he said calmly.
"Hooray for cancer, then," she said smartly. "Do we get to stay in your childhood bed, or did they turn it into a sewing room?"
Sherlock's face scrunched and he tried to remember. "I haven't been upstairs in years. They could have turned the whole first floor into a disco for all I know." He did his best not to stay long. "But yes, my childhood bedroom was still in-tact, the last time I checked. All of my 'achievements' and foolish tastes on display for the world to see."
"Sherlock. It's just a childhood bedroom. Everyone liked silly things as a child. I used to run around with a broom pretending I was a warrior princess. It's all fine." Taking the shirt from him to pack, she kissed his cheek. "I'd like a look into who you were as a child."
"I was dreadful. That's all you need to know. Or better yet, ask Mycroft. He'll give you the full and unadulterated truth about his idiot brother."
Molly laughed. "If it makes you feel any better, my father would have to walk me to the front door of the school because as soon as I was old enough to figure it out, I started skipping school. Then he'd kiss me goodbye." Her face scrunched. "Life at school was bad enough that I'd rather skip and walk around in the cold all day until the bus finally came, but then he was kissing me on the cheek in some big show in front of the other kids and parents."
Sherlock winced. "Ouch. That's… not good."
"Yeah. I'd hide in the woods near the school reading until the day ended. Finally the school called my father to see if I was sick or withdrawing or who knows what."
Choosing a pair of socks, Sherlock looked up. "How long did you get away with it?"
"A month and a half." She smiled fondly at the memory. "It wasn't all bad, getting driven to school. It gave me time with my father I wouldn't have had otherwise, in retrospect. Still. School was more than a little awful."
Sherlock nodded. "That I can agree with."
"So I promise. Nothing's going to put me off, ok?"
zyx
Fortunately, Molly had said nothing. Not 'no one.' It wasn't that Mrs. Holmes was horrible or anything like that. She was just… intense. Really really intense. When Sherlock's mother took her coat, it was an instant babble of talk. How was the trip, did Sherlock behave in the car? He never behaved in the car as a child. Sherlock didn't learn to drive until he was nearly twenty-one, and refused to let us teach him. Do you drive, dear?
And that was all before Molly had her left arm out of her coat.
Mr. Holmes stood quietly in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the frame with a small smile of utter bemusement on his face. It was easy to tell he was totally taken with her, even after all these years.
Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose when mummy turned her questions to him. Did he behave himself in the car? He really should have called when he ended up in the hospital. She had to hear it from Mycroft, and wasn't that completely dreadful that he didn't even call his mother…
"I need a glass of water," he said firmly and practically pushed past his father into the kitchen.
Molly shrugged and winced. "It sort of got away from us. Sorry."
"Oh I don't blame you, dear. I completely blame that son of mine. Neither of them can call home for anything they moved out and it's like I don't exist any more to them…Oh my. Sit down, sit down." She turned to her husband. "Something to drink for Ms. Hooper?"
He went off into the kitchen, and Molly was left alone. With Sherlock's mother. "So, um… hi…" She blushed. She'd practiced what she'd intended to say, and it had still not worked. First impressions were important and Molly seemed to be endlessly poor with them.
"Why don't you tell me about yourself, dear? Sherlock hasn't told me a single thing, of course. You two look lovely together by the way…"
Oh god. No wonder Sherlock had panic attacks. She felt one coming on right now. "Um… well, I'm a pathologist."
Mummy leaned forward on the sofa. "Oh that sounds interesting. Is that how you met my boy? Do you work on many cases together?"
Molly smiled, even though she could feel her heart pounding and her fight or flight response was leaning toward flight. "Um… I help out, occasionally. I don't like leaving the morgue. So, uh… he visits me, mostly."
"Aww, isn't that sweet. Did you hear that dear? He visits her at work!"
"It's not really… romantic or anything. Usually he's asking about toxicology reports or stomach contents. Once I found a lead shard deep in a victim's amygdala. That was interesting. He'd been acting strange and out of control before the police beat him to death, which was a shame because it was a medical issue and not-she looked down. "Oh. Sorry. Most people don't like to hear about what I do." She forgot. She got excited about half-digested snails and congenital heart defects. Other people… not so much.
"Oh no no, it sounds quite interesting. So you… dissect them. The dead bodies?"
She nodded. "Um… they're not all murder victims. Car wrecks, hospital deaths, natural causes. I did have one fellow who had the entire steering column puncture his chest because he turned off the airbag system in his car. And a fellow impaled by his own tire iron…" she blushed again.
The woman tossed her hands up the air in excitement. "Oh my. You should write a book. No wonder you get on so well with my Sherlock." She looked behind her. "Dear, drinks?" she shouted it authoritatively.
"Water only boils so fast," her husband called back calmly.
"And where's that son of mine. Sherlock, surely it doesn't take that long to get a glass of water."
"Talking to dad!" he shouted back.
The woman was a force of nature and Molly dreaded ever getting in her way. Twenty more hours. Twenty more hours and they could leave. And Sherlock had abandoned her in the sitting room, in front of the fire place with his mother. Fantastic.
"I'm not the writer type," she said, trying to direct the conversation away from shouting back and forth. "I leave that up to John. I heard a publisher offered him a book deal for expanded versions of the blog posts. I don't know if he's going to accept it. But I hope so."
"How ARE he and Mary doing? I haven't even had a chance to see the baby. She was half ready to pop last time she was here. Well, seven and a half months. Maybe eight. But it looked like the baby had dropped. Was it a girl or a boy? When it drops early, it's usually a boy. Did she go back to work? I didn't go back to work. I was too wrapped up in my boys to even think about it. And I worked with dreadful people, so I wrote a few engineering books while the boys were asleep or playing and I was fine with it. Just never publish under your own name. If they know you're a woman no publisher will take it, if it's a science book. You'd think we'd have gotten over that by now, but apparently not. John should take the contract. My engineering and mechanics book was used as a textbook for a few years and the royalties were nice. Paid for the kitchen renovation, it did."
Molly just listened with wide eyes. Was she supposed to speak? Was she supposed to interrupt? How did this work? She had never been in the conversational equivalent of a hurricane before. Quite frankly, she was terrified.
"You could probably write a few text books. Those aren't hard. Hire out the illustrations though. They're hardly worth time. That's where the money is. Get it into some university program and make some updates every few years… They're expensive as hell, too. Let me tell you how much Mycroft's books cost…
Blinking rapidly, Molly searched for some sort of escape. "Oh, it's ok. I know how much it costs. Medical training is not easy on the budget." There. She'd dodged… things. "John and Mary are doing well. The baby's a year old now. Always into everything, shows no signs of slowing down."
"Oh that was Sherlock. Couldn't keep anything hidden or locked up. He had way too many close calls with chemicals under the sink. And Mycroft was hardly an angel, but he was a sight better than Sherlock. But no one could keep him out of trouble. Why one time, he took one of my good meat carving knives and decided to dissect the neighbor's dead-"
Sherlock suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Mother, we are not talking about Pete the Peacock."
Molly giggled.
"Don't encourage her. It was one large fowl and I never did it again."
"That I know of. He and his brother used to get into the most ghastly circumstances, didn't you, Sherlock? Still, only had to send the police out looking for you the once…"
Sherlock closed his eyes, trying to practice his deep breathing technique without his mother noticing.
"Well, either way… you have a lovely home. How long have you been living here?" Molly tried to turn it the other way. Maybe if Mrs. Holmes was being asked questions, she would be less inclined to grill them. "Oh since the first book sold. Couldn't stand London any more. Or those unappreciative arseholes in my department. Decode this, sort that, and not even a thank you. I was smarter than half of those men, and they knew it. So when the book sold, I told them to faff off, good luck with the cyphers, and that they were welcome to fight the cold war on their own. But by then I was pregnant with Mycroft, so I really wasn't much worried about their stupid cyphers and interoffice politics. What about you, love? Plans for children?" She looked from Molly to Sherlock. "Your father and I would like grand children before we're too old to enjoy them, you know."
Molly smiled tightly. It really wasn't anyone's business.
"Quit bothering Molly about children. We both happen to be quite career oriented individuals at the moment-"
"Oh Sherlock, it all changes when you have children. You change. You'll mellow out a bit and see the world differently. Look at how the cold war turned out. They didn't need me at all, really. Crime in London will hang around and wait for you on weekend."
Sherlock clenched his jaw and was holding his breath. Molly could tell because he was getting a little purple around the eyes. She stood up and took his hand. "Don't worry, Mrs. Holmes. Should we choose to procreate, you will be the first to know." She smiled up at Sherlock. "I think you promised to show me your old room?"
"Oh yes his old room, we left everything…"
Sherlock retreated up the steps, hand clutching Molly's tightly as he dragged her along. His mother was still going on about something, even as he opened the door to his room, pulled her inside, then shut and locked it. "Nineteen hours and forty minutes," he sighed in exhaustion.
"Breathe," she reminded him.
"Me breathe? YOU breathe." He threw himself on his old bed, the dark duvet crumpling beneath him. "You look about as wonderful as I feel."
Molly curled up next to him on the bed. "I feel like I am going to vomit," she told him truthfully. "And have a heart attack. And an aneurysm. All at once. If that happens, you're still grounded."
He slid his arms around her. "My mother isn't even tolerable in small doses."
"Why didn't you tell me she was… I don't know. Ray-gun intense? If her powers were directed into a fine point laser beam she could blow up the moon." She relaxed her head against his chest. "Also, you were such a little punk," she said, glancing around the room, the darkly painted walls. The ultra violet light. The faint odor of marijuana and cigarette smoke lingering in the space. "It's adorable." Her stomach stopped twisting quite as badly, now that she had something else to focus on. "I, um… had more stuffed animals than I do now. And my room was painted a sedate, calming aquamarine. I went through a mermaid phase."
"A mermaid phase?" He kissed her forehead. "I'd like to have seen that."
"The mermaid and the goth fall in love despite all odds?" she asked with half a smile.
He squeezed her tighter. "It probably ends badly. The goth kid is into self-harm and longs for death so drowns himself thinking it will bringing him closer to the love of his life. He dies and she is left alone."
She frowned. That wasn't her version of the fairy tale at all. "Well, aren't you cheerful."
"My mother does that to me."
"Turns your happy endings into maudlin suicide tales?"
"Something like that."
They held onto each other for dear life as the afternoon light faded and the room was left in a dark blue glow.