After a night sleeping on smooth stone, Molly had decided that it was her last. Her entire body was achy and stiff from the rough sleep she'd had. For all his deductive abilities in life, Sherlock certainly lacked them in death or chose not to use them.
"Ready to stop by the alley again, today?" He asked the moment he saw her eyes softly flutter open.
"Ugh. Down, boy." Molly grunted, squeezing her eyes tight again as she sat up and stretched. "I let you call the shots all day, yesterday, Sherlock, but now I'm going to go home." Molly calmly explained, rising to her feet and gather her things.
"Home? Why?!"
"Because, Sherlock, I smell like a cemetery, my hair is decorated with fallen foliage, I'm fairly certain there were spiders in my trousers last night and I'm famished…. We're going back to my flat." Before she tossed her bag over her shoulders, she fished out her oyster card. "Honestly, I only stayed here last night because it's closer than my flat, with the downpour and all, and I didn't want to risk being cornered again so soon."
"What do you mean 'cornered again'?" Sherlock asked, as Molly stepped out into the sunlight and recoiled at its brightness and warmth.
"That conversation I had with Greg." The pathologist explained. "I never want to have another like that with anyone again." Her expression was serious and pained. "That was awful, Sherlock, and it hurt." Again, she left him without words, he could only nod. Never before, in his adult life, could he remember feeling this much at someone else's mercy. And if he had, it certainly didn't feel like this. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to properly verbalize how she made him feel, especially now; after the falls he'd suffered. Sherlock never felt this vulnerable but, after all, he'd been stripped of his skin and bones; left as this weird mass only Molly could see and neither of them knew why.
Of course, she was tortured by this, but she had a choice and he had to respect that because he had none. The one person that mattered the most to him in all this world was now his only tether to it and he couldn't risk her cutting the cord. Sherlock was a man so used to being heavy handed, yet now he had to tiptoe through existence. Not only that, but along with the loss of his body, he'd lost something else; he was the very embodiment of all his emotions now and had lost the ability to swallow them down.
As a result, he quietly followed her home, which was a feat; he detested the tube.
Molly washed away the night before and replaced it with the scent of her coconut and vanilla body wash. It took several washes at several temperatures of water but she finally washed the odours from her skin and her hair.
But, she wasn't sad anymore. This wasn't about washing away the pain and frustration of the past day, it was about becoming herself again. She was going to help the Sherlock she knew now, of course, but during the past two days, she'd given him her whole life and she wasn't going to do that anymore.
"You know," Molly spoke with the knowledge Sherlock was in hearing range. "We can't go back to Scotland Yard until we know for sure what happened and have proof." In the mirror, she could see him nod at this as she got out her blow dryer.
"I just feel like I'm on the right track." He explained and she paused. Sherlock always chose logic over gut, so, while he might have used that phrase before, combined with this new Sherlock's behavior, it definitely forced her to look him in the eyes again. Molly had done this only a few times since she started realizing what he must be and, now, she was doing it again. It was almost painful and undeniably unsettling. As she stood there, gazing in his eyes through the mirror in nothing but a bath towel she could feel him approach her and when he was at her shoulders staring back into her eyes as if they were magnets, he leaned close to her ear. "Do I scare you, Molly?" The breath that came from him was unusually cold against her wet shoulder. "I can hear your heart beating faster and I can see it in your eyes. You don't like to look at me, do you, Molly?" He asked in his deep, gravelly baritone and she shook her head no.
"You're not you, Sherlock." Stoic, her voice gently cracked as she said his name.
"Yes, I am, Molly. I am me, I am Sherlock." She let out a shriek as his voice cracked her mirror and sent a few small shard flying. As silence fell between them, they exchanged looks of shock and fear, before he turned and left.
Leaving her there, just as broken as the mirror.
Once Molly had cleaned up the glass, and finished putting herself together, she stepped out into the living room where Sherlock was pacing.
"We don't need to go back." He explained.
"Sherlock…"
"I am getting my memories back on their own, it's like my mind is healing."
"Sherlock…"
"And I am so close, I can see the man's face. I know what my killer looks like, Molly. Don't you see how great this is?" He turned to look at her, finally and his entire face dropped. "What?"
"You showed me you were real, Sherlock, by hurting me." Slowly, she raised her finger to show a single, small cut in the middle of her ring finger.
"What? That? That's nothing, it'll heal." He attempted to play it off.
"No, Sherlock. I know you are real now because you hurt me. You didn't mean to, but you were upset, you scared me, and " she held the finger closer to his face, "you hurt me."
"What do you want me to say,Molly?" He whispered.
"What do I want you to say?!" Withdrawing her finger, she grabbed her temples. "I need you to understand that I don't know if I can trust you anymore. Should I trust you?"
"Yes, of course, I -"
"Can you even trust yourself, Sherlock?" She cut him off. "Really, truly, I think you scared yourself, too. I don't think you trust yourself and, if you can't trust yourself… how can you expect me to?" Sherlock stared at his feet, ashamed. "Listen, I just checked my calendar. I have a dinner date tonight, so I'll be going to that. You had me nearly all day yesterday; I'm taking today off. Oh, and stay off of my computer, it hasn't been the same since you hopped in it to check out my last date."
Of course, he didn't argue. He couldn't bring himself to. She was completely right. The only thing he wished he could do was tell her all the things that were floating around in his head, but she didn't need that now. So, he just watched her walk away to make a cup of tea.
After a day of watching her watch television and movies, he moved on to watching her prepare for her date. Observing her rituals and how she used eeni meeni miini moh to pick between two pairs of white gold earrings to go with her black halter dress with white pinstripes. He wanted to tell her how lovely she looked, but he didn't. He wanted to tell her that her date's name was Dave, because she kept forgetting it, but he didn't. He wanted to suggest she get the fish at that particular restaurant, but he didn't.
He didn't because he couldn't. Sherlock's mouth felt fused closed by his own guilt and desire to see her happy. It remained that way. Snapped shut like a bear trap, until a face in the crowd bought his attention and pulled him away from Molly and Dave's boring conversation about some random television show he'd never seen. This face was almost calling to him.
The man was sitting with his family. He assumed the woman was his wife and beside them sat their two young sons and older daughter. That face was a face he knew. The face he tried to describe to Molly. Carefully, eyes still fixed on the man, he leaned over to Molly's shoulder.
"Molly, I'm very sorry, but we're going to have to excuse ourselves." He explained.
"Why?" She managed to whisper.
"Because my killer is enjoying a steak and I think you should ask him about it."
