Molly woke when the morning sun streamed in through the window and onto her bed. She sat up, tossed the sheet aside, and then groaned at the red spot she found under her.
"Not red again," Molly groaned.
Last night, she had tried to banish the color red from her flat. She had taken off the shoes and the expensive red dress and tossed them into a box which she had shoved into the back of her closet. The lipstick, she had thrown into the trash. And yet despite her efforts, red would not abandon her. She went into the bathroom, pressing against her belly which had begun to cramp.
She should have expected it. Her period always came at the worst possible moment. It hurt, but it was just one more pain to heap on top of the pain of last night's embarrassment.
Sherlock had been vulnerable. He had been unsure. She could clearly see now how alone he had felt, yet he had trusted Molly, relaxing around her as he could not relax around his parents. And what had she done to help him?
The last few months had been so hard for Sherlock. He had almost died several times. John had abandoned him. His family had lied to him. Sherlock must feel truly alone.
Maybe that was why she had felt so drawn to him lately. No, her thoughts were nowhere near so noble. She had wanted Sherlock, and so she had kissed Sherlock. He had not kissed her. Molly feared that she wouldn't be able to face him again. She was facing no one this morning, except her own image in the mirror. She had bags under her eyes and they were still a bit red from her crying.
"Red. Ughhh!"
She showered and dressed in comfortable clothes resolving not to leave the flat ever again. Well, at least not today. She dug into the refrigerator for some yogurt and started the kettle to make some chamomile tea.
The first day of her period she always cramped hard. Molly's first period had come at the age of thirteen. She had been glad to see it, as her friends had already had theirs. The teacher gave her pads enough to last that first week. It was a lucky thing, because her father was too shocked to buy them when she told him. He had looked at her in surprise as if he had expected her to always stay a child.
She was thirty now which meant that she had been having periods for seventeen years. She had read somewhere that a woman had four hundred periods in her lifetime. How many had it been so far? Three hundred and sixty five days in a year, divided by twenty eight, the average length of a woman's cycle. She pulled out a pad of paper and worked it out longhand on the kitchen counter. It was thirteen and a bit more periods every year. Thirteen times a year for seventeen years meant that she had had two hundred and twenty one periods in her lifetime. Two hundred and twenty one. That was more than half the way to four hundred, and she had not yet had a child.
Molly lowered her face into her hands. To think of having to go through this pain every month for her lifetime and never have it come to anything. It had already happened two hundred and twenty one times. Would her four hundred eggs pass away into nothing leaving her with no children? Would she live alone her entire life only to die in an empty flat?
"Two hundred and twenty one?" Molly said aloud suddenly realizing why the number seemed so familiar. It was the same as Sherlock's flat number. Fate was making a joke! Reminding her of the person she wanted. Of the man she could not have.
It was laughable really, expecting him to be overcome with lust just because she'd got a hair cut. It was like in the cinema when a girl takes off her glasses, and suddenly the man who ignored her before asks her out. Sherlock would have laughed at such a story. He would have scorned the man for not seeing her true beauty in the first place.
Sherlock's seeing eyes. They were one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place, the way that he had seemed to know her with just a look. Then again, there had been so many times when he hadn't seen her. He hadn't realized for example that she was asking him out for coffee … or perhaps he had.
She had assumed that Sherlock was a bit clueless when it came to people. She had assumed that he hadn't noticed that she was propositioning him, but what if he had noticed. Perhaps he had always known what she was doing. Perhaps he had never been interested in her at all. If so, then Tom was right. She had been deluding herself for years. She'd never had a chance with him, and he had known it from the first day that he saw her. It had taken her until last night to see it. The way he hadn't wanted her. The way he had not kissed her back. Molly wiped her eyes.
She had told Sherlock last night that she didn't understand parents apologizing to their children, but that's what her father had done. That last week of his life, he had held her hands in his and apologized for leaving her alone. Is this what he had feared? That she would die childless and alone. And if she did, what would be left in the world of her mother's talents. Who would be left to remember her father's kindness. She had wanted to pass those things on to her own children, to share their stories and pass on their skills. So far that hadn't happened. After her father's death, she had focused on completing her medical degree, and then there was always another goal, and another.
Medicine at first had only been a means to an end. Something to do until she had found a cure for her father's illness. After he had died, she had stayed in medicine because… because that was where she was, that was what she knew.
Now she was alone.
Who would she call if she were arrested by the police? Who would morn her if she died here in the flat? Would anyone even miss her now that she wasn't expected at work? How long would it take someone to find her body? Long enough for her cat to start to eat it perhaps. Cats would do that, waiting less time than a dog would to sample the only available source of meat.
She realized then that she was being maudlin. It often happened on the first day of her menstrual period. She fed the cat anyway, just in case, overfilling his bowl before pouring her tea.
She wasn't really alone. If she went to jail, her friends would come and bail her out. And if she died, someone would find her, and even if Toby had nibbled on her corpse, Sherlock would take him in. He wouldn't have any inhibitions about it. He might even think it was funny.
"A friend is someone you would die for, someone you would live for."
That's what Sherlock had said, and it was true. She might have lost her job because she helped Sherlock, but she had known that was a possibility from the start. Why wouldn't she believe that he would do the same for her. He loved her, after all. He had told her so. That meant that if she needed help, he would come. She was sure of it. If she needed him, he would come. Sherlock was her friend.
Molly took a drink of her tea, and then lay down on the floor. She found it didn't hurt so much when she was still.
The child she had been would never have got upset over someone not kissing her. The child she had been would never have feared dying alone. The child she had been would have expected to die by the sword on some adventure, or in a balloon crash, or exploring a crystal filled cave.
When had her life become so boring? When had she become so very still? Had getting a period changed so much about her life? She lay a hand over her womb feeling the way it contracted. It felt hollow.
Toby came over to her then and licked her hand. I suppose it was never too early for him to have a little taste.
