No shelter for this child in mazes lost

It fell entirely on him to protect Molly, Sherlock realized on day one hundred and forty as he took a picture of Molly and her just-barely-showing baby bump. It was a project which appealed to both of them. Him because he was able to track her pregnancy in exactitude from home, and to her because she would be able to make a photo album as a keepsake.

His brother would do his best to shield them, of course, but he had at least seventeen countries to run at the moment if the polish on his shoes was anything to go by. John had moved out two months ago, and Mrs. Hudson could barely protect her own fridge(s) from Sherlock's experiments let alone Molly and a baby.

Sherlock did not mind the expectation of rising to the challenge. He had created this web to keep Molly near, it was his responsibility to make sure she—and his unborn child—remained quite safely cocooned there. His only consolation was that Mycroft had sent him a picture, captured from a camera phone, of his newest addition to his office. It was a morbid habit carried over from childhood, turned towards more mature themes. It had started with frogs, if Sherlock recalled correctly.

In a jar of blue preservative liquid, floated a severed head bearing the surprised face of James Moriarty—Jim from IT, who had started this entire mess. Sherlock smirked and saved the photo as his phone's wallpaper, pleased that the snake's head had been cut off. However, there was the potential that it was less a snake and more a hydra, so Sherlock did not count himself safe, he counted the danger the same as he had the day before. This was his brother's way of apologizing and for the first time in his life, Sherlock accepted it.

You have always been far more unpredictable than I and far more prepared, Brother

SH

He didn't pause to think that Molly might handle his phone and see the background, because he really didn't care. Molly ought to know by now that the Holmes brothers did not deal with threats in a normal fashion, and really Moriarty had tried to kill Sherlock and John—and he had hurt Molly, he had managed to hurt her far worse than Sherlock had ever managed in more than five years. He deserved to have his head in a jar in a small office deep within the halls of power. Mycroft had even put the jar on a display pedestal with a brass label at the base. It read: J. Moriarty. He tried.

Of course.

Those were the first truly respectful and civil words the brothers had exchanged in more than a decade. The memories felt weird where Sherlock hung them up in his Mind Palace, but he enjoyed weird things so he left them.

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