Thank you Mrs Dizzy and musicchica10 for your wonderful reviews!
Okay so this is the end of Shine With All The Untold! D: I may or may not be writing another fic in this universe (tentatively titled The Season of Scars and Hearts maybe yes? it would probably be from Mavis Leonette's POV maybe if I can get into her head) so do tell me what you think of that idea in a review! Otherwise, um,
Enjoy!
In this broken world we choose
She wept that night, far more than she really had thought she would. To be able to turn around and have Sherlock at her elbow, inspecting the life she'd been leading for the last three years and understanding it so implicitly that by the end of the evening he had molded himself once again around being husband, father, protector as he had been before he left. Molly couldn't help but cry every so often—when he'd sat in his chair and tuned his violin, the whine of the strings as he tightened and loosened them was almost as dear as the music he later drew from the instrument. She'd also cried—silent, fat tears down her cheeks every ten seconds or so—as he held one of her hands during the dinner they had with Mrs. Hudson.
Sherlock had sat at the head of the table, in a spot which had been empty for the years he'd been away, with his left hand clasped around her own. His thumb swept up and down her knuckles every so often as the conversation rose and fell. He didn't chide her as the tears filled her eyes and eventually spilled, just squeezed her hand slightly without breaking whatever sentence or bite he was in the middle of. Everyone else kindly looked away except for Brinley who pouted whenever she met his eyes—he didn't like it when she cried, not one bit.
Molly also wept in bed that night as she ghosted her fingers along his skin, as he pressed his lips firmly against her neck, as they wrapped around one another and remembered every curve and plane of muscle on each other's bodies. Sherlock had tried, initially, to sooth her tears away or at least wipe them away with the blade of his thumb—but Molly asked him to stop, she wasn't sad. She was so blissfully happy that there was no other way to express it. Sherlock left her to her small lie—that she was glad he was home, because really Molly was so happy that it made her ache with the feeling. But she was also sad that they had had to endure three years of loss. She was sad that Sherlock had not been there to teach Brinley his "L"s or to walk. He had missed forcing his daughter to learn the violin properly from a proper master until she was older.
With every kiss he laid on her naked skin, Molly felt more tears welling up at the fact that he had hurt himself so badly in order to avoid being hurt in such a way as to break him.
Because Molly knew that it would have been easier for Sherlock to let them die, and that his last three years of hardship would barely be appreciated by Mavis Leonette or Brinley and only barely understood by Molly herself. She knew that he had chosen the path of thorns better than he did probably—she knew that Sherlock Holmes had gotten too attached to his family to ever give them up permanently. Molly also understood that for a man who had such a poor grasp on intimacy and emotions and love, his sacrifice of the last three years had been close to the ultimate one. It had to have been the acutest kind of misery, knowing that if he misjudged a step even once that there could be bullets in the brains of his wife and two children and that in all likelihood someone would make him watch. She certainly wouldn't have been able to handle it.
Molly wept in relief, also, because Sherlock would only have come home if he was sure—if he was absolutely sure that the threats to his family were neutralized to the very best of his impressive ability. She had long ago accepted the Sherlock would kill for her, and she let the tears flow that evening for however many men and women, little girls and boys too, who had lost a dear loved one because of how deeply and obsessively Sherlock loved her and their children. When Sherlock Holmes was on the case, it was bad news for bad people—and Molly hoped that whoever stepped into the vacuum Sherlock had torn through the criminal underworld, they would not suck him away from her once again. Because while he was perfectly able to withstand and recover from such, Molly wasn't too sure she could be that strong for him again.
It was the middle of the night when she woke up later, feeling as though she were welded against him as he held her tightly. His shoulders were shaking, and there was a distinct hitch to his breath—and it was slightly painful where his fingers dug into her soft skin.
"Molly…" he whispered when he realized she was awake, his lips tickling her where he pressed his face between her shoulder and neck.
"I'm here, Sherlock," she whispered back, hardly daring to move—when Sherlock got this keyed up, one wrong mood would send him pacing for hours around the house and leave her alone, and she didn't want to be alone tonight of all nights. He could pace obsessively tomorrow night, any other night, but tonight he owed it to her to stay with her.
"Molly, I love you—I don't deserve you, but I love you, I do," he said, his voice soft and barely above the whisper from earlier. Molly petted her fingers through his hair and tried to shift around a bit so that she could cradle him with her body—and she felt him relax into the feeling.
"Sherlock, I deserve whoever I want, and I want you—and you deserve the same do you want me?" She smiled when he clutched tighter around her and nodded, even though it was too dark for him to see it and besides he still had his face hidden in the crook of her neck. Molly continued running her fingers through his dark curls and thought about tomorrow—they would go to see Greg Lestrade, and then John and his wife Mary, and whoever else Sherlock decided needed to know he was alive again. Tomorrow this vulnerable man would be gone.
Sherlock mediated his mood swings and obsessions by letting out occasional moments of vulnerability, of his humanity, all through the day. But when he was forced to store them up, when he let them out they poured out—and this, right now, was three years' worth of her husband's tenderness, sweetness, and weakness coming out. It would all be gone by tomorrow, but for the moment Molly was glad to have this much. She had Sherlock Holmes, and he had her.
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