Disclaimer: This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta read, so all mistakes are mine. Thanks for their reviews go to coloradoandcolorado1, Katya Jade, Reina434, Poodle warriors, LadyK1138, lavanyalabelle and Rocking the Redhead. We're entering the home stretch now ladies, and remember: it's always darkest before the dawn. Enjoy.
- CONVICTION -
He starts walking and he doesn't stop.
His head feels sore- so loud, so full- and he can't take it, he can't take the noise.
So he does what he always does.
He runs.
Sherlock fairly certain he leaves Baker Street at a sedate pace. For some reason he's terrified that someone- Mrs. Hudson or his brother or, Christ help him, Molly- will see him leaving and will guess his intentions. Will realise what he's about to do and try to stop him- Or worse yet, will realise he's not worth the trouble and let him go.
He's not sure he can bear that.
So he avoids it. He hides. He chooses uncertainty over fact. Closes the door to Baker Street as soon as Molly gives him an opportunity, walks down the steps like an automaton, like the machine John once accused him of being. And then he disappears into the streets.
He can't think. He doesn't want to think. His brain rebels, his Mind Palace feels like a slagheap. He can see Molly's expression behind his eyelids and it hurts. It aches. He has no doubt she hates him now.
He feels a sharp hiss of pain and he realises he's bitten his lip so hard he's opened it; he can feel blood dripping down his chin.
A couple passing by look up at him as he lurches towards them, the woman instinctively moving closer to her partner; Sherlock doesn't want to think it but Molly pops into his head, Molly in The Mayfair that last day before John found them.
She smiles for him behind his eyes but it's not real. It's a sham. A joke. A thing he doesn't deserve and wouldn't understand the value of anyway.
Once he's onto Gower Street he breaks into a run and within minutes he's out of breath, a stitch in his side and his lungs on fire.
He doesn't know how long his flight lasts. He doesn't even know, despite his familiarity with the city, quite where he ends up. All he knows is that his skin feels like it's on inside out and his hands are shaking, the impact of the pavement against his feet thunderous. Painful. Necessary, as necessary for his safety as his absence is for Molly's. As necessary as the death of the monster at the end of every fairy tale. Each step feels like a slap, like a blow. Each step feels like punishment. Each forced breath makes him scowl, make shim hiss in pain but he won't stop. He won't. He can't.
He hurt her, he thinks. He hurt her.
What on Earth was he thinking when he tried to hurt his Molly?
And why on Earth wouldn't she hurt him back, when he's given her so much bloody reason?
But though he tries to puzzle it out, no answer is forthcoming. Every explanation he comes up with, every avenue of inquiry, just makes his head howl and spit more vociferously. For the first time in a long time even thinking hurts. He ducks and darts through the traffic, weaving like a drunkard; He can't even remember why he thought it was a good idea to ask her to hurt him. He can't even remember why he thought she might want him, misshapen, misbegotten thing that he is, at all. All he knows is that he failed her- He let that man follow him back to their home, he let that man get into a position where he could damage Molly-
And then he didn't protect her. He let her get hurt even though he promised her he's hers and she's his.
What sort of man does that? he thinks. What sort of man does that to someone he loves?
A night long ago comes to mind, a flat in Camden and long dark fingers. The elegant dip of another body against his own, the shudder of another's breath as Victor Turner whispers his name-
Sherlock forces the memory away viciously, so distracted that he trips and ploughs headlong into a sleek, grey Peugeot that's gunning its engine, sitting at a traffic light. He lands messily, arms splaying across the bonnet even as the lights change from red to green.
"Fuck you," the car's driver calls. "Get off the fucking road, you junkie scumbag."
Sherlock blinks up at him blearily, trying to understand, trying to register.
How does that man know him well enough to say that?
The car pulls off but he stays still, traffic howling around him. He wonders how long it'll be before people stop trying to avoid hitting him and he wonders when he'll start being alarmed by that thought. He somehow suspects he'll be a long time yet. He doesn't know how long he's there, only realises it's been a while when he blinks and sees Greg Lestrade frowning at him, asking him what he's taken.
"I hurt her," he says, rather than answering. "I hurt Molly. I tried to hurt my Molly, and John found out about it."
Greg takes him to NSY, tells him he's going to let him cool his heels in a cell for the night while he gets the story of what happened from Molly.
When the detective inspector comes to find his friend though, that friend has skipped out of the station. Just walked right out- After all, it's not an unusual sight, Sherlock Holmes finally wandering home for the night.
While Greg rings Molly and explains, Sherlock goes to Soho. Finds someone who knows someone who can help him. The feel of that first hit, is, he must admit, exquisite.
He wakes up in a bed that's not his own the next morning, and he drops his phone into a bin outside Victoria Station before disappearing into the morning crowd.
Three days pass. Then a week.
Molly's so worried she's stopped sleeping or eating. Washing has also become optional.
But though she wants with all her heart to know that Sherlock's alright, she can feel a bitterness starting to build in her, and it's so great it scares her a little.
The guilt scares her too, so much more than a little, but she doesn't want to think about that.
Two weeks pass and Sherlock picks his first pocket.
A month passes and he trades his first… favour for a hit, a small bit of mutual pleasure that leaves him breathless and panting Molly's name. (The woman's he's with likes this not at all. Her boyfriend bruising his nose illustrates this rather well).
Two months pass before any of Mycroft's boys track him down, nearly three before they manage to get him into a van and off the streets. They're taking him to Whitehall, apparently. Mycroft wants a word with his baby brother, they say.
Sherlock breaks out of the van and runs. This time he hops a train.
He makes it as far as Edinburgh.
He's staring at the edifice that is that city's castle, stupid, drunken tourists milling all around him when he first lets himself think that he really misses Molly.
He doesn't normally let himself register it, because remembering his old life hurts far too much.
But tonight? Tonight, he can't help it. So he picks the pocket of a well-heeled businessman, takes his phone. Calls John's number from memory and when he doesn't answer he call's Molly's. He listens to her voice as she asks who this is, tries to quash the warm, guilty rush of pleasure he feels as she finally whispers, "Sherlock..? Is that you, Sherlock? Oh God, love, are you alright?"
The image of a razor flashes behind his eyes, chest twisting in fear as he remembers what he allowed to happen to her. What he tried to do to her.
He hands the businessman back his phone, tells him he dropped it. The man offers him a twenty in thanks but he can't make himself take it.
He finds a stinking, narrow alley off the Royal Mile and that's where he sleeps.
Mummy Holmes turns up at Baker Street, demands to meet Molly.
The pathologist doesn't want to speak with her- what can she say?- but she can't really justify fobbing her off either.
So she gives into the inevitable and lets her in.
The two women sit together, tight-lipped and silent as Mrs. Hudson pours tea and doles out biscuits. Every time Molly thinks the elder Holmes will speak the woman elects to say nothing. Just twists her obscenely expensive leather gloves in her hands, staring down at her wedding ring as if it could tell the future.
After an hour Mrs. Holmes stands, takes her leave of baker Street; It's as she's standing at the door to the flat that she says it.
"Don't let him blame you, my dear," she says quietly. "When he comes back, don't let him blame you. You can't- You can't let the boy hold you hostage with his problems, no matter how much you might wish to." She looks up.
"Do you understand me?"
And without waiting for an answer she hurries down the stairs, Mrs. Hudson closing the door behind her.
Molly stares into space for more than an hour and then stands. Totters towards the bathroom and takes her first voluntary shower since Sherlock left her. She feels the warmth of the water and she tells herself she deserves this, and when she comes out she makes a full meal for herself too.
She tries to ignore the echo of guilt that chimes in her chest but, just like her feelings for Its cause, it's never far away.
He has to leave Edinburgh in a hurry, a debt to a dealer that turns nasty making the decision for him.
So he runs again, to Manchester this time. He spent some time there, in university. It was one of his parents' many, many schemes to make him finish his education.
Mycroft thought it would be a good idea, after, "all that foolishness with Victor."
But though he knows the city better than he knew Edinburgh, he makes the same trouble, gets into the same situations in Manchester as he did in Scotland. The only difference is that this time he's recognised: The Armstrong Firm's reach is long, apparently, and they're still pissed off at him for breaking into their premises in London, something a charming professional enforcer named Tiny explains to him from the business end of a pair of pliers and a car battery.
Sherlock barely makes it out of the city- and Tiny's business premises- in one piece.
Since he can't go home he absconds again, tries Newcastle. Sheffield. Leeds. Even Doncaster.
None of it works though; his habit- and it is a habit now, even he can admit that- means that he can't settle anywhere.
There really is no rest for the wicked, he sometimes muses.
He mails John a birthday card from Nottingham, stoned off his head and so proud of himself for being able to remember the address when he's high.
It doesn't occur to him that he'll need a stamp in order for John to receive it.
It also doesn't occur to him that he's being watched as he makes his way back to the doss-house he's crashing in and scores his latest hit-
The blond-haired woman watching over him, however, knows him well enough to guess as much.
The product's bad, it's been cut with something… unhelpful.
Sherlock realises this when he wakes up, barely able to breathe, the flashing blue lights of both ambulances and police cars making his head swim.
His heartbeat's going mad, trying to drum its way out of his chest, apparently. He can't really think, and he suspects he might be seeing things because there's someone trying to help him out of the doss-house, someone he thinks he recognises though his mind shies away from giving this small, efficient, blond personage a name.
As soon as her back's turned however, he disappears into the night.
He pretends not to hear her calling that John wants to talk to him-
It's not like he knows anyone called John.
"I'm sorry Mols, I lost him."
Molly can hear the guilt in Mary's tone, the anger at herself. The sense of failure.
John had finally relented and allowed her to take over the search for Sherlock from him, and this is the closest she'd gotten to getting him back safe.
"It wasn't your fault," Molly says quietly. "He's been gone five months now, it was a miracle you tracked him down at all-"
"Don't make excuses for me," Mary says tightly. "That's what John's for." And she sighs, her voice sounding so much older. Her tone turns rueful. "I'll be back on the next train," she says after a moment. "We can regroup. I found him once, I can find him again, Molly."
Molly nods into her mobile. "Of course. Regroup. Rethink. Just get yourself home."
But though she agrees with her out loud, in her heart of hearts she doesn't really believe that anyone can bring Sherlock back to her.
Molly's birthday is in December, Sherlock remembers because she always said it got overshadowed by Christmas.
He thinks of this as he shivers in a squat in… York? Bristol? He's not sure anymore.
He just knows it's somewhere where nobody knows who he is, somewhere he can rest (if only for a while).
As he thinks it he remembers Molly's smile and he remembers that he was once hers, that she used to want to keep him for her own. He remembers her slapping him that day long ago, her calling his gifts beautiful. He remembers the sound of John's laughter and Mary's sarcasm and despite himself, he smiles.
The substances buzzing through his veins are keeping his bad memories at bay right now.
A blanket of snow covers the city, covers him.
It doesn't occur to him to fear it, but then there's little occurs to him anymore, even when he's sleeping on the streets.
The phone-call comes on a bitterly cold night, three days before Christmas.
It's from John, not Mary, and he says that he and the family are in York, ostensibly to see Harrie but really to follow a lead they've found on Sherlock. (Mycroft had initially scoffed at their investigations, but seeing them get results when his boys couldn't quite put the smile on the other side of his face).
John says Sherlock's in an ICU, says he was found in a squat.
He says there were so many drugs in his system the doctors think it was an attempted suicide.
Of course, Mary just thinks he was in his Mind Palace and just didn't notice the cold or the snow.
Either one is possible, according to John.
By this time Molly's had six months without him, six months of anger. Six months of grievance. Six months of getting on without him. She's living her life, she's eating and sleeping again. The ache of worrying about him has never gone away- it never will- but if there's one thing she can do it's compartmentalise, and that is precisely what she's done.
And yet…
"You don't have to come," John tells her. "He's not conscious yet, and there's no guarantee we'll be able to keep a hold of him once he is. I just thought…" He sighs and Molly can picture him, the weight of the world on his shoulders, the weight of his own guilt on his heart. There's more grey in his hair over Sherlock than there is over his child. "If you want to see him," he says after a moment, "then come, Mols.
This might be your last chance, if I'm being honest with you."
Molly hangs up the phone without answering. Sits in the darkness for an hour, contemplating.
And then she calls up British Rail's website from her laptop and books herself a ticket to York.