Down the steps go John goes and Sherlock isn't quite sure what he should do.

The world is devoid of color.

He swings the violin bow back and forth in a slight pendulum motion just to keep his hands busy.

He always knew that John would have a reaction, but not that. There was no screaming, no cursing and no abrasive hugs. He had stared at him like a ghost and then he just walked away.

He stops swinging the bow and walks over to his chair, picks up his phone where he left it to rest and dials a number.

"My flat's empty. My fridge is empty." He says to the voice on the other end.

The voice sighs into the phone and says,

"Are you sure Mycroft didn't put anything in your fridge?"

Sherlock doesn't answer. The voice continues.

"I can't come over tonight, but tomorrow morning. I'll be right over with some milk. Don't leave."

No answer.

"Please don't leave."

Sherlock finally answers. "I won't."

x-x-x

Mrs. Hudson didn't come upstairs after John disappeared. Sherlock was sure she would come bounding up to see him, but she didn't. He wonders if she is afraid to see him, afraid to see a dead man walking. Sherlock groans in his chair. They should be glad that he's back. He tosses his phone up in the air, annoyed, but then a memory whirs to life in his busy mind. It is linked to another death.

When he had first met Mrs. Hudson, he had been examining her pictures when he had been in her house.

"You have no older pictures of this boy. This boy should be in his thirties b now. This is the oldest one you have," He pointed at a twenty-year old boy smiling with his arms around a younger Mrs. Hudson. "Died at a young age? Doesn't seem the type to stop talking to his mum."

Mrs. Hudson voice quavered. "He always called me in the morning and at night."

Sherlock nodded his head. "He had not called you one morning?"

"He had called me that morning. T-That night he did not. " She swallowed and spoke more bravely. "He got into a car accident coming back from meeting a friend. He wasn't pissed, mind you, but accidents, they happen."

Sherlock had ignored the pointless information except for the main fact. "I was right then. You have no son anymore,"

"Mr. Holmes-"

"Sherlock,"

"Sherlock. Mind your tongue." She pointed an angry waggling finger at him. "I will always have a son. He won't come walking through the door again or the phone won't ring again with his voice, but I'll still have him." She handed him a tin of biscuits. "Have one."

"I'm not-"

She shoved it at him. "Have one. I insist."

Sherlock had reluctantly shoved one in his mouth. They were quite good. He knew not to mess with this woman.

The phone clatters to the floor. He doesn't remember why he saved that memory. It was his first meeting with Martha Hudson. She had been strong and determined, but also there was tenderness and a kindness to her.

He sighs and picks up his phone and begins tossing it again.

She'll come up when she's ready, he tells himself. Mrs. Hudson is allowed that.

x-x-x

Sherlock is pacing back and forth when there's a knock on the door. He jumps to the closed door, but waits for the voice behind to speak. He has been pacing all night.

"It's me, Sherlock." It's not Mrs. Hudson. It is the voice he had been expecting to hear after his phone call. He swiftly opens the door.

Molly Hooper walks in and hands him a bag with milk and sandwich she picked up from Speedy's. He looks at it and eventually reluctantly takes it from her as she shrugs off her coat and leaves it on the couch.

"Mrs. Hudson let me in. She did say you were very naughty for sneaking into her house. She says not today, but soon she'll come up. I think she was crying. Happy tears, mind you."

"John always bought the milk." He says dejectedly, completing ignoring the information given to him. He is still concerned about John's departure.

"I know. Tea?"

"Please."

She busily opens the cabinets as Sherlock puts away the milk and leaves the sandwich on the table like he's not sure where it belongs, like it's a foreign creature.

"Molly,"

"Yes?" She twists her head around to look at him.

"Not that mug. That's-"

"Johns." She nods, understanding and puts it back in the cabinet. She takes a plain one for her and a striped one for him. She goes to open the fridge for the milk he had just put away.

"Sherlock, the fridge is full of food."

Sherlock turns. "Is it?"

Molly chuckles as she takes the milk out. "Oh Sherlock. I don't know how you did it for three years."

"I am a grown adult. I can feed myself. I have done it before."

Molly cradles the milk and stares at him. "I'm very happy you're back in one piece."

Sherlock looks away from her gaze and leans against the wall of the kitchen. "John came to see you."

She nods as she moves toward the kettle.

"He came to see me yesterday after leaving you I assume. I opened my lab to find him, panting. I think he ran from Baker Street to Barts. I didn't think that was possible. He had to speak to me urgently, he said."

"Go on."

"He just asked if you were real because he was tired of believing in things that weren't there. Reality verse make believe. I told him yes. Then all he said was that he was sorry for me that I had to lie. He said that must have been a lot for me and,"

"And?"

"Then he just left." The kettle whistles. "Tea's ready."

x-x-x

Molly cups her tea in her hands while she curls in John's chair and Sherlock sits in his own, legs long with his feet crossed at the bottom, hands in his thoughtful steepled position. The tea sits next to him, not being touched. Both are quiet and then he speaks.

"Do you think he'll come back?" Sherlock wants it to go back to the way it was. There is no more Moriarty or the webs he had woven to trap he or his friends in. He and John can just go back to solving cases.

Molly looks at him thoughtfully. "I wish he could see you now."

"Why?"

"Oh Sherlock because it- this is what people do when they know they've hurt someone-"

"I didn't hurt him. I was protecting him. He would be dead. As would Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson."

"I know, but Sherlock," He glares at her. "You left him alone for three years."

"He's still alive."

Molly picks up her tea and curls back in her seat. She swirls her tea. Sherlock doesn't know why she does it. It does nothing to the tea as she doesn't put milk or sugar in hers. She speaks, still swirling the spoon. "It can't be an overnight miracle like you want it to be. I think when you died, a large part of him thought he was at fault that he couldn't save you."

"That's ridiculous." Sherlock brushes aside that silly notion.

"He's a doctor. And now seeing you back, alive, it's another blow. You abandoned him. You had adventures and you left him here as though he wasn't good enough for you."

Sherlock looks affronted.

"I did anything and everything for him! Doesn't he see that?" He jumps up waving his arms in a fit. Molly puts her tea down and tries to cajole him back into his seat.

"He does, I know he does," She easies him back into his seat, "But it doesn't make up for the pain of being abandoned. I know that feeling and it's not fun especially when you can't get an answer for why? You start to hate yourself, trying to figure out what you did to make the other person leave you."

Sherlock jumps up again, refusing Molly's calming hands. "I need to speak with him." He insists. "Where do you think he is? He only moved out recently, with that Mary woman he was with. I could smell her perfume on him." He turns his nose up at this fact.

"Please Sherlock, you can't leave." She calls as he starts to make a dash for his coat. "Your brother said not for another week. John has had enough of the press."

He stops midway putting his scarf on. "The papers have been largely empty. That much has been obvious."

"That doesn't stop people from pestering."

"John can handle them." He's almost out the door, but Molly has dashed to the entranceway. Hair is flying free in front of her face and Molly is trying to look vey stern in protecting the front door. Her teacup lays spilled on the floor in her run to meet him at the door.

"No Sherlock. No. It's not the kind thing to do."

"Kindness?" He scoffs. "Who said anything about being kind?"

"Sherlock, no. John and Lestrade, they have been working through your old cases."

"Why? That's silly of them." He tries to get past Molly, but she won't budge.

"They were trying to clear your name."

Sherlock ponders this thought for a minute. He remembered what he told John on the roof at Barts. I'm a fake…

He unwinds the scarf from his neck and shrugs off his coat. He heads back to his chair. "Tell John I would like to see him. Tell him what I've told you."

Molly's eyebrows rose. "What would you precisely like me to tell him?"

"The day you cleaned me up three years ago."

Molly's eye flashed back to Sherlock sitting in the morgue with Molly and her gauze cleaning up a cut above his eye when he landed in the garbage truck.

"Post traumatic Stress Disorder develops in 11 to 20% of soldiers returning form war."

Molly let him ramble as she cleaned him up.

"John loved war and I ended it for him. He hates the aftermath of it. The cleanup of it all."

She continued to clean him up. The shock of carrying out his plan is now just hitting him, she realized.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock's eyes locked onto hers. "He looked sad. No one has ever looked sad at me like I would be missed. I have only been met with people and their looks of disappointment. He looked terrified but he also looked sad.

Molly didn't say anything. She cleaned him up while Sherlock closed his eyes and tried to compose himself, knowing the task ahead of him.

Molly reaches for her coat that she too had tossed on the couch from entering earlier.

"I'll tell him. I don't know if he'll come, but I'll tell him."

Sherlock nods his thanks as Molly's out the door. Once she's out he looks for his violin, picks up it up and begins to play. The milk sits on the counter, forgotten.