Holidaysat221b prompt of the day - 8/10/22: Hmm… Molly is actually very cunning (I think she is indeed canonically), she uses her doe eyes, throaty voice, and innocent smile to get away with everything. So many people fall for her tactics, Sherlock is one of them, although he has more control than the others. - Anonymous

Rated a very light T for Language.

Jim hadn't seen it. Mycroft hadn't seen it. Culverton Smith and that slimy, loathsome toad Charles Augustus Magnuson hadn't seen it.

Mary (lord, she missed Mary!), who ought to have seen it, and John, who never would until he stopped lumping all women into Categories (if ever a man had a Whore/Madonna complex…), had both missed it.

Even the ever-clever Eurus hadn't seen it.

People who ought to have seen it had all missed it. She quite enjoyed that, hugging the secret knowledge of her private truth to herself with glee.

Only Sherlock Holmes had ever seen it. Seen HER.

But lately, oh lately, he had stopped seeing her or at least, stopped paying as close attention to her as he should have been. That vexed her, and when she was vexed…well. He knew how she was when she was vexed. Knew better than to treat her as an afterthought in his life.

Which was why, after figuring out what his sister had in mind for him, after discovering said sister's ability to ghost in and out of her prison like River Song, Molly was making him pay for it.

"You say it," she challenged him, entirely crocodilian tears choking her voice and glinting in the corners of her eyes. She kept her expression downcast, knowing that she was being watched, and that Sherlock wasn't alone and couldn't do anything but play along. Because of COURSE his psychotic and semi-psychic sister had placed bombs in Molly's flat, although she'd pretend she hadn't. And so Sherlock believed her to be in mortal danger.

More fool he, she thought viciously as she waited for him to answer her challenge.

And answer it he did; oh so beautifully, his voice halting at first as he said the words. "I, I love you." Then, more strongly, more surely. She pictured him gazing up at the screen as if looking directly into her eyes instead of at her bowed profile. "I love you."

She made him wait, made him squirm, made him almost panic before repeating the words herself. "I love you," she murmured, and the phone cut off.

Molly held the phone to her lips, facing away from the cameras as a gleeful smile tugged at her lips.

That would show her ungrateful husband that he couldn't take her for granted!

(Later, when he returned home from his ordeal at Sherrinford and Musgrave, Sherlock did indeed show his wife exactly how much he appreciated her, even when she was tormenting him. Or was it especially when - well, that's between the husband and wife and far outside the scope of this glimpse into their lives.)

End note: Yeah, so...yeah. I wrote this Thing. I hope you enjoyed it? Dark!Molly can be fun even if the exact nature of her darkness is as ill-defined as I made it here :)