What Moriarty Missed

Genre: Family/Friendship

Pairings: Greg and Molly

Main characters: Greg and Sherlock

"Moriarty slipped up. He made a mistake. Because the one person he thought didn't matter at all to me was the one person that mattered the most." (Sherlock to Molly, Season 3, Episode 1, "The Empty Hearse")

"Why did you do that?" Greg said, breaking the serenity of the silence he was sharing with Sherlock. There were times when they had much to say, whether John Watson was with them, or not. But there were times when silence spoke volumes to the depth their friendship had achieved.

Greg was genuinely flummoxed. Newly engaged to Molly Hooper, happier than he'd ever been in his life, but still utterly flummoxed.

"Do what?" Sherlock asked curiously, turning to his friend.

"Give Molly up for me? You love her, just as much as I do. So why did you give her up and push her towards me?"

"Because I love her. I have very few people in my circle who are important enough to me to say, fake my own death and vanish for two years just to save their lives, both from immediate danger, and future peril. John. Mrs. Hudson. You. Moriarty missed one though." Sherlock had turned reflective, his features softening with the inner emotion he had finally learned to reconcile with his outer logic and chilled impersonal demeanor.

"Yes. He missed Molly," Greg replied. None of this was news to him. The older man turned to look at his friend, studying his face for clues.

"Molly. Moriarty greatly underestimated her worth to me."

"But Eurus didn't. She saw it, and she used it, tried to destroy you with it. I mean, I understand of course that for you, it wasn't about you being in danger... it was about Molly's life being threatened, even if it was a hollow threat. Still, the game was about you, and Molly was meant to appear be collateral damage." Greg finished. Sherlock glanced at him, a look of grateful understanding passing over his eyes.

Sherlock nodded. "Yes, she was. I'm not sure Eurus would do such a thing now, she's changing slowly with time and contact with family and myself. But at the time, she had no qualms about using Molly to get to me," Sherlock replied. "I'm not sure that Magnussen wouldn't have put her in peril as well, had I not… well. Had he not, I mean…"

"The world is full of Magnussens and Euruses, I suppose," Greg conceded, noting but choosing to ignore the near admission of guilt. Magnussen was dead, no longer posing a threat to anyone he cared about. Whoever had actually pulled the trigger was of no consequence to him. "If anyone knows that, it's you and I."

"Indeed, Greg. I knew I could never make Molly truly happy, not in the long term, but most of all, I wasn't sure I could ever keep her truly safe. Moriarty may be dead, Magnussen may be dead, Eurus may be changing for the better… but there is still much evil left in the world, in my world. When one evil is eliminated, it always seems that there are two more in queue to take its place. It's peril to my loved ones in perpetuity. If I didn't trust you to be able to protect her from that, I may not have encouraged your union quite as adamantly as I did."

"I understand," Greg said, simply. "Thank you for that, by the way. For that matchmaking bit. I hope you realize what it's meant, I mean knowing what you gave up."

"If our roles had been reversed, Greg, if giving her up meant her happiness and well-being were to be assured, would you?"

Greg smiled briefly, his eyebrows twitching, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course I would," he said.

"Then you know that I didn't truly give up what was most important. I may have encouraged you and Molly to be together, to marry, to have a family perhaps, all I did there was to encourage something I saw existing in both of you to fully emerge and blossom into something gloriously beautiful and true... but I didn't give her up, not fully. Ensuring her happiness meant that I didn't have to do that. The core of my relationship with Molly remains."

"The friendship," Greg said, nodding. "I understand now."

Sherlock smiled warmly at Greg, knowing the DI could sometimes speak volumes with few words. With a mutual nod towards each other, the two men returned to their comfortable, companionable silence.