Molly sat opposite Sherlock and watched him subversively from behind her book. He sat back in the wooden kitchen chair, as patrician as always. His legs were crossed and his expression was as remote as the house felt.
Molly had stood outside the bathroom door as Sherlock made himself sick again and again in an attempt to get the alcohol out of his system. John had all but thrown the inebriated man into her arms before giving her a strange look and disappearing upstairs. She had tried to ask Sherlock what had happened but he wouldn't meet her eye. He staggered into the bathroom and shut the door in her face, leaving her wringing her hands outside. Offers of help and water were curtly refused.
When Sherlock emerged, his eyes still slightly glazed, he had straightened his jacket formally and cleared his throat.
"Coffee." He said decidedly.
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The kettle whistled and Molly jumped. Sherlock was staring at her evenly, expectantly.
He wants me to make it for him, she thought with a surge of annoyance.
But instead Sherlock dropped his eyes and passed a hand over his face. He gave her a tired smile.
"Coffee?"
This time it was a question.
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They cradled their cups in silence. Molly realised that this was the first time Sherlock had ever made her coffee. She studied the man sitting opposite her. That was what he seemed reduced to now, just a man. His brilliance overshadowed by how human he had exposed himself to be; drunk, lost, exhausted.
"You have to eat."
Sherlock looked up, some familiar sharpness returning to his eyes. Molly was determined.
"You have to eat, or you won't have the energy to keep thinking."
Sherlock waved a hand dismissively.
"I always have the energy to think."
He watched as Molly stood and began to search through the kitchen cupboards. She found a loaf of bread and carried it to the table. This time she sat beside Sherlock. He flinched.
"Let's start small."
Molly tore off the corner of the loaf with her fingers and offered it to him. Sherlock frowned.
"I am not a duck." He said firmly.
Molly laid the morsel on the table in front of Sherlock without a word, took out her phone and scrolled through her contacts. Finding what she was looking for she laid the phone carefully beside the piece of bread. Sherlock looked down at the screen. Brightly backlit, his brother's name and phone number blinked back at him.
Sherlock sighed. Begrudgingly, he picked up the bread and took a bite.
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John stood at the main door in his socks and looked up at the sky. A loaded heaviness had come into the air, the mercifully cool breeze replaced by a smothering stillness. John watched clouds roll across the moon and shuddered at the first distant, rumbling peal of thunder. A storm was coming in fast. The dark clouds seemed to boil in the moonlit sky. All the heat was building to this, holding its breath. Something would break tonight.
John turned to limp back inside. Behind him, the crickets chirping in the grass fell silent.
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Molly stood too when Sherlock made to leave the kitchen.
"I'm going up too," she said. "I don't like being alone here."
Sherlock paused, his hand on the back of a chair. His eyes settled on her, scanning her face. She was used to this and waited patiently, fancying that she could see the binary moving fast behind his eyes. There was some colour in his cheeks now, she noticed, and his body had stopped shaking. He's noticing me noticing this, she realised. Sherlock inclined his head slightly, his eyes still fixed on her.
"Thank... You." He said finally. He turned to leave. Molly followed him, stunned. It was definitely the first time he had thanked her, honestly, gratefully, and perhaps the first time he had thanked anyone with his voice sounding like that, his eyes meeting hers for once without freezing her to the bone. She followed him out of the kitchen.
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The storm came in fast that night. The stifling air sang with electricity. Lying in bed, John shuddered with every new peal of thunder, but even worse were the ringing silences in between. They made him think of the huge emptiness of the house pressing in on them, three frail humans trapped like rats in the East wing.
Sherlock stood at the window and watched as the clouds burst and hurled heavy drops of rain against the glass. The pressure in the air made his head ache. He pressed his fingers against his temples and frowned.
He thought that it was happening again, in the kitchen, that feeling, the lust. Something had risen in his chest when he looked at Molly. It had scared him. He had looked down at her and his heart quickened.
No. Not again.
It wasn't though, was it? This was different. The sensations that came with the nightmares had been violent and almost unbearable. This feeling was pleasant. The heightened pulse rate, flood of warmth, impulse to reach out and touch Molly's hair, trace her parted lips with his thumb... Different, but caused by the same drug, mind game or hypnotism as the other?
Sherlock ground his knuckles into his eyes in frustration. Where did one stop and the other start? Was any of it real? How could he know?
"Enough."
He said it out loud, brought back to focus by the sound of his own voice. Whatever these feelings were, they didn't matter. Couldn't matter. All importance rested on The Case.
If there even was one.
Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose hard and shook his head, turning his attention to clearing up the mess on his lab table.
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The warmth of the air surrounding her like a blanket, Molly had fallen asleep surprisingly easily. Since she was a child she had always loved lightning. Her fascination with the workings of the universe had started young, and even at eight (armed with her first book of science facts for children) she had pressed her nose against the window at the first sign of a storm. It felt to her as though the universe was knocking, making its presence known to all the tiny people. Almost every thought of childhood is apt to comfort. Molly lay, breathing deeply, covered by the thinnest sheet. It was too warm for much else. She slept peacefully. And then she began to dream.
The room again.
No.
That low room. She was alone this time. The cradle in the corner.
No.
Molly froze. A thin, soft voice was singing.
"London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down..."
Molly struggled to turn and couldn't. The air was setting like concrete around her, thick and slow.
"Build it up with bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar, build it up with bricks and mortar, my fair lady..."
The cradle began to rock. Molly closed her eyes. The voice lost its softness, turned into a death rattle-
"Take the key and lock her up... Lock her up... Lock her up... Take the key and lock her up, my fair lady..."
Molly was drawn to the cradle, slow step by slow step, the steadily, grotesquely rocking thing pulling her into its orbit. With a sick shiver she realised that the voice was not coming from behind her, around her, anywhere, it was her that was singing, and as she raised trembling fingers to her lips she felt them move of their own accord, rasping out the words-
"Set a man to watch all night... Watch all night, watch all night... Set a man to watch all night-"
Molly's arm locked, reaching for the muslin covering the cradle-
"My... Fair... Lady."
Her own hand, out of her control. Lifting the rotting material. And in the cradle was-
Molly woke with a racking gasp. Panting, she tried to sit up, but her body was still locked in paralysis. She closed her eyes again, willing it away.
Something cold landed on her cheek like a tear. A drop of water. And now she could smell the stagnation if the lake, and she knew that there was someone in the room with her. She opened her eyes.
The girl standing by her bed looking down at her. Her mouth just a hole in her face. Grey skin, waxy and loose from being in the water so long. Pond slime in her hair. Her twisted face.
Molly opened her mouth to scream and the girl pitched forward onto her.
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Lightning lit the grounds, making the lake and forest look for moments at a time like a tableau, concentrated, as though a model train might pass through them. Sherlock wiped the condensation from the window absently. The rain and the darkness made visibility poor, for a minute all he could see was his own face staring back at him.
The storm was practically on top of them.
Counting between bursts, Sherlock had gotten to eight on the last one. This time, on six, a flash of lightning so bright it bleached out the darkness like an overexposed photograph. Sherlock jumped and leaned forward so fast that his forehead almost hit the windowpane. Out in the night, in the rain, a small figure, almost luminous in a white nightdress, was walking across the grounds.
"Molly..." Sherlock whispered, then shouted,
"Molly!"
The thunder drowned his voice.
Hammering the window with his fist, Sherlock realised she was making her way towards the lake.
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The rain came down in sheets, blurring everything, but Molly's eyes were sightless anyway. Her face was slack as a sleepwalkers. Her thin cotton nightdress plastered to her skin, soaked. Another flash of lightening illuminated the jetty, the lake's surface pockmarked with singing rain.
Blind but steady, Molly climbed the steps, sodden wood under her bare feet. Carefully she walked down the centre.
Another flash, the thunder immediate now.
Reaching the end of the jetty, Molly stood quietly for a minute. Then she bent forward, reaching out both arms as if in embrace.
Sherlock grabbed her around the waist as she began to fall.
He tripped backwards with her, landing heavily on the wooden boards with her on top of him. He looked into her face as her empty eyes fluttered closed.
"Molly!"
He rolled to the side, laying her on the jetty beside him. Another flash lit her white face, her white nightdress. She looked like a wax doll. Sherlock lifted her easily. He stared out over the dark expanse of water.
"What brought you here?" He whispered to the comatose girl in his arms, then a movement caught his eye.
Sherlock stared in confusion and horror into the lake.
Below the surface, the still water shattered by rain, he saw a pale, drawn face sink out of view into the darkness of the deep water.