She Mattered:

"You're wrong, you know. You do count. You've always counted and I've always trusted you. But you were right. I'm not okay."

"Tell me what's wrong." Her gaze penetrated him and Sherlock trembled.

"Molly, I think I'm going to die."

"What do you need?" She could make his hair stand on end with just a few simple words.

"If I wasn't everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?" He knew she wouldn't now. Surely, after everything John had told him he'd done wrong, after Christmas…

"What do you need?"

"You."

It had been a few months since that conversation, and Sherlock was now sprawled on Molly's couch, staring at the ceiling with his fingers steepled beneath his chin. The texture above was not like the texture of 221B, but it was still interesting enough. It gave his mind something to run across while the six nicotine patches worked their way into his system. His brain was going to become mush. He needed a distraction, but Molly was at Bart's for another few hours. Sherlock was alone.

Alone. Just as he'd left John Watson. The last words he'd heard from the man he'd heard from a distance, read from his angry lips. John had begged, and Sherlock could not give him that miracle. Not yet. While it was true that Moriarty was gone, for good this time, there was too much danger in revealing Sherlock's own not-so-demise. He'd gathered many an enemy, and Moriarty had obviously drug them back up from the depths of the underbelly of London. This life he was leading now, dead to the world, is what London needed for the time. It was what Sherlock needed in all his selfish agony.

He wasn't sure he could make it without Molly. Despite his enormous miscalculations with her, she still stood by him. She and only four others believed in him. Though now that he thought about it, Mycroft and Lestrade might be out of that equation now. His "suicide" rather played toward him being guilty, especially with a dead Rich Brooks on the rooftop. Or, at least a puddle of his blood. Of course, all of that is washed away now. They don't tend to leave that sort of mess lying about. People often got sensitive regarding death and gore.

Molly wasn't, which was good because slowly he was turning her kitchen into the one he'd had at Baker Street. She didn't put up with as much as John did, but she put up with enough to allow Sherlock to have his experiments and occupy his mind for brief moments. Sherlock hadn't been able to put another body part in the refrigerator since Molly had nearly mistaken the human liver for a nice cut of meat to put on the stove. Molly liked his violin at least…

He arched up over the arm of the couch and looked upside-down through the house. His violin sat against the chair in the dinning-room a few paces away. Reflexively, Sherlock called out, "John! Come get me my violin!" There of course, wasn't an answer. No footsteps approaching to show a disapproving face. No John.

"Damn." Sherlock climbed off the couch to retrieve the instrument himself. A light blue dressing gown flapped excitedly behind him. It wasn't long enough for his liking though, didn't come down to his ankles and allow for him to wrap up perfectly in it. He would have thrown a strop but there wasn't a soul about to be affected by it.

"Damn again."

Sherlock took the violin into his hands and strolled back to the living room where he had a stand with an unfinished symphony laying about it. He started in the middle and played further, stringing some notes together, erasing, and rewriting. This would at least keep his mind busy for some time. With all of the nicotine flooding his system, his brain was open and his eyes were taking in more than usual. He could practically see the notes floating off of the violin strings. The marched across his vision and placed themselves in position on the papers. When it became too much, when he saw all of it about him drowning out the rest of the room, Sherlock closed his eyes and gave over to his sense of hearing and touching.

He didn't hear the door opening. He didn't hear her footsteps across the floor. He was still standing in the middle of the living room with his eyes closed and ears tuned into the music. It was only when he felt a soft hand on his arm that Sherlock noticed her presence. He came out of the trance with a gasp, silver eyes snapping open and landing on her honeyed ones. "…Molly…"

"Sorry for em, interrupting. I was just, well I was home and just thought you should, you know…know." She never blushed, her pale skin staying soft under his gaze.

"No, you're fine. It's all fine." He swallowed hard at the familiar words. "I was going to make dinner, but lost track of the time." Sherlock pulled the violin from beneath his chin and set it back in the case, then loosened the bow and added that as well. Perhaps that was the truth, but perhaps he was just trying to be kind.

Molly just smiled and held up a bag in her hands. "Chinese, hope you don't mind." She turned away, her long ponytail bouncing with her movement. The jumper she wore bunched under her bag.

Sherlock followed her and snagged the bag from her shoulder with one hand, then straightened the probably uncomfortably bunched fabric with the other. "Just, on your desk, right?" He was already walking for it without awaiting an answer. She never did provide an answer, either. He could hear her getting plates down, silverware out, and opening paper and plastic containers of food.

"Just help yourself to anything." She was scooping white rice onto her own plate as Sherlock walked back over.

That was how their relationship had grown to be, and it had become that way quickly. They helped themselves to each other often. For example, the other day Sherlock was bent over a microscope looking at the chemical reaction of some unknown particles he'd found on the bottom of Molly's shoe. She came up next to him, dug into his pocket and pulled out his new falsely named credit card, now reading Seamus Abbey. He had, of course, needed a false identification. "I'm going to get breakfast things for tomorrow. Need anything?" she asked. Sherlock had said nothing, so she took the card and left for the store.

Another day Sherlock was thinking too much, had finished all of his projects, and was throwing a strop on the couch. Molly had come over then, too, and curled on the arm of the couch above his head, running her fingers through his hair. It had given Sherlock sensations to focus on, things new to him. No one had just sat quietly with him while he went through these moments and given themselves to him. She was as surprising as his John.

Now, sitting on the couches with the food spread between them on the coffee table, Molly and Sherlock grabbed what they wanted. Sherlock hadn't eaten in a couple of days so he knew he needed to eat now.

"I was thinking about all of this, Sherlock… shouldn't John know? Shouldn't your brother know?"

He bit down on the tines of his fork and grimaced. "Er, no Molly. I shouldn't tell them; then what would have been the point of doing this?"

She sighed and chewed her moo shu pork a little faster. Always polite. She swallowed, then spoke up again, "Why me, Sherlock? All you ever said was that I mattered. I just don't see how…"

He leveled her with a look that would have had John frowning and asking for the explanation of what he was missing. Molly, on the other hand, just stared back with those big inquisitive eyes.

"I already told you, you say the most horrible things to me…"

Sherlock actually laughed. It wasn't a big laugh, more of a chuckle from one side of his mouth and he looked over at her. "Molly, haven't you noticed that normal human communication is a bit beyond me? And most of the time I'm attempting it alone when I'm with you."

"It's not my forte either, but you could try being a little nicer to me is all." She picked up a sugared roll and bit into it, sugar brushing off on the sides of her mouth.

"You have…" Taking immediate response to her words, Sherlock cut himself off and just reached out to brush the powder away with two steady fingers.

Molly held the rest of the pastry between her fingers and blinked at him, then smiled. "Thank you."

Sherlock merely nodded and went back to his food. He finished quickly and then sat back, pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms about his knees. Molly ate slowly, and she liked to turn on a science show while she ate.

Already forgetting her line of questioning, he turned to something of interest to him. Sherlock liked to watch her in her nightly ritual. He was taking mental notes about what piqued her interest, finding that she lifted her eyebrows up high when surprised. She also pouted her lips out a little and squished her eyebrows together when she didn't agree with something.

"That's wrong." She would mutter this occasionally and then follow it with some half-formed sentence about what was wrong with some science term or experiment.

Agreeing with most of it, Sherlock added in his two penny's worth to see how she responded to that. It went a lot further than he'd thought it would. "Well… not quite Sherlock see if the-"

"You're not taking into account time-"

"Time only matters in this case as the-"

"Oh, yes of course," Sherlock said throwing his hands in the air. "If the reaction isn't-"

"Exactly, so they're going about it all wrong."

"Agreed." He smiled and settled back to watching her. She was smiling as well, and was leaning forward now, abandoning the rest of the food on the plate. Molly pushed the plate a little further away with her bare toes.

They sat in a subdued silence for a long time, and Sherlock felt his mind actually focusing on one thing at a time. It wasn't often that it did that. He tried to get it to quiet down by keeping himself immersed, but he just saw too much. Sitting on a couch with Molly, he could only see her. Did you know that her brown hair shimmered red in some light, especially the light of the television when all other lights were out? He liked that. Getting up, Sherlock dragged the Chinese remnants away from the table and turned out the lights before returning to the couch. Molly hadn't even stirred.

Sherlock didn't seem to realize that he was just standing there, by the couch, looking down at her. He realized this only when Molly turned her face up to him. "Aren't you going to sit again?"

"Hmm?" He folded his arms over his chest and stood a little taller.

She pointed at the spot next to her. Sherlock's eyes glanced to it then back to Molly's. He pursed his lips tightly, turning them white with the pressure. Then he shook his head.

They kept their eyes locked for a long time. Minutes. Sherlock would blink long and lazily so that each time he opened his eyes again it was a completely new look at Molly's face. He loved that she could give him something so singularly distinct each time. He had always known she was spectacularly brilliant since the first day he'd stepped foot in the lab with her, but he hadn't wanted to look much closer until now. Her eyes were much brighter, clearer, than any others he'd come across. He wondered briefly if she would let him experiment on them, but brushed it away figuring anything he would try to do would be painful to her.

When she, apparently, realized that Sherlock wasn't going to sit down with her, Molly smiled softly at him and eased back on the couch. When he crouched down in front of her, reached out and slowly took her arm in his hands, fingers laying against her steady pulse, she barely blinked at him. He also found this fascinating. It appeared as if nothing he did could surprise her. He kept his long, pale fingers on her pulse point, and just felt her life flowing beneath him.

"You fascinate me."

Molly's pulse jumped and she pulled back a little. Her arm was still snug in his hand though, and Sherlock tried something else.

"I meant it when I said you matter. I meant it when I said you shouldn't get into another relationship."

She frowned and her pulse slowed. That wasn't quite what he expected. He thought it would quicken, that she would pull away from him. "I'm capable of having a relationship with another human being…"

"I know that. You're not following along."

She leaned closer. "So… you don't want me to have a relationship with anyone. You find me fascinating. Sherlock…"

"No, I'm not."

"But I really think you are."

"I'm married to my work."

It was Molly's turn to laugh. She laughed quite a bit, and her cheeks actually tinged pink. "I've been part of your work since the beginning. That's why I matter, isn't it? That's what I was missing this whole time. You treat me just like the rest of your work, bluntly and precisely opinionated. You comment to fix me, to perfect me. Which is why you don't hide from me. There's nothing to hide from me and-"

He cut her off with a kiss. Sherlock had leaned in, placing his hands on either side of Molly and put his lips gently to her talking ones. It was soft, just enough to make her stop the spilling of words that Sherlock hadn't wanted to speak himself. Now, he guessed, he didn't have to. It amazed him that she could find her way into his head so easily. Actually, it was quite terrifying.

The talents of Molly Hooper were just beginning to show themselves beyond her self-protecting walls. And Sherlock Holmes was letting his own walls drop in front of her.