It Took a Week

It took him a week to return.

Sherlock refused to admit even to himself that it had anything to do with Molly's conveying of John's rejection.

It didn't mean it wasn't true, only that he deigned not to accept that fact. If he didn't accept it then it wasn't true for him, and then… Well, then Sherlock would change his track of thought because that was just idiotic.

And Sherlock Holmes wasn't an idiot.

"People are idiots." he had muttered out loud, already ready for the next line, that fated next line.

But in order for him to say his next scripted line, there had to be another to say it first, and Sherlock closed his eyes as the knowledge struck him all over again that she wasn't there to do it. Not now, not in twenty minutes when she came back from the shops, not in three days when she came back from a weekend with the girls.

Not ever.

There would be none to play that game with now. No-one to shoot that look from her the side of her eyes, to raise one eyebrow and tell him how wrong he was.

"Most people."

"Most people." he'd whispered to the empty living room, unable to comprehend that he could not make himself open his eyes to see that empty room.

Sherlock Holmes was a self-proclaimed clever man. A genius, if you would.

But he was coming to realise, in the most painful way, that there were going to be a lot of moments in his near future when he would feel like this. Not able to understand.

Incomprehensible had never been a word Sherlock Holmes thought he would ever utter, certainly not about himself, and he was uncomfortable at the astounding fact that he was, right then, unable to comprehend.

Human beings were science, mathematics, he had always believed. Even the lowest IQ followed patterns. Patterns that to most eyes were not patterns at all but Sherlock saw, had always seen.

But now?

Now there was no pattern. His own particular, well-kept, organised brain was travelling paths that wound and wove and disappeared and connected where they shouldn't and he was… lost.

And every path that dead-ended did so right on the threshold of the wing of his Mind Palace he was most afraid to travel to now. Not Moriarty's dungeon, not the locked room Magnussen occupied. Not the lavish sitting rooms he had assigned to The Woman.

No, the wing that was a cottage, was a mansion of it's own, was an entity that lived and breathed in Sherlock's mind like it belonged there and ruled itself at the same time.

The part of his Palace which was not a palace at all but a home of its own.

The Watson wing.

Sherlock stood before the steps again, again and again and again and he couldn't. He was taken there by the paths and halted by… by himself. He was afraid, in the way that Sherlock only allowed himself to be in his own head.

Because inside of those walls were the ones he was most afraid of, most unsure of. He would take a day in Moriarty's torture cell with him than face the journey through that worn, welcoming wooden door.

Sherlock had opened his eyes and taken a deep, unsettled breath.

And he had had to move.

So he stood outside of Molly's door, knowing Molly. Knowing what she was going to say, knowing what she was going to do. Knowing the moment he knocked that she knew it was him. And he knew she'd bring her with her, to step outside and tell him to go away. But he knew Molly, knew what she would do. He knew even the motives. Molly was, Sherlock so rarely said, special in a way that was unreplicatable. A Molly sort of way, Mary would have said.

The door opened and she stepped through, closing the door to and looking at him with those sorrowful doe eyes.

"Sherlock." she said quietly.

"Molly." he said, not surprised at all to find his gaze would not stay on her when it could track the bundle in her arms.

"Rosalund." he said, hearing the regrettable quiver in his otherwise steady baritone. "Rosie."

Molly bit her lip, her fingers tightening just a fraction before she closed her eyes.

"Sherlock." she said agin, and he did not need to try to hear the cracking resolve in her voice.

You're not to see her. she was saying, without ever opening her mouth. He doesn't want you to see her.

He doesn't want you near her.

"I know." he told her, looking at her face, seeking those new lines, the sadness that weighed so heavily on her that it were like a suffocating blanket.

"I know." she answered, a breathy knowledge as she opened her eyes to meet his gaze.

She looked down at the baby in her arms, squeezing her tight before her eyes questioned Sherlock.

Do you want-

"No." he said, taking one last, cataloguing look at the child of his friends.

"I'm sorry Sherlock." Molly whispered, holding Rosie close to her heart as she watched him turn and stride away, his coat billowing as always and yet somehow even that was sad.

As though even Sherlock's coat knew it were lacking its usual follower, lacking that old, familiar admiring gaze.

The thought made Molly's tears fall as she slipped back into the flat to put Rosie down for her nap.