A/N: so this is chapter 2, I hope you enjoy it! Thank you all for the excellent feed back I've received and I hope you continue to enjoy the story and where I'm taking it.
Trigger warnings: suicide and self-harm.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock in any format.
It took two days for Molly to realize I was still cutting myself, and another two for her to find the blade and get rid of it. In all of this time I still hadn't spoken to her, choosing silence over the awkward conversation that would ensue if I did speak to her. She meant a lot to me, and if I was completely honest the looks she kept throwing my way were killing me. The pity, the disappointment, the pointless reassurance I always found in her eyes, it just made me despise myself that much more. She didn't deserve this; to have to put up with me, to be disappointed, not sweet Molly Hooper who wouldn't hurt a fly. So by the time she had got home from Bart's on the fifth night, I was already packed. The taxi was already booked for eight that same night, a short note written informing Molly of my departure, but she'd gotten home early. So here I was sitting on her settee, my suitcase still by the door, taxi immediately cancelled as soon as she found out me plans.
"Why were you planning to leave Sherlock?" she asked, "and don't you dare just stay silent, I'm done with that shit." She added, her usually soft voice taking on a harsh edge. I stared into her sparkling hazel eyes, then looked away, ashamed of the disappointment I saw in them, "I'm sorry." I whispered. She didn't respond for a few minutes so eventually I lifted my eyes from the ground and looked at her, surprised to find her looking at me looking almost shocked. "What are you sorry for? You have nothing to be sorry for." She told me, all traces of harshness banished from her voice. "I'm sorry that your disappointed in me, I'm sorry you have to put up with me, I'm sorry I was so cruel to you before." I explained in a rush, trying to get it all out in one so I wouldn't have to explain myself more. "Oh Sherlock, you were only trying to defend yourself when you were being cruel, I get that." She informed me, looking directly into my eyes, "and I'm not disappointed in you, I just wish you'd try and help yourself." She added, smiling that small sweet smile that was hers and hers alone.
After the entire leaving fiasco we both decided to call it a day and go to sleep, well she went to sleep, I sat in bed obsessing over every small detail of our conversation and trying to get the voices to shut up. By the next day I had come to the conclusion that the only way to stop her from leaving would be to tell her everything, granted it might make her just leave anyway as soon as she finds out how screwed up I am, but at least I wouldn't be dragging out the wait. Either way by the end of the day she'd be gone, or I would have spilled my guts to her and she'd have stayed.
I decided the best thing to start off with would be to give her the majority of the knives I had left in the stash under my bed, as a peace offering almost, to say that I was going to at least try. When I put the small box of blades on her coffee table, well you could say she was a little shocked, especially because I'd forgotten to wash the blood of one of them. Of course she immediately disposed of them by chucking them all in the nearest skip. It took me three tries to try and make myself tell her, my mouth refusing to open and let all the secrets I'd kept for most of my life flood out. When I finally got the words out she just sat there and listened, occasionally putting an arm around my shoulder when it got too much and I started shaking. I told her about everything but my birth parents, still unwilling to share my greatest secret, she didn't even know I was adopted, let alone the horrors that had led up to me being taken from my birth parents.
When I finished we just sat in silence, her taking in the enormity of what I'd revealed, me taking in that I had just spilled most of the secrets I'd been keeping for the majority of my life. I wasn't quite sure whether I was relieved I'd put everything out in the open, or that one of the people that mattered the most to me would either stay or go, that I could stop waiting.
While we both tried to process what I had just revealed to her we sat on Molly's settee, arms wrapped around each other in comfort, a new sensation for me, but the tingles it sent down my spine weren't unpleasant, they were the exact opposite actually. Too soon she pulled away, drying her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffling slightly before looking straight at me again. "Thank you, for trusting me enough to tell me that." She said, her voice gentle but strained, obviously trying to hold back tears, I didn't want to make her cry. As the first tear started to slide down her face I wiped it away gently with my thumb, staring at her intently, crying wasn't good. "God, look at me crying when you've been through all of that, you're so much stronger than everyone thinks," she told me, smiling through her tears. I smiled back a bit then rolled up my sleeves to show her the scars, and the still red and healing marks going all the up on both sides. "Obviously not that strong Molly, you would never do something like this. Your strong, and beautiful, and smart, and brave, and everything I wish I was." I admitted, holding back tears of my own, her face still contorted in shock and concern from when I revealed my arms. They told my story just as much as my words, some vertical, mostly horizontal slashes up my arms, and then the one word, branded into my skin by a knife, a knife I had made sure went deep enough to leave a scar. The word freak. And then she was softly stroking my arm comfortingly, and I watched as she leaned down and kissed one of the worse scars. "Your not a freak, you're the strongest man I have ever met, you go through all of this, and yet still you don't break down. You go through all of that and yet you still see beauty. You're a miracle Sherlock Holmes," she told me, her voice strong despite her recent tears, looking directly into my soul the entire time she was speaking. You know what though? I looked right back into hers as well, and it was perfect, she was perfect, and she wasn't leaving. That's when I realized, I love her, I love Molly Hooper, and I was to caught up in protecting myself I didn't notice.
We didn't talk for the rest of the morning, just holding onto each other in comfort, both forgetting about the fact that Molly had to be in work until eventually the phone wrung, someone from work wondering where she was. She informed them she had slept in and would be there as soon as possible, the proceeding to scramble to pick up her bag and keys before rushing out of the door with an "I'll see you soon." Shouted in my direction. I smiled to myself; still amazed that everything had gone so well, still subconsciously waiting for something to go wrong.
Later that afternoon I got an unexpected text, it read: 'I didn't know my dear; I didn't realize this would happen. The game went to far, and I'm sorry, I'll be seeing you soon. –JM' I was slightly surprised. Up until that point I wasn't certain Moriarty was capable of feeling remorse, he had obviously not known about my history, Mycroft had made sure those records were very tightly sealed, they had only come to light due to recent events. So he was sorry, but the game was still on, that meant a new distraction from the voices, which was good. I would have replied to the text but the number was blocked, for obvious reasons, one thing was for sure though, he was going to be changing the game. He didn't want to destroy me, he wanted to destroy my image, and now that had backfired he would have to change tactics. Maybe this game would be less destructive, more fun to play along with, but when it started it would be a welcome distraction from the voices that had already started to get louder in my head.
By the time Molly got home I was already scratching at my wrists, resisting the urge to pick up the two small blades I hadn't given her, little patches of blood blooming on my shirt where I'd reopened recent wounds with the scratching. Molly didn't say anything about the blood or the scratching, she just silently disinfected and wrapped the wounds in gauze, only speaking when I had pulled my sleeves back down to cover my freshly bandaged arms. "What can I do to help you Sherlock?" she asked me, her voice holding a hint of sorrow. I looked down, unable to meet her gaze, "Just stay with me, please?" I asked, the last word sounding more desperate than I wanted it to be, a desperate plea to not be alone anymore. I sat still for a few moments, waiting for her response, when I felt her soft fingers on my chin, turning my face to hers, forcing me to like right at her. "I'm not going to leave Sherlock, I promise." She told me, her tone so sincere and honest, like a pure raindrop, free of all chemicals, untainted by a world full if harshness. I nodded at her, unable to respond to her in anyway, unable to describe her in words that would do her justice. She was my salvation now, the only thing since Raina has died that made sense, that helped. I still heard the voices in my head, but they were dimmer, drowned out by the honesty of her tone and her words. I couldn't help it, in that moment she was everything, and I leaned forward and kissed her.
The kiss wasn't passionate, it was short, and sweet, and healing, the kind of kiss that people in soppy romance novels liken to warm summers days. Her lips tasted of peppermint and strawberries, her hair smelt like mint from the shampoo I'd seen in her shower, her skin of lavender, my mind told me in the short second the kiss had lasted, all of these details mixing into an intoxicating flavor and smell that seemed to be made for me. Before that moment if you had asked me when I was last happy I would have said two years ago, when I first met John, now I would say that moment, that short moment that could've been an eternity. When I broke the kiss we just stared at each other, both waiting for the other to make the first move, both waiting for the others reaction. Eventually I broke the silence, unable to bare the thought that I might have ruined everything. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have do-" I started but she cut me off midsentence, "Don't apologize, it was nice, I liked it, but Sherlock…What does this make us?" she asked cautiously. I stared at her wide-eyed; I'd expected her response to be violent, her to tell me to leave, not for her to have liked it. "I umm, I'm not sure. Whatever you want to do or be is fine with me." I told her, "I've… I've umm, never done this before." I hesitantly admitted. I'd always been a bit scared of Molly, never sure why the voices were so loud whenever I got to close to her before, but I did now. I loved, and I was so afraid of losing her I'd automatically shut down towards her, the voices on constant alert to stop me getting to close. "Are we together?" she questioned, pulling me from my revelations. I smiled at the thought, I liked the term, together, it seemed permanent, stable, and good. "Yes. Yes we're together." I replied still smiling, Molly returning it with a smile of her own.
A/N: there you go, hope you enjoyed reading it. This story is almost writing itself and I've decided to let the characters guide me, or my version of them guide me because that's how I write best. I hope you enjoy the direction I'm heading with this, which I do have some idea about! P.S John will be introduced into the story soon, so yeah there will be much angst there!
Reviews welcome!