In the week following Sherlock's supposed suicide, Molly takes personal leave and holes up in her flat with a dead man who answers back. "I just need some time away," she tells her supervisor, who says she was expecting as much and grants the leave request immediately. Which is grand because when Molly hangs up the phone, she finds Sherlock sifting through her desk drawers.

"What are you doing?"

"Studying. Getting an angle on your story."

"Rummaging through my personal things?"

"And that. And waiting for you to finish up so we can get started."

"I was on the phone for five minutes."

He shrugs, and she suddenly understands that aggrieved look she's seen so often on John's face.

She understands it even more as the week progresses. It's a bit disorienting, spending this much time with a man she's idolized so long, especially considering that prolonged exposure reveals to her that he is not idol material.

They hold counsel...well, not really counsel, exactly. Counsel needs more than one person, and he is rigidly silent as to his own plans for the next stage of the ruse. Still, they spend the time going over and over her story, and it's collaboration to a point.

She had never realized how practiced Sherlock was at the art of deception. He slips in and out of dozens of characters, runs three times as many scenarios. ("You need to be prepared for questions from anybody and everybody," he insists, when she expresses confusion at why he's quizzing her in the character of a cabbie.) He coaches her on her tone, facial expressions, and eye contact—the story itself, in its bare bones, being what John "witnessed," Sherlock dead from an unsurvivable leap.

"Not enough eye contact—you want their attention riveted on you like you're a magician performing a sleight of hand trick…no, no, no, that's too much, the only time you keep eye contact that long and intently is when you're talking to a mortal enemy or a lover." She blushes and he sighs. "We have to work on that, too. You blush far too easily; people will know you're hiding something."

"It's automatic," she protests. "I can't help it."

"You'll have to think of a cover story."

"I have one."

He waits, but she tilts her chin stubbornly and meets his eyes defiantly (but only for five seconds).

"Fine, we'll come back to that." He leans back and squints at her like a painter stepping away from his latest masterpiece. "Try to manage a flood of tears now and then."

"That won't be difficult."

"Really?" he asks dubiously.

"You'll be gone." She blushes again, and her eyes well up.

"Yes!" he exclaims. "Precisely like that. Pull that out and you'll be able to convince John Watson himself."

She hides her face in her hands.

"Don't overdo it."

Molly tries to think of something to change the subject, but all she can muster is a tack she's taken dozens of times since the fall at St. Bart's. "What if somebody else sees the body? What if they look and then they know that…."

He throws himself dramatically against the back of the armchair. "'What if pigs grew wings and flew to Mars?' They won't look, for the same reason I wouldn't have looked had it been a corpse you had identified for me were I an easily duped investigator in an open-and-shut case. They trust you."

Sometimes it's hard to work out if Sherlock is being insulting or complimentary. She chooses once more not to read too much into it either way, which so far has helped to keep her balanced enough to put up with him.

"Besides," he adds, "it won't be the first time he's been mistaken for me."

Of course. "The ambassador's daughter."

He looks surprised. "You knew about that case?"

She knows about all his cases. She knows about his favorite sonatas and his penchant for nicotine and his grudging tolerance of felines (or at least of Toby). She knows that his landlady has a bad hip and that the drugs bust at his place a couple years ago wasn't entirely without precedent. She knows he doesn't talk about the things he doesn't want to talk about, and she knows he hadn't been about to talk about the case.

"Let's go back to rehearsals," she says. "Or practicing, or running lines, or whatever you like to call it."

He nods and angles his head up. His eyes go hard.

"I always said he'd go over the edge, but I never thought it'd be this literal."

The nervous giggle that started to build at his uncanny impression of Sgt. Donovan turns to a queasy feeling before it has a chance to bubble over.

"That's not funny." She's talking to him, but he continues as Donovan and she remembers how brutal he is.

"That's right, you were one of his mates, weren't you? Close as he got, anyway? Must be rough on you and poor John Watson, believing in a fraud all this time."

"He wasn't a fraud." She isn't supposed to be defending him too vigorously. "He…he was a good man. Almost. I mean…he was…."

"A kidnapper, and almost a murderer, and a psychopath, Molly. Just be thankful you didn't get in his way before things turned."

"You think he kidnapped the ambassador's children?"

"Donovan's" eyes narrow. "How do you know about the ambassador case?"

Molly sighs impatiently. "That's not fair, Sher…."

"How do you know?"

Molly flings her hands in the air. "I work with the department, I hear all sorts of things."

"You keep track of him." It isn't a question.

"'Kept,'" Molly corrects. "And yes. Not always. This case. Kidnapping, I mean, it was wretched, wasn't it? You're really sure it was him?"

"Positive."

She is getting closer. "Were the children able to ID him, then?"

"The girl wouldn't stop screaming. Near enough to an ID."

And there it is, a flash of genuine loathing in his eyes.

"He would've hated that," she says softly.

"Please. Like he'd ever care what some kid beneath his notice thought of him."

"He was human," protests Molly. "Wasn't he?"

Sherlock claps his hands abruptly, dropping the Donovan persona. "Much better. Time for a break."

She stands with him and grabs his sleeve as he turns to leave. "It wasn't you. It was never you."

He shakes his head.

"You are everything I think you are." She leans in to catch his eye. "And I think you're a great man, Sherlock Holmes. A great man, and a good one." Then she lets him stalk off to the guest bedroom, because he is everything she thinks he is, and he is not the sort for tea and sympathy.

She hopes that in this round of training, they've both managed to learn something.