Dust in the Air
by Flaignhan
She's hollow.
She's numb.
Rosie, however, is fast asleep in her travel cot at the end of the bed. Molly can hear her soft little puffs of breath, the occasional sigh or shift of her blanket as she changes position.
Molly cannot sleep.
She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to sleep again.
It can't be true. It just can't.
And yet, given that it was Mycroft who made the call, his heavy tired voice at the end of the phone, she knows it must be true.
This isn't the type of lie he'd tell.
She hasn't heard from John at all, which only further backs up Mycroft's claim. Mycroft had asked if she would be able to take care of Rosie for the rest of the night - it's the first time she's heard Rosie's name from his lips - that her assistance might possibly be required tomorrow as well. He'd said it would be impossible to predict how grief would strike John, that there was no telling where exactly it would attack him first, and how debilitating the initial sucker punch would be.
He'd promised to call her in the morning.
She thinks he must have liked Mary.
She sits in bed all night, immersed in darkness but for the half inch of hallway light filtering in through the crack in the door, left ajar for Rosie's benefit.
She'll wake to an entirely different world.
Molly keeps her phone clutched in her hand, in case anyone calls, or texts. She burrows further into her duvet, a warm and soft world. It's the last form of comfort she can grasp before reality hits hard tomorrow. She checks her phone periodically, but it's just a soul destroying way to watch the minutes drag by, and eventually form quarter hours, then halves, then wholes.
She can't watch TV. She can't listen to music. She can't read. She can't do anything but sit in the dark and feel the crushing weight of loss all around her. Echoed in that is the loss that the others must feel - John, without a wife and facing fatherhood alone; Rosie, without a mum to guide her; and Sherlock, without one of his few close friends.
Molly has known grief, plenty of it. This is right up there with the worst of it, and she doesn't know what to do. There is a child sleeping in the cot at the foot of her bed, completely unaware that the world has changed forever.
Molly sits in the dark, and she waits for the sun to rise.
It gets worse, before it can start to get any better.
She hopes and prays for the better to come, sooner rather than later, and in the meantime, she pitches in as much as she can.
Sherlock is persona non grata in the Watson household.
John blames him, and it's illogical. Deep down, he must know it. He must. There was no way Sherlock, nor anyone, for that matter, could have predicted what would happen.
And yet, the blame lays at his feet.
She barely has time to talk to Sherlock in the days that follow. There's a brief phone call, in which she asks if he's all right, and he tells her he's not in a voice that sounds like it's not quite there. He asks the same of her, and she answers the same, her tone the same, everything the same.
She tells him he should come round one evening, and he agrees, but doesn't commit to anything. She knows he won't come, and he knows she's busy helping John as much as possible.
He steers clear.
It's not what either of them need.
But, as ever, it's the hand they've been dealt.
Funeral planning is not nice, but it's not until they're deciding on pallbearers that it becomes terrible.
There's John, of course, and there's Greg, and then John skips right to a friend of Mary's that she remembers vaguely from the wedding. He'd been a bit twitchy.
Molly looks at John across the kitchen table, the soft pages of funeral parlour brochures open in front of them, reflecting the spotlights in the ceiling. She doesn't even need to say his name, but John starts shaking his head.
"Nope," he says, he doesn't meet her eye, just continues to keep his fist clenched on the table, gripping his biro so tightly it might shatter. "Not him, I'm not having him there, not after - "
"John." Her voice is soft and she doesn't want to argue with him. In fact it's the last thing she wants to do. But she'll do it, if she has to.
It's not a decision he can ever take back.
"He should be there," she says. "You don't have to speak to him - "
"She's dead, Molly," he says through gritted teeth, his gaze fixed on the table. "Because of him, and his stupid mouth."
"John - "
"He was showing off! She's dead because he was showing off." He buries his face in his hands, and the tears start to come silently, his shoulders shaking with each suppressed sob. Molly reaches across the table, closing her hand gently around his forearm while he cries. She doesn't reignite the argument, but lets him go for as long as he needs to, until the tears dry up and the lump in his throat recedes enough for him to feel like he can continue.
"I'd rather Mycroft - " John begins, but his throat must still be a little clogged, because he stops, and wipes at his eyes with the heel of his palm.
"She was his friend," Molly says, as gently as she is able. "She loved him so much that she was determined to save him. If you don't let him come to the funeral, after she chose to do what she did...you can't take that back John. We all get one opportunity to say goodbye and you shouldn't..." She doesn't even know what this is. Spite? Revenge? Is he lashing out because he's angry and grieving? Whatever it is, he doesn't get to do it. Mary might have been his wife, but she was and is very much loved by other people too. Including Sherlock. Especially Sherlock.
John doesn't get to be the gatekeeper to Mary's funeral. She won't let him make that mistake.
"And you think he should..." John swallows, but the words still take a while to come. "You think he should get to carry her?"
"If not him, who?"
She has him stumped there. With only six or seven years of this life, as Mary, to draw from, it's not going to be a jam packed funeral. There aren't that many candidates for pallbearer.
"You don't have to talk to him, not if you're not ready."
John covers his face with his hands, but Molly knows she's getting through to him.
"I'll keep him in check, I promise, but you can't not let him come. You can't."
It must do the job, because he completely ignores her words, then lowers his hands and takes a deep breath before pulling the florist's brochure towards him. He flicks through the pages, the pauses on one.
"Lilies?" he asks, voice croaky.
Molly nods. "Yeah," she says. "Lilies."
It's when she's about to leave that John has another cry. His grief swallows him whole and spits him out, and Molly knows, she knows it is the weight of a silent home, bearing down, crushing him every single second of every single minute.
She puts her arms around him, and he sinks into her shoulder, his tears dampening her cardigan.
There's nothing she can say.
She handles death every single day, but when it comes to the bereaved, she has nothing to say.
There's nothing that could make it better anyway. What do people say? Surely not that don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened bullshit? Surely no one says that to a real, grieving human being?
Ten minutes and six (unnecessary) apologies later, she's heading out of the front door, on her way back to the flat to catch up on some much needed sleep. As she waits for the bus, she types out a quick text to Sherlock.
Come over tonight please xx
His response comes the very next minute.
OK
She's still in bed when she hears his key in the lock. She's cosy under her duvet, and has been drifting in and out of an exhausted sleep for the past hour or so. She checks the time on her phone - seven thirty - and a glance at the curtains tells her that the sky outside is darkening fast, the last glows of sunlight disappearing over the rooftops.
She calls out his name, and after a few seconds he pushes open her bedroom door. In the darkness, she sees him slip off his jacket and hang it on the hook on the back of her door. He toes off his shoes, kicking them to one side, before he lifts the covers and slides into bed next to her.
She moves closer to him, resting her head on his chest, and he slips an arm around her, his fingertips playing with the hem of her t-shirt.
She wants to go back to sleep, wants the pair of them to get a good night's rest together, because she can guarantee that sleep has been just as evasive for him as it has for her. He probably needs to eat as well.
So does she, for that matter.
Before they do anything else however, she needs to have this conversation with him. She needs to drive home her words, make sure they settle in his brain, before they can become distracted.
Tragedy makes the world go faster, and slower.
"You can come to the funeral," she says, and her head rises with his chest as he breathes in sharply, but no words follow. He doesn't know what to say.
"Don't speak to him though," she adds. "He's not ready."
"Of course he's not," Sherlock replies. "I killed his wife."
"No you didn't," Molly says firmly. "You didn't and you know it. It was horrible and pointless and petty and stupid and a lot of other things, but it wasn't your fault."
"He thinks it is," Sherlock mutters.
"And he's wrong," Molly replies. The world is all out of shape at the moment, but of this she is certain. "He's wrong, but he's also grieving, so you just need to give him the space he needs."
Sherlock doesn't say anything, but he does pull her fractionally closer. He's needed her this week, but he hasn't asked for her, hasn't assumed he could just turn up and have her all to himself. He's been stewing, alone in Baker Street, having decided that right now, John needs her more than he does.
Sherlock can't have bothered to consider that she might need him too.
"You're going to be a pallbearer."
He turns his head on the pillow, looking down at her. She lifts her head from his chest, her eyes meeting his in the darkness, and she can just about make out the tiny frown creasing his brow.
"How did you manage that?"
Molly shrugs. "I didn't have to shout at him, so that's a bonus."
"Would you have?" Sherlock asks.
"Course I would," she replies, settling her head back on his chest. "Of course. He can't just have some random bloke carry her because he's fallen out with you. You only get to do this once for her."
Sherlock's chest deflates slowly, and then he presses a kiss to the top of her head.
"Thank you," he breathes.
She holds him tightly, and his left hand finds hers, lacing their fingers together.
They sleep for a couple of hours, and when Molly wakes, she orders some pizza, and the two of them placate their growling stomachs. She doesn't care that the box is a bit greasy underneath, nor does she care that she'll probably find crumbs in her bed in the morning.
They eat pizza in bed, and then go back to sleep. There are lots of ways to deal with grief, and this is, apparently, their own special brand.