A SUPER LONG CHAPTER, JUST IN TIME FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
Sorry this took so long to get up today. It's been a tough few weeks for me, health and school wise. Blah.
I don't think I've yet thanked you all for reading this far- that doesn't mean I'm not incredibly thankful! You guys are the best, I really love when people review with helpful criticism or just to say they loved it or even that they hated it or whatever, all input is good input. Thanks so much!
He was yelling through the phone at a person who, it seemed, could not care any less.
"… You know I could solve this case faster than any of your men at The Yard, It's selfish on your part not to let me in…"
He didn't bother with the woman sitting on the floor of his living room, who had made a nest of cleanliness for herself in that spot weeks ago while the mess grew around her.
Plates, dust, discarded layers of clothing.
Papers everywhere.
They weren't just taped to the walls anymore- they littered the desks and floors, hanged crammed under every magnet on the fridge, stuffed in pockets and found under seat cushions.
The web that Sherlock Holmes had begun to spin in order to catch Moriarty was threatening to suffocate the entire flat.
"… Yes, I mean it. Selfish. You and your team keep your jobs, and citizens lose their lives-"
He was interrupted again, spinning on his heels as he scowled, pulling at the hair on his scalp.
"You're inadequate as a detective and you're doing a terrible job in Lestrade's stead as a leader, Donovan, so why do you insist on refusing help from someone who actually knows what he's doing? You know my methods. You know they produce results faster than your team of-"
He looked at the phone, then to Molly.
"She hung up on me."
Molly shrugged and repositioning her legs, which were starting to fall asleep.
"Maybe you shouldn't have called her inadequate."
He waved her off, wrapping the ratty dressing gown more closely around him before hopping onto the square chair that he'd dragged away from its spot centring the fireplace and towards the couch, facing the mess he'd made of the rest of the flat. Molly had noticed that Sherlock had taken extra care in not leaving the other chair, the rounded quaint armchair that once mirrored his own, out of the chaos that had encompassed the rest of the residence. The effort with which he made sure that it did not collect too much nor too little clutter was on the brink of becoming a defining artform.
Molly had noticed it, but she knew better than to mention it.
"The sixth death of this sort since May and they're still sticking to this same story of an armed intruder when it's so obvious that it's got to be something different, a sniper most likely-"
He was waving his arms like some angry, judgemental orchestral director, grimacing at the mere mention of the Met and their theories. She wasn't listening anymore, but it wasn't as if he noticed. She wasn't there to comment. Just to make his speaking to himself acceptable.
Which was fine with her- she preferred company in isolation. She appreciated the silence that allowed her to both get her work done and let the questions she'd let grow over the past few months continue to simmer just out of mind.
She'd been close, a few times- fighting out a word or two before a glare silenced her, or her motivation to actually speak crumbled the moment she'd put the words in order. She was past letting it bother her- she had always been silent, fuller of things she wanted to say than things she had found the courage to.
The first day that she'd found herself back in the flat, she'd meant to bring it all to the foreground- she didn't expect that, a month after the fact, she'd be sitting on the floor, waiting. It didn't happen- she invited herself in, sat herself on the couch, and, mouth perpetually half-open, deigned that she would have to just apologise with her presence. She was sorry. She had one job, one simple job, and she'd failed and just look at the consequences.
She'd called him at the exact minute Sherlock had told her to. He didn't pick up.
She couldn't find him.
What if she'd found him? Would she be here? Would he be there?
If she'd only gotten to John Watson first, would he have been here instead of her?
You look sad, she had told him.
When you think he's not looking.
No, I just mean… I mean if there's anything you need…
What right did she have to fit herself into the game?
It didn't stop her from doing it again, so it seemed- here she was, squeezing herself in between reams of paper and pictures, forcing herself in on the situation to-
To atone.
To ask for forgiveness for what she'd done.
"… Can't even go outside without a crowd following me, it's just not conducive to my work, Can't even walk into a dentist's office without someone recognising me…"
To keep watch.
There were more things being printed- the poor machine sat atop one of the arms of the couch, wobbling to and fro each time another forty page document was ordered for; tirelessly, day and night, it seemed. The papers ran under the ink and shot out, still warm, all over the floor. There was no order to it- Sherlock didn't seem to need to look at the papers after they'd been printed. The merely collected.
She was chastised every time she tried to pick them up. He, on the other hand, was allowed to pick them up and throw them around at will. As he was doing now: sifting through them all, picking them up and tossing them, paying more attention to his ranting than what he was actually looking at.
And my, did Sherlock Holmes rant.
"… There's nothing I can do but sit here and do research. You cannot simply substitute hard evidence and primary sources with- With-"
He shook the few papers clutched in his hands, as if the act itself was the noun he was looking for.
He threw them over his head, scowling as he continued to pull at his hair.
Molly was actually playing Sudoku this time.
"You're going to go bald if you keep doing that," She offered, gnawing at the eraser at the tip of her pencil.
He grimaced at the joke- unfunny.
Trudged into the kitchen to open the fridge, slammed it shut, and scowled whole-heartedly.
"Why can no one just leave me alone?" He stepped over Molly on the floor to slump onto the couch, pushing papers and string out of the way to maximise the sulky effect.
"Well, you're- you're rather famous," Molly replied simply, running a hand through her hair to push it from her face, and then another ruffle it back into her eyes. "People want to see you. Take your picture and get your autograph."
"Why would anyone want my autograph?"
"Because they hate you, probably."
"Everyone hates me, they've never asked for my autograph."
Molly smirked. "Good point." She quieted, filling in the nines at the bottom. Sherlock allowed himself to stretch onto the couch- arms pinned across his chest, as one might imagine a vampire falling into his coffin at the end of each night. When he became bored of this pose, he threw an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the light.
There was a common silence that settled through 221B, broken only by Mrs. Hudson's television downstairs at its deeper pitches.
Molly had thought that he was asleep- that was her first mistake, thinking that Sherlock Holmes slept. His chest rose and fell, his breathing deep enough for her to lean back against the arm of the couch.
"I'm sorry, you know."
"Molly, please do shut up. I'm trying to think."
"O-Oh. Ok."
The flat quieted. The traffic of Baker Street in the afternoon filtered in through the double windows, but it was still quiet enough for Molly's ears to ring.
And then, mere minutes later-
"- It still doesn't make sense. It's just not enough."
She'd been getting used to the time-travel method of holding a conversation with Sherlock Holmes. One had to remember the untied threads of every conversation, lest they be brought up days, weeks later. She was getting used to him.
"I still don't know what enough is, Sherlock. Care to elaborate?"
But he'd wound himself up, thinking about her. How dare she become unreadable? Simple, stable Molly. Where was her motive?
"Your… Showing up here every day. Not sleeping very much- you stay late and come early. Eating very little, but you've taken to making food here so you make sure that I eat. You've stopped watching those television shows you loved keeping track of so much, and I cringe to think of the state of your cat, who is probably very unused to seeing so little of you…"
Sherlock waited- not for an answer, but for some clue, some unravelling to let him know why she was here. He furrowed his eyebrows- she knew what was coming.
"You were never the type of student to raise your hand. It scared you, even when you knew you were right you were so afraid of being chastised. See- look here-"
He pulled her hand from the pencil she was holding loosely, puzzle abandoned at the onset of a new one.
"Your hand is shaking. Is it from the attention? Am I chastising you?"
"You-"
But he wasn't done. He sat down next to her, continued.
"You surrounded yourself with people who were much less intelligent than yourself because you thought that it would make you feel better, but it didn't- those girls had different values than you did, and you were made to be self-conscious about your appearance, your weight, your shyness and lack of interest in boys. They mocked the things you were interested in, the books you read. The fact that you read at all. You were interested in the things they liked, but they thought the things you liked were stupid- and so you had to make up for them. You tried to keep up with them- watched the shows they watched, bought more makeup than you knew what to do with, went on diets- but you couldn't do it all. Not while keeping your grades up, a rule that your parents obviously held in high value."
She stared at him, mouth slightly open, as if waiting for a natural pause in his thought process to say what she needed to say. But he wouldn't allow it.
"You were miserable all through your childhood. And so when you finally went to university you made a promise to yourself that you weren't going to focus on people like them- you weren't going to go out of your way to make friends if they were only going to make you miserable. So you made very few, if at all- acquaintances. You didn't mean to work in the same hospital you studied in, but your professors were the only friends you had- the old ones probably started teasing you for your career pathway. But your parents weren't happy about it either, weren't they? They were fairly normal, never expected their oldest daughter to work in a morgue. They probably still tease you. Or, they would, if your father hadn't died before you graduated."
By this time, her jaw had set tensely, lips pressed thin. She could wait, so it seemed.
"You took a liking to me the instant you met me- you make your attraction very obvious, and the fact that your little crush continued after I constantly shot down your requests for friendship or coffee tells that you are very used to men with something of my temperament- Freud would guess daddy and though I would have to say it was more likely a first love you've told me yourself that I remind you of your father, so maybe a combination of the two. Which gives hard, psychoanalytical evidence as to why you find yourself drawn to me, but not at the moment and not to this extreme- it is no little effort on your part to wake up an hour early every morning for over a month to come to Baker Street before work, come here after work, then to go home usually in the early hours of the morning- only to repeat that process the next day. It- It's senseless."
He seemed to have asked a question- there was a punctuation mark curled around the entire soliloquy, as if he couldn't possibly have just stood up and asked her what she had been doing in his living room for five weeks.
She had pulled her hand from his by this point, but not much earlier- her palm still tingled with the foreign touch, unfamiliar to the heat of another pressed up against her flesh for longer than a short cordial handshake for long, long months. She rubbed the sensation out of her nerves as she spoke, voice shaking but eyes strong as she held his gaze.
"I'm sorry."
He narrowed his eyes- this was not what he had expected.
"You keep saying that. It doesn't make sense."
"I- I just needed to-"
Her voice dropped off, along with her eyes- looking off to the right, to the set of chairs by the fireplace. Instead of asking what she was talking about, Sherlock remained silent, which to Molly was just as telling.
She breathed. Allowed herself to close her eyes for a few long moments- more than a few long moments.
"I don't know if it was because of… But I can't stop from thinking that it was… I just-"
"-If you're not going to say it, stop talking, please-"
"If it's my fault that he died, I want you to tell me."
She could feel him staring at her. She, instead, kept her eyes on the rounded chair, still facing the fireplace.
When he said nothing, she continued. She couldn't trust herself to look at his expression.
"You trusted me. I know that there was a lot more to the plan that you hadn't told me, but you still trusted me. And you gave me one job. It wasn't difficult- I just had to call him."
She wasn't crying, but her voice was shaking.
"I did it exactly when you told me to, and he just- he didn't pick up… I should have gone looking for him sooner, I suppose that would have helped. I just-"
She finally looked up to him, meeting his eyes just as he looked away.
"I didn't know that that was what was going to happen-"
She didn't get to finish-
"That wasn't you?"
She stopped.
"What?"
He went to meet her eyes, and try as she might she had no idea what he was thinking. A glimmer of surprise was planted on his face, and as the moments passed it grew into a wild weed.
It seemed like he was trying to calm himself.
He said nothing for a long moment.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four-
"You… Didn't call him six minutes earlier than I told you to?"
"No, I made sure of it, I knew it was important-"
"You didn't call him and tell him that Mrs. Hudson had been shot and gravely wounded?"
"What? God no- I was going to tell him that there was something I needed to give you, just as we'd planned-"
But he'd already been distracted, sprang from the couch and bounded up the stairs in one fluid motion.
Molly heard a crash from upstairs- that was John's, right? And reserved herself to the spot on the couch until several more, louder crashes followed.
Carefully up the stairs she went, peering gently into the room before she stepped in-
Sherlock was on all fours, looking under the bed. He'd made a proper mess of the room, even in the small amount of time he'd spent in it- drawers opened and clothing spilled out, linens pulled from the mattress, a lamp on its side on the floor, its shade somewhere farther across the floor.
"Sherlock…"
He slithered himself out from under the bed, pausing just long enough a beat to look her in the eye before continuing his quest to destroy any semblance of order in his sight.
There was something wild in his expression- a variation on his 'fresh-body-to-experiment-on' theme, and one ultimately more terrifying out of laboratory setting. He was breathing heavily and grinning with only his top lip.
"His gun is missing."
Molly leaned slightly against the doorframe, watching uncomfortably as Sherlock began pulling boxes from the top shelf of the closet.
"… Gun?"
"He used to hide it in a shoebox when he first moved in, but started keeping it in his bedside drawer after repeated use was deemed probable- and that there wasn't a place in this flat that he could hide it that I wouldn't find. It's not there. It's not in this room. It's missing."
"I don't understand."
"How could you not? Someone else called him and told him that Mrs. Hudson was gravely injured at Baker Street and he needed to get to her as soon as possible. He takes a taxi to Baker Street and tells them that it's an emergency, to get there as soon as possible- He runs into the flat to find her perfectly fine. Previously I thought that he must not have even taken the time to properly enter 221B- got back into the taxi that he'd told to wait for him, gone back to St. Bart's after he assumed that he'd been tricked by Moriarty and his men… He spent enough time to grab his gun."
He stopped, thought for a second, disappeared into the closet.
"And that means…"
He was rooting through the closet now; standing on his toes in the midst of the chaos he'd enacted on a room he hadn't set foot in in five months. He let the sentence hang unfinished- she was left to guess.
"… What does it mean?"
He ignored her- nothing new in that.
"Sherlock? What does it mean?"
Satisfied with the way he'd wrecked John's room, he pushed around her to the toilet- musty towels in a half-filled hamper strewn across the tile floor, medication and toothpaste soon joining them as he looked for some clue that he apparently couldn't receive with his usual methods of standing still and staring for long enough.
"Sherlock…"
And he'd pushed her out of the way to scamper down the stairs, stopping every three to inspect a tiny scratch, clump of dust- he was very forcibly ignoring her, his eyebrows furrowed together in a sort of concentration that defied all other senses. She stood in front of him as close as she could, staring at whatever it was on the wallpaper that he was messing with.
"What are you doing?"
She was effortlessly evaded- he held her in one place while he walked around her, taking the flight of stairs down two at a time to look for the dust patterns under the sofa.
She stood behind him for a long moment, eyes narrowing at the behaviour- frantic. She hadn't seen him act like this since- she'd probably never seen him act like this. She'd never been with him on a chase, though. Was this what he was like when he was trailing the coattails of a criminal? Like he himself was going to die if he didn't have all of the answers? It was exciting. It was- confusing. There was no criminal here.
She put a hand on his shoulder.
"Sherl-"
He whipped around, slapping her hand away from him.
She jumped back- he struggled to his feet in less than a second, looming over her with his face twisted.
He stood like that for three long seconds.
Four.
His breathing was heavy, his face slightly flushed- he'd worked himself up. When Molly took a step back, he followed her.
"When did you call him."
It wasn't a question.
"We- Around- When you told me to-"
"Don't lie to me!"
She'd been backed into the wall by now- she couldn't answer him. He didn't give her enough time, her throat was closed.
"I'm- I'm not!"
When he slammed his fist to the wall very close to her head, she tried her best not to cry out.
"THEN WHO DID?!"
"I do- I don't know…"
He spun around, pulling his hair viciously from the roots.
Moriarty must have gotten to him before her but how did he know to call Why didn't he just kidnap him once he got into the taxi that was, undoubtedly, his He must have gotten him on the taxi ride back but Why did he let him go all the way to the apartment to find out that nothing was wrong with Mrs. Hudson it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense
"IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"
The sound of glass breaking, heard just over the beating of his own heart, the buzzing in his brain.
Molly was curled in on herself on the floor in between the sofa and the doorway, covering her head and crying.
The broken glass of what was just thirty seconds ago a plate of cold food lay scattered on the floor.
Sherlock took a deep breath. He heaved up the energy to contain his displaced anger.
"Get out."
From behind the sofa, just out of view, Molly made no attempt to move.
"Get out of my flat, this instant. Right now."
He hadn't remembered throwing the plate, but he knew he still had the strength to throw the mug of moulding tea if she tested him.
Slowly, she stood up, staring him straight in the eye as she went to collect her things, stuffing them haphazardly into her bag so as to not lose track of him. She did not look afraid, and for some reason this infuriated him.
"GO!"
Long after she'd hurried out the door, Sherlock stood in the middle of the living room, arms limp at his sides.
His eyes travelled from the space Molly had once occupied, to the mess on the floor- but ultimately wandered up the stairs.
He took a single, shaky breath.