Molly Hooper-Holmes' first day back at the morgue after being shot was quite eventful. There were three post-mortems done and about a ream of paperwork to be done. True to the definition of "light duty" Dr. Hooper-Holmes didn't perform the exams, but she was called in to look at a diseased heart. It showed clear signs of valve disease and the patient's history included drug use. The death was ruled to be natural and she went back to her paperwork.

Around 1:00 a cup of tea, Earl Grey with a lemon wedge on the side, appeared at her elbow. She looked up with a smile. "Sherlock. Thanks, darling. What have you been up to?"

"I went to see George at New Scotland Yard. There's nothing for me to work on right now. It is a good thing you don't bore me or we'd really be in trouble. I just walked around the city for a while then came here to see my wife." He held her left hand gently running his thumb over the rings that sat on her third finger. He had given them to her the day before, no ceremony, no romance. Just a, "Here, they were my Gran's."

Molly looked at him incredulously but slid them on her finger. They were slightly big but not enough to resize. It was easy to guess, from the rings, where Sherlock got his taste from. His simple yet exquisite taste in clothes was mirrored in his grandmother's rings. The wedding band was a simple, plain band of white gold. The engagement ring was the same white gold with a simple setting of lapis lazuli in the center with rose quartz on either size. Sherlock explained to his wife that the lapis represented intelligence and the rose quartz for love, both very fitting for her.

His grandparents met during WWII and were immediately enraptured with each other, as the story goes. She was a secretary at Bletchley Park and he was an intelligence officer for the army assigned to carry dispatches to and from command. After the war they married and had Sigur Holmes, Sherlock's father. Margaret Holmes, in time, became a PhD in chemistry which was unusual for a woman at the time. She taught chemistry at King's Collage and assisted in the peer review of Watson and Crick's paper on the structure of DNA. James Holmes joined MI5 after the war and much of his work was still classified.

Sherlock remembered them as being very much in love with each other even after over fifty years of marriage. They had retired to Sussex and bought the cottage where Sherlock and Mycroft's parents lived now. His fond memories as a child always made him remember the good times he had visiting there growing up. The good times ended at the age of nine when his grandmother passed away suddenly. The Holmes family, his parents and their two remaining sons, moved in with Grandfather Holmes. It was during that time that Sherlock learned from him how to ask the right questions.

He still remembered the call. He was at school, a small boarding school about fifteen miles from home. His grandfather had died suddenly when out working on his bee hives. Sherlock was devastated but with exams pending he couldn't come home. A few months later, his dog, Redbeard died. It was a difficult time for young Sherlock and he began to see the advantage of his brother's mantra about caring being a disadvantage. Shutting down his emotions and developing his already strong intellect helped him through this period. Never one for friends, his transformation largely went unnoticed.

Years later, the walls he had erected slowly began to crumble brick by brick when he met his pathologist at St. Bart's. Molly Hooper was pretty and kind to him even when she shouldn't have been. In time, he started to see that maybe being alone wasn't an advantage, Mycroft be damned.

Of course, he ignored what he felt. He couldn't admit, even to himself, that he was falling in love with Margaret Elizabeth Hooper. The work was all that mattered, intellect above emotion. It protected him so far, it would continue to protect him. Until it didn't. The two days he spent in solitary confinement after murdering Magnussen forced him to decide what was really meaningful to him and that was Molly.

At 2:00 Molly logged off the computer and gathered her things. She looked at her husband lost in his mind palace and chuckled, for someone so noticing of detail when he was at ease he could be so un-noticing. "Sherlock, I'm done. Would you like to go home?"

"No." he replied, his face unreadable.

"I'm sorry?" Molly said not understanding. "You want to stay here?"

"Nope. I want to take my wife out for a meal, then I want to take her home and make sure she rests."

"Oh. Can we get some tea on the way home? I saw we were almost out."

"OK. Food, tea, rest. Any requests on the food?"

"You pick."

They ended up at a little fish and chip place and ate large portions of fish and chips. Molly didn't like to eat that way too often; she saw firsthand what some foods did to the human body. A huge yawn broke their morgue centered conversation. "You're worn out. I'll get a cab." Sherlock said to his wife.

They rode back to Baker Street in silence and she felt the fatigue grow as she climbed the stairs. Although it was still early, he helped her to their room, helped her change into her nightshirt and settled her into bed. He laid a tender kiss on her forehead and softly closed the bedroom door. The soft sigh that escaped Molly Hooper-Holmes as the door closed made him smile.