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“Molly,” Sherlock’s baritone voice echoed through her and she hated herself for it.
She just walked faster. No. She would not be roped into anything Sherlock Holmes related today. Not today. Not today of all days. Not when he’s barely been able to apologize. Not when the only thing he could tell her about the phone call was that he had to under threat of her being murdered. No. He would not talk to Sherlock. Not today. Not on the anniversary.
She jammed her finger to the lift button.
“Molly, please.”
Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.
What words?
I love you.
She could practically feel his breath against her neck. Molly closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning to look at him. “What, Sherlock? I don’t have any body parts for you to have today.”
Ding.
The lift doors opened and Molly turned her back on Sherlock and stepped into the lift, hoping the conversation was over. It apparently wasn’t as Sherlock just stepped in after her.
Molly turned to him again after pressing her floor button as the door closed and the lift began to move. “Is this important? Because I’m really not having a good day.”
She could see the pain flicker in his eyes. He masked it quickly, but she could read him. She always had, even when she hadn’t wanted to. Molly supposed that it was the curse of being the one person who mattered most . She knew who Sherlock Holmes was, better than John even, at times.
She could still remember the dead man who slept in her arms as he broke down to the reality that he may never come back. That he would die out there and no one but her and his brother would mourn him the second time. She remembered him burying himself in her over and over until the pain went away. She remembered whispering I love you into his hair as he slept in her arms. She remembered waking up to an empty bed and nothing to indicate he was there save for messy sheets and the smell of him on her pillow.
She remembered collapsing at work five weeks later only to learn that she lost the one thing of him that she could have kept.
She remembered how she couldn’t tell anyone because John wasn’t talking to her. Greg was trying to distance himself from anyone Sherlock related to keep his job. Mrs. Hudson was too dependent on her soothers to help her. Mycroft hadn’t cared save for the little grave he had arranged next to her dad.
Mary had been the only one Molly ever told. Mary had just held her and rocked her carefully in her arms and told her everything was going to be okay.
She remembered when Mary asked her to be Rosie’s godmother. She remembered holding that precious girl in her arms. She remembered them reading Mary’s will. She remembered Mary’s final words to her: You need her and she needs you now too.
She didn’t want to do this today. She didn’t want to do this on the one year anniversary of the phone call or the five year anniversary of the day she lost their baby.
“Molly, I—”
The lift shook and began to shoot upward, the lights grew bright and sparked.
“Molly!”
Sherlock was on her in a moment, wrapping himself around her as they doubled down to the floor. He held her to his chest as he braces himself on the handrail, bending over to shield her from the crackling lights.
“Sherlock—”
“We’re going to be fine, Molly. I promise.”
His voice was shaking and and she could hear his panic, but all she could do was bury her face into his chest and try not to cry.
The shaking stopped and ding .
“Thirteenth floor,” the automated voice said.
“There isn’t a thirteenth floor,” Molly whispered.
Sherlock straightened, but kept her close to him, and looked out the opening doors. Molly glanced past him and saw that they were in the middle of nowhere in a forest.
“That’s impossible.” Sherlock let go of her to stand up but instantly offereded her his hand so that she could stand. He pulled her close again, keeping her under his arm.
“I’m seeing it too,” she whispered.
Hesitantly the two stepped from the lift to look around and saw that only the door was there. There was nothing behind it.
Ding.
Molly began to panic as the door closed and was gone.
—
Molly wasn't sure how long they had been in the hut. She couldn’t imagine that they had been there more than a month, but the ticks on the Wall said that they had been. The Forest was getting colder and Sherlock had commented that winter must be upon them. She thought about how lucky they were that they both had been wearing warmer clothes when they had come to this place.
Sherlock came in through the hut door, carrying in the deer-like creature. The food had taken some getting used to. And Molly had been able to convince Sherlock that it would be the best if he hate regularly.
They both went to the place where the lift had disappeared to every day around the same time it had disappeared, hoping it would return, but it never did. Molly knew how frustrated Sherlock was over all this since nothing was logical. However Molly was much more used to her life not being normal since Sherlock waltzed into her lab.
It also helped that neither really talked to one another.
—
She awoke to something hard pressing against her hip. Molly blinked herself awake and found Sherlock wrapped around her and the only thing she could think was pressing into her was his morning wood.
He must have moved closer to her in the cold night.
Molly knew Sherlock was a sexual being. There was the woman he could recognize by not her face and the Janine and his Mr. Shags-a-Lot persona. He’d even slept with her, but that had been out of desperation.
No.
Molly knew Sherlock’s type. It was dark curled hair, big bright eyes, and curves. She snorted. Maybe he was a narcissist. The women were basically female versions of himself.
Her snort must have woken him because suddenly his entire body grew stiff. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s not—”
“I know,” she said softly. “It’s got nothing to do with me. Just basic biology.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’ll go handle it.”
Sherlock left quickly. Molly wondered if he had left as quickly after their one night together. She had run scenarios in her head many times.
Her most common one was he woke up and realized that he had made a mistake due to his unnecessary emotions. He had probably looked at her with a mix of disgust and pity and left, feeling like any note at all would have just given her pointless hope.
Sherlock Holmes didn’t love her and being the only woman he was going to be in contact with, for who knew how long, wasn’t going to change anything.
—
They had found some sort of sap that got them drunk. Not piss their pants drunk, but drunk enough that they became looser than they had in the past year that they had been there.
One full year.
Almost.
One year tomorrow.
Another anniversary.
Molly wasn’t sure who kissed who first, but suddenly she was on her back with Sherlock cradled between her thighs. Their tongues fought against one another as Sherlock began to rut against her. It felt like a dream she didn’t want to end, but she knew in her heart it would. They would wake up tomorrow and Sherlock would tell her it was a mistake and that he didn’t mean it.
Not on the eve of the anniversary.
I love you.
A little gravestone that had a skull and a deerstalker cap on it.
I love you.
A little gravestone that read: My Little Pirate.
Molly, please.
“Molly,” Sherlock paused and pulled away from her. He cupped her face in his hand and wiped away the tears slipping down her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t…” she whispered. “I can’t…”
“Molly…”
“I can’t, Sherlock… we can’t…”
“Of course we can.” His smile was tight and almost painful. He bent down to kiss her again, but she turned her face away. “Why can’t we?”
“Because I’m tired of being one of your mistakes.”
Sherlock reared away from her as though slapped. “Mistake?”
“I can’t wake up and see you look at me as though nothing happened. I won’t be a memory you delete, Sherlock.”
“I could never delete you, Molly Hooper. I know everything about you.”
“No you don’t.” The tears kept falling. “If you did, you wouldn’t be doing this. Not tonight.”
“Molly…”
“Please, Sherlock.”
“Molly.” He pressed his forehead to her temple. “I know about the baby.”
—
He had been in Russia when Mycroft had him informed. One of the agents gave Sherlock his next instructions. It was a typical day.
“Ah,” the agent said, remembering something. Sherlock had rolled his eyes at the minion’s lack of remembering. He needed to tell off Mycroft about that. “That pathologist—”
Sherlock stiffened.
Molly.
Someone had hurt her.
Molly.
Someone had found out she had helped him fake his death.
Molly.
She needed him.
Molly.
Her sighing his name as he drove himself and her into completion.
Molly.
Her fingers carding gently through his hair as he fell asleep in her arms.
Molly.
The small smile that formed on her lips when he kissed her goodbye as she slept on. He couldn’t give her hope when he might never return.
Molly!
“—she had a miscarriage a few days ago. Don’t know why the big man wanted me to tell you, but he did. Said to call him using this.” He handed the dumbfounded Sherlock a burner phone before leaving.
Miscarriage.
Sherlock practically crawled to the hotel he was staying in and quickly dialed the only number on the phone. It didn’t take long for Mycroft to answer.
“How is she?” Sherlock asked before his brother could even say anything.
“Distraught,” Mycroft replied. “She apparently hadn’t known. Mike Stamford is giving her the month off since she hadn’t taken any leave after your suicide.”
“How is she, Mycroft?” Sherlock growled.
“She just lost the only bit of you you were ever going to give her, Sherlock. What do you think?”
He felt sick to his stomach. Molly… Molly.
“I want you to offer her a gravestone.”
“Sherlock, it’s only a bunch of cells. There’s not even anything to—”
“Don’t you dare!” Sherlock roared. Tears began to sting at his eyes as her curled in on himself. A baby. His baby. Theirs. Molly.
“Caring is not the advantage, brother mine.”
“I don’t care. Give Molly a gravestone and put it next to her father.”
You’re a bit like my dad.
Tears began to stream down his cheeks.
Because I know what that means: looking sad when you think no one can see.
I don’t count.
“Please.”
“It will be arranged.”
Mycroft hung up and Sherlock took extra pleasure destroying the phone.
What do you need?
You.
—
“You didn’t win. You lost.” His sister’s voice echoed in the room. The room that had only seconds before had held the whisper of Molly’s I love you. “Look at what you did to her. Look at what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions I lost count. Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time.”
Sherlock tuned his sister out as he carefully set the gun on the table and went to collect the lid of the coffin. The coffin never truly meant for her.
I love you.
A little gravestone. He could see her now, kneeling next to it in the clothes she had been wearing on the monitor. She always wore happy colors for those moments. She needed them. She needed them to feel happy or else she would implode. They never talked about it. He couldn’t. How could he? What was there to say?
He set the cover over the coffin. His fingers traced gingerly along the silver plaque.
I love you.
“Sherlock?” John’s voice barely permeated through the darkness.
“No.” Sherlock unbuttoned his coat. “No!”
His fists smashed through the wood. Over and over. He tore it to shreds. He hated it.
He hated it as the Molly in his mind was smiling, bouncing a little bundle in her arms that he knew wasn’t Rosie. A faceless child he gave her because it was the only way he could see her being happy when he had been away. It was the image he held onto whenever he got beaten. It was the image he focused on on the nights he blacked out and believed he might not wake again.
Sherlock screamed as he continued to destroy the coffin knowing his sister did this on purpose.
On the anniversary his baby had been lost.
—
He looked down at her now as she finally looked at him. Really looked at him.
“But—”
“Mycroft told me. When I was away,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to her again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Molly Hooper.” He was shaking now too and he could feel the tears roll down his nose and splash against her cheek. “I should have been there. I should have come back the second I heard. But I was a coward. I couldn’t… I couldn’t do that to you. I would have made it worse. You know how I am. I shut down for things like that. I can’t. I would have hurt you, Molly.” He nuzzled her cheek. “Molly. My Molly.”
—
They were there for another year, but that night before the anniversary was different.
Sherlock held her in his arms, a hand resting protectively over her growing belly. Molly was smiling as she placed her hand over his.
“We need to get out of here,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“We can’t do this alone.”
“I know.” Sherlock pressed a kiss to the back of her head. “I’ll protect you both. I promise.”
—
The lift doors finally appeared and Sherlock rushed them through, not giving any chance that it might close too quickly. They sat down on the floor of the lift and he held her close as the door slid shut.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.
The lift began to shake and the lights flickered off and then back on.
Molly looked up and her eyes widened. “Sherlock…?” His beard was gone. His clothes they had made out of leather were replaced by his old belstaff. She looked down at herself. She was back to how she was before. “No!” She wailed.
Sherlock held her close. “Molly… Molly…”
“This isn’t the end,” he promised. “We… maybe the baby is still there.” He sounded unsure, but continued. “And if… I’m never leaving you, Molly. I won’t ever leave you alone again. “Molly. My Molly.”
—
They stepped out of the lift and into the ground floor hallway of St. Barts. Molly was near tears and Sherlock just held her. There was nothing they could do but hope.
“Molly,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple. “My Molly. Let’s go…”
“Go where?” she sniffed.
“To see our little pirate. I think we should go together, this year. Don’t you?”