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The first thing he can hear is the soft, incessant beeping of his heart rate monitor. The first thing he can feel was the blessed oblivion of morphine. The first thing he sees is the wearied worried face of Molly Hooper, who must have been sitting by his bedside for – too long from the look of her. Her face more gaunt than he can remember, her eyes more shallow, and dark lines below them too.
He tries to speak, tries to say her name, but sounds, words and thoughts will not cooperate together.
He wants to tell her she was his first thought. He wants her to know how she helped him, guided him, saved him.
When he finally regains the ability to speak, he says the one thing he thinks she wants to hear the most.
“I’m sorry about the drugs.”
Then sleep takes him again. But not before he hears someone ask, “What drugs?”. It sounds like Molly – but it couldn’t be. She knows full well what drugs.
---
The next time he wakes, the room is lighter and he can see her more clearly. More than losing weight and missing sleep, he can see the light glimmer on the strands of silver through her hair.
“How long have I been out?” He thought it couldn’t have been long, but the lines on her face tell a different story.
“Only two days.” She says.
“I thought it was a myth,” he rasps.
She hands him a cup of water.
“What’s a myth?” She’s smiling, no doubt happy to hear his voice, no matter what state it’s in.
He gestures to her hair. “Turning grey overnight.”
---
She’s changed her clothes, but doesn’t look like she’s been home. He smiles, comforted by the knowledge of her perpetual vigil by his bedside.
“Don’t you have to work?” he asks, not that he wants he to go, but that he doesn’t feel worthy of her care and concern for him. Not after everything. Especially not after the last thing he said to her before he got shot.
She shakes her head. “This is the only place I need to be.”
She gently touches his hand, an intimate gesture, and yet strangely familiar to him.
He smiles, weakly. He’s glad she broke it off with Tom.
So glad, he’s not sure if he didn’t just say that out loud. From the shocked look on her face, maybe he did.
---
He’s agitated despite the morphine and whatever else they’ve given him to keep his mind and body sedated. He wants to stand up, to find John, to talk to Mary, to get to Magnussen.
He tried to sit up, but the sharp pain of his healing chest stops him.
Molly is right by his side, right where he expected her to be. Her eyes are full on unasked questions.
“I have to stop him,” he explains the next time remembers how to speak and what to say.
“Stop who?” She asks.
“Magnussen.”
---
She’s having a conversation with someone. She’s not happy.
“You have to tell me how long he’s going to be like this!”
He hears words like “blood loss”, “extensive”, “arterial damage”.
“I know all that.” She hisses – he’s never heard her speak with anger like this before.
“There’s no neurological damage” the doctor says.
“You tell me there isn’t,” she scoffs.
The doctor pats him on the shoulder, trying to rouse him further.
“Sherlock, can you tell me what month it is?” the whitecoat asks.
“August.”
The doctor looks at Molly like his point has been proven. Molly looks sceptical.
“Sherlock, what year is it?” She asks him.
He rolls his eyes, “2013”, he almost adds “obviously”.
The doctor and Molly share a worried glance. He has no idea why.
---
Molly’s on the phone to someone. She’s crying. She thinks he’s still asleep.
“I'm telling you, he thinks it's twenty years ago!” She says.
“No I don’t,” he says, eyes still shut. She’s so shocked she drops the phone to the ground. Quickly picking it back up, she ends the call with a promise to call whoever it is back.
“So you don’t think it’s twenty years ago?” She says, her eyes hopeful.
“Of course not!” She breathes deeply, relieved. He continues, “I didn't know you twenty years ago. We met the day you started at Bart's - June 8 2008. That’s only five years ago.”
She’s crying.
“What is it?” He asks.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” She says, adjusting the level on his morphine dispenser.
---
Molly’s hand is holding his. Small, deft fingers interlaced with his own. He doesn’t know when he decided that her hand in his felt right, but it does.
His fingers trace a small metal band. Wedding ring. She catches him looking at it, and pulls her hand away as if to shield it from him.
“I thought you broke it off with Tom?”
“I did.”
“Why are you still wearing his ring?”
“It's not from him.”
He wants to laugh. He would if he wasn’t certain that his body isn’t ready for the movement and exertion that laughter would bring.
“How long have I been here? Surely it hasn't even been a week and you've gone and got engaged again? Or was it a quickie wedding to one of the male orderlies?”
She’s not embarrassed. On the contrary, there is a glimmer of something like hope in her eyes. Hope of what, he can’t say.
“It's only been three days.”
“Well that's impossible, even for you.”
“Make a deduction, Sherlock. Is there any other explanation?”
She’s taunting him, trying to goad him into using the resources of his mind palace currently under guard by opiate sentries.
He feels ill. Weak. Before succumbing to sleep he takes one more look at Molly’s ring.
“It looks a lot like my mum’s,” he notes.
“Go back to sleep,” she says.
---
“Where's Mycroft?” he asks.
Her eyes are wide, like she’s been caught out. She waits for a moment before speaking. “He um- can't make it.”
“Too busy mending another diplomatic crisis - or causing one,” he wants her to laugh. For some reason, her face is downcast again.
"No, he isn't." She says softly, with a glint of tears in her eyes he doesn’t understand.
---
It takes days before he’s willing to ask the question on the edge of his mind.
“Why are you always here?”
“I want to be here.” There’s a strength in her he hadn’t noticed before. Stronger even than the woman who slapped him, and she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Isn't there somewhere else you should be? Or someone else you should be with?” he gestures to the ring again. It really does look like his mother’s.
“No, Sherlock, there is nowhere else in the world I need to be.”
“Molly?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
---
She’s standing by the door, talking in hushed tones to one - no, two people he can’t see.
"He's in and out. And he's confused. He doesn't remember much. He might even remember who you are."
"Molly. Who are you talking to?"
"Um, some visitors. They want to see how you are."
"Is it John?"
"Yeah it's me," the voice says, but it sounds all wrong. Far too young for John. In fact the young man can’t be more than eighteen. And he doesn’t look like John at all. This “John” is tall, lanky, with deep brown eyes and wild hair a similar shade to Molly's.
"You're not John!"
"Yes he is!" A slightly younger girl, maybe sixteen, who looks so much like Molly they could almost be sisters. Definitely related.
Her eyes are wide, challenging him. They aren’t brown like Molly's. They’re green, with tiny flecks of gold.
"Heterochromia,” he says, gesturing to her eyes.
She nods.
"I have it too."
Sleep takes him again
---
"Where's John?" He asks her.
"Who do you mean?"
He’s beginning to get frustrated. There’s something not quite right and he can’t quite deduce exactly what. "What do you mean who? John Watson. Where is he?" he spits out.
"He and Mary are away in Italy. It's their anniversary." She explains.
He can’t believe it. "They can't go to Italy. John isn't even talking to Mary. And who goes away after only being married a few months?"
She closes her eyes, as if willing him to do something – but he has no idea what it is she wants of him.
"Is there another explanation?" She asks.
"They're idiots?"
---
She’s talking to the doctor again. He pretends to sleep because he wants to know what it is that has her so worried.
“He's not remembering anything. He doesn't even recognise his children. Will he be able to remember?”
“There's no neurological reason to explain his amnesia. It must be psychological. I'm sorry Mrs Holmes.”
He tries to hear more of the conversation, but the next thing he knows, Molly has taken his hand again in hers. He traces the ring that looks so familiar yet so foreign on her finger.
"Was my mother here earlier?" He asks.
“No Sherlock. She wasn't.”
“I could have sworn…” he trails off.
“What?”
“I thought the doctor said he was talking to Mrs Holmes.”
He must be dreaming, because it sounds like Molly is saying, “Yes he was.”
---
She’s crying now. He has no idea why, but he knows he can’t stand to see it. He reaches to wipe the tears as they fall.
“Thank you Molly,” is the only thing he knows to say to attempt to comfort her.
He kisses her cheek.
He’s kissed her cheek before. Not just after Christmas deductions gone wrong and hallway declarations of her importance to him. He knows he’s kissed her cheek countless times more than that.
Early mornings. Late nights. At home. At her work.
He looks at her, trying to read her reaction.
“Something tells me you’re not with another man, Molly,” he says by way of explanation before kissing her, soundly, on lips as sweet as he’d always imagined.
He’s kissed those lips before, too.
Their first kiss was after the Moriarty broadcast when he stormed into Bart's to see if she was safe. Relief and adrenaline, coupled with a last minute stay of execution flooded his veins and he took her in his arms and kissed her like the world was about to end.
There were other kisses, too.
Fervent kisses in the foyer of Baker Street.
Stolen kisses in her office when he was on a case.
Kisses on the day she told him she was pregnant.
Kisses in the garden at his parents surrounded by friends and molly with a prominent belly beneath the white lace of her wedding dress.
Kisses on her forehead slicked with sweat after delivering their son.
And again two years later when their daughter is born.
And uncountable times in their unconventional domestic life.
And the morning he headed out for a case – only a six. He said he’d be home by dinner, but somehow the suspect panicked and shot his chest with three lead shells.
He breaks the kiss and looked at her again.
"I remember."
She smiles. The first smile he's seen since he first woke.
“Welcome back” she says, and kisses him again.