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Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. The ground quite literally comes out from beneath Sherlock’s feet when 221B explodes, and it feels like Sherlock just keeps falling. Eurus emerges from the shadows of Sherrinford, from the dark forgotten recesses of Sherlock’s mind. She toys with him- her game, her dissections- and manages to force his pulse to race as quickly as his desperate mind races. When he remembers it later he recalls certain images sharply, but distorted and fractured as though reflected in broken mirror. The deaths of strangers, the brutal unfairness of it all. The ache of old wounds being prodded at. Stinging fear belying an acrid taste in his mouth like compassion chewed up, swallowed, and vomited back out again.
Even more vividly, the moments burned into his brain, imprinted by adrenaline. Looking for Mycroft’s slick beating heart through the tailored grey wool of his waistcoat. The sweat on Sherlock’s palms, the way his hands shook around the grip of the gun as he realized the truth and the guilt of the choice he couldn’t make: that he would choose to save John Watson every time.
John, offering up his life even knowing he had everything to lose. Everything, of course, in the form of his month-old daughter, already motherless, soon to be orphaned if John had his way. The parts of the game that Sherlock can’t forget are the stakes- John Watson shot, John Watson drowned, another best friend murdered, another best friend gone. Only different now, due to all the things Sherlock has never managed to say. In the simplest terms, the words he carries in his chest for John Watson are engraved in the brass plate on the lid of a coffin built for Molly Hooper.
I love you, he doesn’t say. Instead, he aims the gun away from Mycroft, away from John, and presses the barrel into the bare skin under his own chin (below the fragile bone of his skull and soft tissues of his brain) and hopes that they both understand the truth in the words he isn’t saying.
(break)
The world falls apart, but somehow it pulls itself together again, piece by piece. Euros returns to her prison, only she doesn’t return entirely alone. It’s nowhere near enough, but the shared music begins to heal lifelong wounds. It’s nowhere near enough, but it’s the best he can do. Every time he feels her eyes on him he sees John neck deep in dirty water at the bottom a steep well. He tries to quell the image with that of Eurus curled in on herself, the child alone in the sky on the sinking plane, and though he feels compassion for her plight, guilt at the lie of being able to take her home, he still feels his skin prickle every time her eyes meet his.
He returns to Baker Street. The flat is in splinters and shambles and soot, and he finds himself choking on it a little. There’s so much work to be done. But he knows in time the structural damage will be repaired, the wallpaper rehung, the books returned to their shelves. What matters is the work, the fact that two days after the return from the ancestral home at Musgrave he finds a client (hair part says retired, left hand reads widowed, with the skin of a longtime smoker, gas flame blue eyes, and a speed about him that means “thief”) waiting outside under the 221. His case is resolved within twenty minutes, but what matters is that people still know where to find them, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and 221B together again, and the chaos, the burns, the shattered world around him mean so little when he can come home to that.
In the ruins of the flat he finds that putting the world back together again must begin with putting Molly Hooper back together again. She’s had the situation explained to her several times- by Lestrade, by John- before she’s willing to talk to Sherlock. Her willingness to talk does not translate into a willingness to make the effort to reach him. He considers approaching her at work, in the morgue where they’re both comfortable, where she won’t leave before he’s finished. Instead, he comes to her flat. At least this way if she wants to she can refuse to let him in and can have the small satisfaction of slamming the door in his face.
He rings the bell twice and waits. It’s eight o’clock on a Wednesday night. He hears the white noise of a television inside. (A talk station- company for the lonely.) It cuts off after the second ring. The floorboards creak softly (no shoes, thick socks) in the same timbre (shifting weight in place- hesitating). He waits and realizes he can’t accurately predict whether she’ll choose to let him in. Then there are footsteps (rapid, unsteady- trying not to lose her nerve) and a deadbolt slides from home, a chain rattles out of place (more rattling than is strictly necessary, her hands are shaking-) and the door opens. A single brown eye peers out of the gap. The gap doesn’t widen.
“Molly,” Sherlock manages before he has to swallow against a suddenly dry throat. (Fear response?) Molly simply watches him through the gap in the door, waiting for something. Her weight shifts from foot to foot like she’s debating whether to step back and let him in or to lock the door. He needs to convince her. But how? Lestrade and John have explained the circumstances, so this isn’t a matter of explaining. Feelings, then. She’s hurt. She’s angry. And as for Sherlock?
“I’m sorry,” is all he can think to say, but he means it.
She doesn’t reply, but her single visible eye is blinking rapidly. She’s gone still, the floorboards beneath her quiet. For a moment he almost expects her to slam the door in his face.
“John told me what happened.” She says softly. “About the game, I mean.”
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, relieved. The door opens wider. Now Sherlock can see both eyes, the grey sweater and argyle socks (thick wool- earlier induction confirmed). Molly opens her mouth twice but closes it without speaking.
Suddenly, a shrill whistle rents the air. Molly startles and starts to turn towards it but thinks better and stays where she is.
“I left the kettle on,” she offers somewhat helplessly.
“Oh. Of course.” Sherlock puts his hands in his pockets, takes them out again. “I can wait here.”
Molly sighs. Once more, Sherlock waits for the door to swing shut, for her to retreat to stop the whistling, for her to send him away- for now, or forever. Maybe not forever, after all, she’s still talking to him. Sherlock waits. The tea kettle is getting louder, harder to comfortably ignore. Nearing a volume that will certainly bother the neighbors. Then, Molly’s face softens into something akin to resignation.
“Sherlock, would you like a cup of tea?”
It’s better than he could’ve guessed, even after all the times Molly has forgiven him. “Yes, please,” he says quietly, and she steps aside to let him in the flat. He closes the door as she rushes to silence the screaming teakettle on the stove. The new quiet is quickly filled with the tinkling of china as she digs for two mugs. She fiddles with the strings of the tea bags and clumsily singes her thumb on the kettle while she pours. With trembling hands, Molly hands him his mug, setting hers on the counter to cool. He follows her lead, putting the tea aside.
“You said you’ve had it explained, but I want you to hear this from me. I’m not trying to use this as an excuse. Whatever my reasons were, I hurt you, and for that I apologize.” Now Sherlock is the one pulling at his tea bag and staring into the water, avoiding Molly’s eyes from where she’s leaning against the kitchen counter. He forces himself to make his hands still, to look Molly in the face, taking in the tightness in her jaw and the way she’s biting her lips sharply, as if fighting something back. “She said there was a bomb in your building. She’d just blown up 221B, and we had barely escaped. I honestly thought she was going to kill you. I swear it, Molly, I wasn’t trying to hurt you, or be cruel.”
Then, the words Molly’s been holding back come to the surface in a rush of air, as though they’ve been trying to get out for a very long time.
“It shouldn’t matter, it’s not as if you didn’t know.” Her voice is thick, her eyes sparkling. She looks away. “It’s so obvious, everyone’s noticed. And you, with all your deductions- you must’ve already known.”
“…Yes.”
The tears begin to fall in earnest. She wipes at them furiously with the back of her hand.
“I felt like such a fool!”
“You’re not a fool,” Sherlock tells her, as gently as he can. “You’re one of the most intelligent people I know.” That only makes her cry harder. She buries her face in her hands, curling in on herself as her shoulders shake. Sherlock is torn between wanting to reach out and not knowing how, afraid of alienating her further, or hurting her more. He doesn't know what she wants, but reminds himself that she probably doesn’t know what she wants either. In the resulting internal conflict, he finds himself frozen, watching her cry. There’s a moment of panic- how do people do this? It’s easier to reach out and try to do something than it is to do nothing and see her suffer.
“There’s a reason she chose you for her game,” Sherlock continues. Molly doesn’t stop crying, but she looks up, her wet eyes meeting his, her hands away falling from her face.
“To be cruel?” Molly sniffs. Sherlock tears a paper towel off the roll on the counter and offers it to her. She takes it and mops at her eyes.
“Yes, but not to you.” Sherlock makes sure she’s looking at him, makes sure she can read his face plainly and can understand the next part. He has to say it right this time or he won’t get a chance to try again. “The reason she chose you for her game is the same reason she chose John and my brother Mycroft. I didn’t lie to you on the phone.” Molly is very still, and he realizes she’s holding her breath. “Molly, Euros chose you because you are one of the people I care about most in the world.”
Molly’s eyes are bright, focused. Trying to read if he’s lying, and touched when he isn’t. “Really, Sherlock? You mean that?” she asks him, and the rawness on her face, the waver in her voice, is so vulnerable and open that he struggles not to look down.
“I mean it,” he tells her, because he does, and it’s proven by how helpless he feels watching Molly Hooper in pain. “I know that I’m… not the best at this whole… human emotions… thing,” and that gets him the ghost of a smile, “but you are important.” He catches himself fidgeting slightly, hands clenching and unclenching. “Important to me, I mean.”
“Is this me being friend-zoned?” she asks, but she’s smiling, though sniffling slightly.
There’s no good response to that. Mercifully, she continues. “I know, Sherlock. It’s okay.”
“Is it?”
Molly laughs. She has to blow her nose after. “No, but it will be. I’ll get over it, promise.”
Sherlock remembers, suddenly, leaving John’s wedding, pulling his coat on over the suit he’d worn as best man. The air was chilly, but not unpleasantly so, the music cheerful and energetic. There was laughter in the distance, the sound of a good time being had by all. Well, not all, he thought then. You’ll get over it.
“You deserve better,” he tells her. She reaches for her tea, warms her hands on it.
“Maybe,” she considers. “But I want you.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want.” He doesn’t say, ‘I’m lonely too.’ He tries not to think of Mary Watson dying in John’s arms. He fails not to think of that final image of the two of them, the two who will always be two, Sherlock alone in his grief, alone in his longing. Instead, he thinks of John Watson and his sure hands, his clever eyes, his girlfriends, his dead wife, his daughter, all the women he’s loved. Sherlock knows a thing or two about not getting what you want.
“I’m sorry too,” Molly says quietly, and takes a sip of her tea. They stand in silence for some time, standing in Molly’s kitchen, drinking their tea. Molly’s staying very hard at nothing in a way that doesn’t really invite conversation. Sherlock tries to stop it, but now that it’s on that track he can’t keep his mind off everything he wants and can never have. It’s a litany of John, John’s smile, John’s words, John’s strength, John’s body. Some kind of permanence, some tie that will keep John from leaving again, like the weeks after Mary’s death, that will keep Sherlock from having to run, like the two years spent without his partner, his confidante, his friend. Mary echoes around his head, 'If I'm gone, I know what you two could become...'
Gradually, Molly’s focus shifts and it’s clear that she’s returned to the kitchen. When she’s completely back she seems to realize that they’re still standing by the kitchen island, reflected in the gleaming door of Molly’s oven. Molly gestures vaguely in the direction of the table. (Four seats, but only one has wear that indicates frequent use.) They sit, but the silence continues. Molly’s eyes are still red, but the tears are gone. There’s something painfully unfair in that, in seeing her wounded and walking away having been spared her grief. An apology can mend wounds, but it isn’t quite as gratifying as sharing those wounds. People become close when they’re vulnerable, or so Sherlock has been told. She’s shown her wounds, it only seems fair…
“I know how it feels to want someone you can’t have,” is what he decides on. He isn’t sure what he expects her to say, but she says nothing. Her hand crawls away from the handle of her mug and finds Sherlock’s where it’s resting on the table. Her skin is soft and dry (frequent washing, latex gloves). Her touch is gentle, and warm, and he surprises himself by wondering if that could be enough, if they could both pretend, and she could love him, and he could do his best love her back. They could have quiet evenings watching telly, he could bring her on cases and impress her, making deductions just to hear her praise. There would be John still, John and Rosie, the family he wants that doesn’t want him, but it would be alright because he could return home to Molly and her warmth, her soft hands.
But then the moment is broken, and it’s just Sherlock and Molly and their fingers laced on her kitchen table.
“Oh Sherlock,” she murmurs, her eyes soft. “I know you do.”