He walked into her life without introduction.

He never seems to ask permission when he keeps on going.

Most people, she supposes, would get piss-drunk. Smashed, as the kids say. And then they'd go and find some soft warm body for comfort. That is, she's heard, what people do with things as messy as broken hearts.

They move on. They move on. They move on.

Molly, though. She dry-heaved a couple times, after, and that must have flipped some sort of switch. Two weeks, down with the stomach flu. She'd had to call off of work.

I love you.

It's an experiment.

You're my friend, we're friends.

I love you.

Move on. Move on.

Molly wouldn't even know what that looks like.

A whole month goes by. They're remodeling 221B, apparently. Nobody was killed in the Baker Street explosion, though she's never quite sure how. Sherlock Holmes is invincible in the very best and worst of ways.

She sees John and Rosie a few times. John looks like he's aged a decade, but there's something like peace in his eyes.

There's no sign of Sherlock. She doesn't ask.

Molly wasn't the one who called.

Molly isn't the one who asks.

She feels as though she's found herself on a tiny island, where nobody's leaning on her as they were immediately after Mary's death. Molly is useful with death.

Life, though, goes on.

She likes her flat. It's new. She keeps moving, ever since Jim Moriarty watched telly with her on her sofa, that one time. It's like she always has to reinvent something, she just never knows what.

You changed your hair.

You changed.

She shudders it away. It's a Monday, and it's evening, and she's had a long, long day.

When the knock comes on the door, she somehow knows it must be him.

Last time she saw him, she'd thought he was dying. She lives around the dead, but he isn't supposed to be one of them.

"Sherlock," she says. There's no color in her voice. Surely, if he could only see, he'd notice how it was all bled out along her floorboards. All those bright hopes. She holds each one a long time, like holding matches until the flame creeps right down to shrinking fingertips.

"Molly." He's got those formidable eyebrows drawn together, all earnest. She feels as though she's going to be sick again. "Molly. Can I come in?"

He's already come in to everywhere else—work, mind, heart, secrets. He used to come over two flats ago, after the rooftop fall. A couple times, before he disappeared. He used to stretch out on her couch and stare at her ceiling, tell her what kind of mold she couldn't yet see there.

She loved him. She always loves him.

"Come in."

He flinches when he sees her kitchen. Actually flinches. As though it hurts him, and she has no idea why. It's such a sweet little place. Why isn't anything about her ever good enough?

She opens her mouth to speak but it just stays that way, lips parted. Nothing to begin.

Because it's true. It's always been true.

"You used to have a cat."

"Toby, yeah." Toby died last year. She misses him so much, like she isn't supposed to miss anything. She'd have thought she used all that up. "He died."

"I'm sorry." He's still all stiff, standing there next to the faucet, as though he's somewhere else. "I know you liked him."

"You hated him," she says. She tugs the corner of her mouth into the faintest of smiles. "But then, you hate everything."

That's how the silence falls. It's her own fault. She had to say that, you hate everything. She'd be hearing it, now, if she hadn't been hearing it every second in her head since that day a month ago.

I love you.

I love you.

He didn't just say it. He said it twice.

"Do you want to sit down?" She means it to be polite, or maybe she doesn't. She gestures to the sofa (not the same sofa) and he sits. He's so tall and long, his knees are crooked up.

She always thinks she's going to be the one to let it go. He doesn't have to, of course. He's never been the one holding out hope.

"Would you like to—"

"Have dinner?"

"Solve crimes?"

Nothing ever lasts.

"I have a sister."

It's the strangest thing he could have said. It fits, but doesn't fit. This is a different Sherlock, she supposes. More man, now, though there's still those traces of the boy here and there. There must just be parts of him that never needed to grow any older.

"A sister," she parrots back inanely. A Holmes sister. The first image that comes to mind is a female Mycroft in a three-piece suit, and the second is something wild and lonely and probably more real.

"Someday." He's never been at a loss for words—except with her. She's clung to that, on long nights. It hasn't done much to keep her warm. "Someday, Molly, I want to tell you about her. It isn't a nice story."

A nice story. As though she is a little girl, as though that's all she's ever been. Molly rocks back against that same granite countertop, the nice one, the one she'd been proud of until she remembered there wasn't really anyone to be proud to.

She hates that he can see her face this time. "I'm not a child, Sherlock."

"I know. That's not why." He's got that look, the look she and John have joked about, the look that says he knows where this is going. And maybe he does. He's Sherlock, after all, he's always running, and he always gets ahead.

Perhaps he thinks she knows it too.

He's never asked.

Molly doesn't so much sigh as let the air slip from her lungs, a long exhale, as though it will make her let go. "What did you come here to say?"

"She wanted…me. To get to know me, see me…" He looks almost bemused, almost as though he doesn't know why. But Molly does. She's biting the inside of her cheek, and loving him like her heart beats, steady and somewhere deep and painfully permanent within her chest. Molly understands.

It's his one shred of humility. He understands the slack-jawed adulation of the world, but he's never quite understood just how much he makes people fall in love with him.

And this sister? She doesn't even know her name. Can't see her face. But the little that Sherlock tells is a nightmare, though he doesn't sound afraid. She wonders what the end of the dark fairytale is, if it is a good old-fashioned one, too much blood to go around.

Does he look pale? (He's always pale.)

So is she, when she faces the mirror every morning. So is she.

"It was a test. I had three minutes. I believed, at the time—wrongly—that your flat here was rigged with explosives. If you didn't—"

Not an experiment, then. A keycode. He'd wrung it out of her to save her, but her flat wasn't rigged and she doesn't know what he saved. Molly feels her knees beginning to buckle under her. "Could you, uh, leave? Please."

It's dreadful. She knows she's being irrational, but so is everyone else. It's unfair to him, maybe, because he's just gone and told her quite a bit of what goes on inside him, what was done to him (to her).

It's more unfair to her.

He stands up. He's always taller even than she remembers. He swallows.

It's as though he wants to say something more, but he doesn't.

He lets himself out.

Three missed calls. Mrs. Hudson. Dear, what's going on? We're picking out furniture, well, trying to. Would love to have your taste—

John texts. Rosie misses you.

As though that could be true.

One day, John shows up.

She can't stop seeing the new lines around his eyes. But his daughter is in his arms.

"Hi, Rosie," says Molly. Almost squeaks, really. She reaches out and John hands over the baby. Her goddaughter. Rosie is loose-limbed and babbling, happy and not yet knowing what she's lost.

"May we come in for a minute?" John asks.

"Of course."

She makes tea. John sits on the sofa, taking Rosie from her. He's watching her. John lives eternally under Sherlock's admonition that he sees but does not observe, but Molly thinks that John Watson sees a lot more than most people give him credit for.

"You OK?"

"I'm fine, thank you. Work's been a bit busy," she adds. The fact that she has to add something, an explanation, means that she's lying and she knows it.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"No dead time, you know." It's a joke. A bad one.

Don't make jokes, Molly. She shivers.

"We miss you at Baker Street." John could be talking about Mrs. Hudson, himself, Rosie, Sherlock, or some inscrutable combination of some or all. "It's been…surprisingly fun, getting everything together after the blow-up."

"Was that the sister too?" The sister. As though she doesn't know whose sister it is.

John looks surprised, though at what, she's not sure. "Yeah. Yeah, it was. That's—I don't know if it's sorted, exactly. But it's settled."

The Holmes are inexplicable. Molly would know. "I'm glad you're all OK." Then she thinks about Mary, and she wants to bite her tongue off.

But John doesn't even wince. "Thanks." His brow furrows. Rosie makes a small cooing sound, tugging at his jacket. John says, "Molly, I just want you to know—"

Molly bites down, hard, so hard her teeth ache. "What?" she whispers through them.

John shifts Rosie to his other knee. His face is decades older, careworn, but his daughter has his eyes. "He didn't want to hurt you."

Molly tells him that she knows. She pours the tea. They chat about armchairs. Not that it matters, but Molly thinks a yellow one would be nice.

After John leaves, she cries.

Mary's grave is perfectly tended. Molly likes to leave flowers there, sometimes. There's always fresh bouquets, never anything wilting. She thinks that John probably brings the flowers but Sherlock makes sure that they're never there after they die.

"I miss you," Molly said. Their universe—Sherlock's universe—it was infinite and yet small, with so few people. John, Mary, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft—and sometimes Molly.

Sometimes.

You do count, you know. You've always counted and I've always trusted you.

"If you were here," she says, to the smooth granite, to the Beloved Wife, Mother, and Friend, "You'd slap one of us. I'm not sure which one."

Molly, it's Mrs. Hudson. Where are you, dear? It's been weeks since I've heard a peep from you. Don't make me come over.

One day at the lab, Mycroft appears. He seems vaguely distasteful of the corpse on the slab, but not much more distasteful than he seems around the living.

"Mycroft."

"Miss Hooper."

She has blood and bone on her labcoat and goggles. It's not pretty.

"Is there something the matter?"

He twirls his umbrella cane under his smooth hand. "You tell me."

"There's a lot the matter here. It's a morgue."

"I don't know what my brother has told you of our family…troubles, but I'm not unaware that you were caught in the crossfire."

That's Mycroft, slicing to the bone. Yet something tells her he wouldn't make a good mortician. Molly says nothing.

"It was," Mycroft says, "Unfortunate."

Was he there? Was John there?

They must have been. Sherlock wouldn't have told them. Wouldn't have said anything about her, she's certain of it.

"I'm alive," she returns, guarded. Gestures, with a spattered latex glove. "More than can be said for most of the people here."

"Miss Hooper, my brother is extraordinarily dense. But even he—" Mycroft smiles. It's the kind of smile that might mean that he is uncomfortable, but he always directs such effects outwards. "Well," he says. "I see that you are quite engaged. Regards to your sick aunt."

She doesn't bother to ask how he knows. The doors are already swinging and shuddering behind him.

She gets another cat. His name is Anselm, and he won't stop clawing the rug. Still, he's a nice little thing, with a velvety face and a loud purr. Molly strokes him between his peaked ears and watches a Hitchcock.

There's a knock on the door.

She could swear. She could shout, go away!

But what if it's only a delivery?

At this hour? It's not the delivery.

She opens the door. "Hello, Sherlock."

"May I come in?" He's wearing his coat. He's always wearing his damn coat. He was wearing his coat when he kissed her cheek and congratulated her on her engagement to Tom.

Tom. Shame is a familiar feeling. Molly shrugs it away. "OK." It's not as though she was really going to say no.

He comes in, but doesn't sit down.

"You…" she starts weak, and then clears her throat. "You could have phoned."

He meets her gaze. "I thought that might be upsetting."

"Oh, and you wouldn't want that, would you?" She'd be surprised at her own bitterness, if it wasn't always tumbling round and round inside her these days.

"Molly."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter. You did what you thought you had to do." And if it dragged her under deep, dark waters again, what of it?

"I didn't want to say it," he says.

She's going to cry. At times like this, she wishes that she could be cold and hard and knowing, but she can't. "I know."

Sherlock's eyes are piercing, even more so than usual. "I didn't want to say it like that."

Her mouth falls open. It's like the room is spinning, and only the two of them stay still.

He leaves before she can stop him.

They all crash into the lab one day, Lestrade, John, Sherlock. Molly is trembling, and forces herself to stay calm.

"What can you tell us?" She hasn't seen Greg in a while.

"Late thirties. Blunt force trauma. The, uh, cuts afterwards—"

"Glasgow smile," Sherlock says, shouldering through. He's acting as though everything is perfectly normal, though he glances in her direction more than usual. "But there's no link to any of the typical organized crime syndicates that practice this particular form of mutilation."

"Maybe it's the Joker," says John.

"The who?"

"You've at least heard of Batman?"

"Deleted."

"It's probably not the Joker," Lestrade says.

Sherlock's already researching on his phone. It isn't the Joker, but it is a crazed Jack Nicholson fan, recreating kills after each iconic role. Molly reads in the news that Sherlock catches him during a reenactment of The Shining.

New text from John: Dinner at 221B. Mrs. H. is cooking.

She doesn't put on a low-cut, sparkling evening dress this time. God, why was she always so stupid?

They're all there, except Mycroft. Molly has the distinct feeling that he would never accept a dinner invitation featuring Mrs. Hudson's cookery, though she also believes that's a mistake. Mrs. Hudson makes a truly excellent roast.

Greg is talking to John. Mrs. Hudson is bustling about the table. Molly should join her, but she's intercepted by Sherlock with Rosie balanced on his hip.

It isn't fair, Sherlock with a baby. It does things to her.

"Hi."

"You came." He smiles. It looks like a genuine smile, and Molly tries to chase away the nagging voice in her head that says, how would you know?

"Yeah. John asked."

"Good. Thought that would work."

"What?"

"It was my idea."

"The dinner?"

"You. The dinner came afterward." He takes a pocket-watch out of Rosie's mouth. "Really, Rosie. After my explanation of the internal gear system, you still think it's an acceptable chew toy?" He turns back to Molly. "She's not exactly a quick learner."

She reaches out, stroking Rosie's hair. "Give it time."

"Time," Sherlock says. His whole face lights up, as though he's solving something. "Yes. Some things need time, don't they?"

Molly's hand stills amid Rosie's curls. Sherlock is just…looking at her. It's not the dreadful, iron-shafted look of deduction. It's the look that he's worn in tiny shades and seconds, whenever he says something that she always remembers.

"Dinner is served!" Mrs. Hudson crows, and the shade and second fade.

As soon as the dishes are cleared up, Sherlock rises with deliberate decision. "Fancy a walk, Molly?"

Everyone is studiously not looking at them.

"Um." Molly can feel herself turning very red. "OK."

London is gray and gold and shadowy in the evening. It's nearly the eighth anniversary of her father's death. Molly will have to leave London for that, go to the countryside, put a wreath on his grave. Evergreen, she thinks. He never liked flowers, her dad.

"Mind if I smoke?" Sherlock says. He sounds bright. Which usually means hard and sharp, but not tonight. He's just finished a case. She wonders why he's not bleak with boredom yet. Maybe he's still enjoying the high.

"It's not good for you." He's walking quickly, and it makes it a little difficult to keep up. His legs are long.

"There are worse things." Sherlock puts the cigarette back in his pocket anyway. "Did you see the chair?"

"The chair?" She's lost.

"The yellow one." He looks very pleased with himself, and she flounders about in her mind to find the missing piece.

"Oh, yeah. It's—it's very nice."

He takes the cigarette back out, for the sole purpose, seemingly, of rolling it back and forth between nimble fingers. "It's for you."

Molly stops short on the pavement. "Sherlock, what are you doing?"

He wheels around, coat sweeping behind him, so that he's directly across from her, his face tilting down towards her. Very low, he says, "I'm trying."

There are sirens in the distance. A taxi careens by. Molly feels very small under the smog, under the sky. "Trying to do what?"

He doesn't exactly answer. Just starts talking, at his old million-miles-an-hour pace. "I had to save you, you know, even if it hurt you. If I breathed a word of your supposed danger, I thought you'd be killed instantly, no escape, no warning. Pain is survivable. You had to survive, Molly, even if it hurt. I just—" he pauses, lips parted, forming the next words, suddenly uncertain. "I just didn't expect it to hurt me."

"It did?"

"Yes." He shakes his head very slightly. "I've made a science of more than deduction, you know. Repression. From earliest childhood, apparently. It's of crucial importance to separate emotion from what is at hand, what must happen from what our feeble internal chemistries would manufacture to explain circumstances to imperfect minds."

Feeble internal chemistry. That sounds like her.

Sherlock goes on. Without permission, he keeps going, as he always has. "I have learned how to maximize the abilities of my brain, such as it is. It seems so far superior to those around me because it is being used. I've encountered far greater intellects than my own, though few are so thoroughly engaged."

Molly's heart is beating faster, but she is fixed in place, an immovable object, just like the love she bears and hides and suffers from, all these years.

"Before John knew me as well he does now, he was repulsed by this practice of mine. Caring, I had classified as useless. My brother encouraged the supposition, though I did not know the whole of the reason why." He takes a breath. He probably wants the cigarette. She should have let him have it. "Molly, when I believed that I was saving you, I did what was necessary. It was surgery, of sorts. I once took a bullet a centimeter from my heart for much the same reason. You were not the first, nor the last test on that day. Until then, I had successfully organized my approach—as a soldier might on a battlefield. As John does, though in a far less repulsive and more heroic way than I."

"I'm not angry with you, Sherlock." And she isn't. It isn't (often) anger that she feels.

"I'm still sorry." His voice slows, slightly, a more attainable pace. "Molly, with you—I couldn't. Couldn't…separate the two. Emotion from what was at hand."

She squares her shoulders. "Why not?"

"Because it's true."

If she wasn't a pathologist, she thinks, if she didn't know, she'd be quite certain, in this moment, that her heart had leapt up to her throat. "What's true?"

Sherlock moves closer. A step. One step. Three words. And so many years. "It wasn't an experiment and it wasn't an off-switch. It wasn't anything until I'd said it." He runs the edge of his teeth over his lower lip. "My sister knew. Before anyone else and certainly before I did. I'm not an ordinary friend, as John could tell you. I'm not an ordinary brother and I'm not an ordinary man. It follows, therefore, that it would be entirely different, alien, and mostly unpleasant to those around me, when I—"

One more question. One more little push. She whispers, "When you what?" and wonders what it would look like if the sky started falling.

"When I'm in love."

She never knows how it happens. Maybe her legs are giving out, and so she tries for balance, but the next moment she knows, her hands are clinging to the lapels of his coat.

He doesn't say anything else. His hands find her hair, and his lips find her lips, and Sherlock Holmes may not always know his own heart but somewhere he learned the science of kissing. It's a chilly night in London. His fingers are cool, cradling the back of her neck, but his mouth is hot, tasting faintly of mint and of tobacco.

Molly breaks away first. She has too, she cannot always be the one to stay longest. But he won't let her go. Gently, he turns her face up to his again, pulls her in closer so that his arm is around her and she is swallowed up by his coat.

"Sherlock," Molly whispers, against his mouth.

"Yes?" he asks, moving his lips to the line of her jaw.

"What are you doing?"

"Kissing you." That makes him draw back, his hands on her shoulders, his brows crooked together. "Am I doing it right?"

Molly can't exactly answer that without melting. She nods rapidly.

He smirks. "Good. Then why are we stopping?"

"I just want to make sure that it's real."

"I don't deserve you," he murmurs. "There. Is that real enough for you?"

She realizes, suddenly, that she doesn't need her own permission—anyone's permission—to believe.

"You are," she says, with unexpected, almost giddy levity—and then she links her arm through his. He moves his hand over hers, and they walk into gray and gold and shadow.

The yellow chair, as it turns out, is very comfortable.

New text from Sherlock: Case involving beehives. Interested?

New text from Sherlock: John says February 14th is important. Do you care?

New text from Sherlock: Too early to get Rosie an articulated skeleton to play with?

New text from Sherlock: It's still true, you know.

"Sherlock."

"What?"

"I'm right here, you don't have to text me."

"You were reading. I was thinking. It seemed…simpler."

"I think," Molly says, "That you just don't want to say it out loud."

"Say what?" His tone is too innocent.

"Oh, three little words."

"Nobody's in danger."

"Say it anyway," she says, but she's smiling, this time, and it doesn't hurt anymore.

He draws her in with that stare. She fell in love with his eyes first, voice second, and never looked back.

"I love you, Molly Hooper."

The yellow chair is very comfortable. But his chair, as it turns out, fits two.