"So."

"So?"

"Almost there."

"Y-es."

"So I thought we'd just have a chat–"

"Mmm, nope."

"Sorry?"

"John, although you have, from the first, demonstrated no small amount of skepticism regarding my 'experiment' with Molly Hooper, I assure you I am fully prepared. I've done the research. I know the facts, necessary precautions, social expectations and developmental needs. Look, I've an app. I've two apps!" He waved his phone.

"Yeah, thanks, genius. That's not quite what I was getting at." John inhaled, breathing out through his nose and trying for patience. "What I mean is: Are you emotionally prepared for what you're about to face?"

"Emotionally?"

"Yes. Boy, girl, tiny good-natured robot—In a few months a miniaturized version of you will be scurrying about the world, crawling up lab benches and God knows what else. It's hard. Incredibly hard. That much feeling, mate. It's just—"

"Not worried," Sherlock said.

"You should be."

Sherlock looked at him with consternation. "As always John, you're overlooking the obvious."

"Oh? What's that?"

And with that he stood quickly, eyes widening in emphasis, "I've got Molly."

It is more difficult coming back to London than it had been ten years before, and infinitely harder to reenter his life and the roles he previously held in it.

He passes a sleepless night at the Diogenes, enduring his brother's scorn and Andrea's artificial calm before returning to Baker street, where Mrs. Hudson shakes her fist, uttering a string of half-Spanish curses, and slams the front door in his face, (just as she does for the next month whenever she chances to catch sight of him). He takes that to mean he's not yet welcome.

At NSY, Lestrade has nothing to say to say to him. Won't give him any work, either. "You got a more important job right now," Lestrade says, shoving a finger his chest, telling him to go home. "I don't want to see your face until you've gotten down on your knees and begged–and I mean begged, Sherlock, begged–that woman for forgiveness. "

Sally Donovan, now a Detective Inspector in her own right, calls him a piss poor excuse for a man and a human being. Not for the first time, she is completely correct. He's reminded of Mycroft, the erstwhile architect of his escape, but also the man who'd regarded him with barely disguised contempt upon his return. Of all his people, only Phillip Anderson seems to offer anything in the way of sympathy, though it seems more out of obligation than true sentiment.

And then there is John. John, whom he sought second only to Molly, and who looked at him with such fury and bitter disappointment. He shook his head, so overwhelmed with disgust that he didn't bother throwing punches this time. (Mary gets one in; her right hook is better than John's, too.)

Logically, he knows what they suspect, evidenced by demands for bloodwork and hair samples and a corroborated account of his locations, travails, activities. He wordlessly submits, providing the necessary samples and requests to Andrea to validate the dates and locations of his numerous assignments.

"Just," John seethes, four days after he's returned, when the last of the tests and confirmations from MI6 have been forwarded to Baker Street. "Just–God! Why, Sherlock?"

"Because I had to do something, John. I couldn't rest, could not stop until that organization that threatened our children's lives was utterly undone."

From his armchair, John shakes his head, mouth curving with his pensive smile-that-isn't, and looks at Sherlock as though he hardly recognizes him. "That's not what I meant, mate."

Even after she's read the files and the tests confirm that he's been clean, Molly doesn't say more than a few words to him for weeks. She puts on a good face for the sake of Jack and David and Anna, but the space between them echoes across unquantifiable distance. Once, twice, he catches sight of her clenched fists and worried mouth, and is painfully reminded of the awkward young woman she'd once been, fighting between her desire to speak her mind and her inclination to slam a door in his face.

It is a hard winter, one that stretches out before them all like black ice on an unfamiliar road.

Anna Holmes, ever her father's daughter, regards him with a set of mercurial, closely-guarded emotions, flashing from one to the next at near to lightspeed. Chief among them is resentment. She has been altered by the events of the past year. Since he's seen her last, her impish, bossy qualities have taken on a hard edge. She is flinty, competitive, and does not take well to change.

Molly holds out just-rinsed teapot and tray. "Jack, take these down to Mrs. Hudson, please."

"I'll do it," Anna interrupts, glancing at Sherlock with contempt, eager to leave the room. "I'm faster, anyway," she says, dismissive.

(You killed him, she repeats, screaming in every room of his mind palace. Eyes wild; terrified. You killed him!)

Jack ignores the dig, content to spoon more cereal into his mouth. The tray is heavy and awkward in her thin arms. Sherlock moves to help her. "Here, let me–"

"I don't need your help," Anna snaps, shoving past him with a scowl. She hasn't addressed him directly yet, refusing to meet his eyes or refer to him by any name. "None of us need you," she spits, and thunders down the stairs.

Molly meets his eye briefly. Her expression softens, but she says nothing, and follows Anna down the stairs.

"Is she always that nasty?" he asks Jack, sitting across from his son with a small sigh.

"No, not usually," Jack answers slowly. The only around you goes unspoken. Sherlock hears it anyway.

And so the high tide of reconciliation that had come in so slowly it scarcely seemed to advance at all, goes out again in the blink of an eye.

The viciousness in Anna's barbs and the pain of Molly's silences weigh heavily on him. He's lying on the sofa at half past midnight when his brooding is interrupted by the sounds of a small figure creeping down the stairs.

"We stopped playing it." Jack says, tiptoeing to the sofa. Ripper is curled up before a low-burning fire, and they sit side by side, feet splayed out on the coffee table.

Sherlock smiles, takes a deep breath and attempts to push his melancholy away. On a road paved by cold nights and gray, empty days, his son's unyielding warmth has been his saving grace. He is his mother's son, truly, though still undamaged by the doubt and heartache he's thrust upon Molly. "Playing what?" he asks, putting his arm around his eight-year-old youngest.

"The song." He mimes a guitar, fingers finding the invisible chords.

"Song?"

"Ours. 'Queen of the Savages.' The one you were humming," Jack says.

Oh. He hadn't realized.

"It made Mum sad, though. So I learned some new ones." His son lays his head against his shoulder, chattering quietly about his musical accomplishments. Sherlock leans his head against Jack's, holding him close, content to listen. Words and melodies well to the surface of his mind; memories that haunted him in all the miserable spaces of the last months: Filthy dive bars in Bangalore; broken Afghan-constructed housing complexes; a dank squat in Hanoi; a half-dead fishing vessel in Jakarta. All manner of terrible places where, broken, grief-stricken, he'd weighed the best parts of his life against the worst, choked by the fear that he would never do right by his children. His friends. His–

Molly.

It is a hard winter. The loneliest of his life.

Ten months after he left, Molly had gone on two dates with a nice doctor from UCL whom she met at a conference at the Royal Free. Jonathan was sweet and funny and asked after the children. He had an older son who has just started university in Norwich. He was on good terms with his ex-wife. He ordered the salmon and decent wine and saw her to a cab. He was breathtakingly average and so utterly normal—and she broke down in tears on Mary Watson's shoulder fifteen minutes after he had bid her goodnight.

"I know, love," Mary said, rubbing soothing circles on her back. "I know."

"He abandoned us," she sniffled. "How can it be so hard to move on?"

"Darling," Mary said, ever the pragmatist. "I've got news for you. We all made this choice. A life with Sherlock. All of us. Even me, because I could never have been happy with John if I wasn't happy with his best man." She stroked Molly's back soothingly, "I'm not making excuses. He's appalling, and selfish. But...you knew what you were in for. You knew the child he is below that too-big brain that's never done anything but bring him trouble."

John brought her tea, set it on the end table, and scooted a chair in close. "I know. I know the heartbreak he's caused. I do. But. But." His eyes softened. "You've a life together, Molly. Jack and Anna, and Baker Street...Once he's gotten it through his head that that's the best thing he's ever done, he'll be back." He leaned close and clasping her hands in his own. "Even after this, after all we've been through, it would be such a colossal tragedy to just...let it all go."

And Molly had sniffled, wiping the tears from her eyes. She composed herself a moment, drawing in a great breath. "No," she said, resigned to her decision. She shook her head, rueful. Goddamn that man. "The tragedy is that I couldn't."

Now, months later, and weeks since he'd showed up at the door to Baker Street, hair flecked with gray and more lines than she'd remembered at his eyes, the weight of that decision has been pressing on her, holding her down like a stone to a river bed, violent currents of emotion rushing chaotically around her.

Her phone buzzes. Wagamama + Fringe. Mad science to follow? Have MOD on speed dial.

She grins, about to set her mobile aside when it buzzes once more.

You can do it babe. Love love love you. She smiles again, this time inwardly, giving thanks to whatever mad cosmic being was responsible for bringing Mary Watson into their lives. Steeling herself, she closes the hallway doors and turns to the man poised in his chair, eyes closed in concentration.

"We need to talk." She perches on the arm of the sofa, folds her hands, waits.

Sherlock opens his eyes, snapping to attention. He sits up, considers her. "I am listening."

Molly looks at the hands in her lap, tracing the curve of her index finger with the other. "The first time you left, after the fall, long before all this, I could take it. The silence, wondering and watching and waiting, and without any sign that you were alive or would ever be coming home. It was awful. I don't think I ever told you that. Even knowing you weren't– That you trusted me, of all people. And still. It was hell, Sherlock. The lying and pretending and uncertainty. All of it was so, so hard."

She clenches her jaw. "But this–"

"I know." His eyes fall away.

"Let me finish."

"Molly, it would be helpful if you let me explain that I needed–

And then, like a dam bursting, the torrent of emotion breaks out of her with a terrible and shocking velocity. "They needed you!" she shouts. "We all needed you, Sherlock. Your children, your family required you. Here! And you left us. Do you know what that did to them? To us?"

"You of all people should know how my mind works," he counters, springing to his feet. "I needed a distraction. The work. Something I could throw myself into–"

"Don't do that," she hisses, eyes narrowing at his justifications and knowing them as the excuses they truly were. "Don't you dare do that." She felt like a live wire pulled taut; tensing, flexing, ready to break under the energy and the strain. "It wasn't about the work; you've always had the work. I have never once in all these years asked you to stop being the great Consulting Detective," she spits. "I've never held you back from the cases. You still flit about, days and nights, up and down the country, across Europe, around the bloody world if it pleases you. And if you have chosen to be here more often than not, then I've counted my blessings and what it has meant to your children and this family that you are. But never, ever try to blame me – blame us – for keeping you from what your gifts allow you do."

Countless times in the last year, Molly Hooper has contemplated the odds of their relationship surviving this latest terrible breach of trust. She has despaired and raged and ached over his absence, more than once contemplating the idea of leaving Baker Street with her children altogether. But still, she held on to a thin, blue hope that when he returned, they would be able to move forward together.

Their future hanging in the balance, she waits once more.

In the living room of 221B, Sherlock Holmes falls quiet under the force of Molly Hooper's ire. He cannot remember a time when he has seen such anger unleashed. They had fought many times; so often over the many risks the worked involved over their shared years together, but even through their worst disagreement, Molly had met him with a quiet understanding, a stoic determination, and the resolve to see him through. Well, barring one ill-advised lapse into heroin…he touches his chin at the memory.

"You didn't leave for the work," Molly continues. "You ran away because you were fucking terrified, Sherlock."

He watches the way she holds herself in check, keeping a distance between them, wringing and gesturing with her hands, not knowing what to do with them. She bites her lip. "But we were hurt too. You weren't there for all the nights I stayed up with one or both or all of them, sobbing and inconsolably afraid. And yes, David, too. Not about guns or bad men or the evils of the world, but afraid for you, for their father. Because I couldn't promise them you would be back. I couldn't explain to them why you weren't here."

"There were so many nightmares. And shock and outbursts and therapists. But they're strong, and we've always told them about the dangers that exist in our deeply complicated life. They have John and Mary and Mrs. Hudson to help them through. Their uncle and their grandparents, all their friends. They are smart and capable and so loved by everyone in their lives, and they'll get through it. They deserved to have you take part in that."

She hesitates. "And you deserved it too. They almost–" She grimaces, pressing her hand to her mouth a moment. "Sherlock, they almost."

(You killed him!)

"I know." The shame. Guilt. Anger. Recrimination. "Molly." He sinks to the chair, runs his shaky hands through his hair. "I know it was my fault. What I am. What I do."

A strange, dawning look. Something registers in her features. Surprise? "You are spectacularly missing the point. Even if that were the case—which it most assuredly is not," Molly says, kneeling beside him. "Sherlock, I loved you anyway. I had children with you anyway. Wouldn't that make me equally responsible?"

"Of course not," he scoffs, turning away.

"You must understand—I don't blame you for what happened to them," Molly says, very slowly. She touches his face, and he dares to meet her eyes. "You did exactly what you always promised me you would: You helped. You found them. You brought them home safe."

"But you broke our hearts when you left. And worse of all, you kept all your own fear and grief to yourself. You deserved to heal, too. And you owed it to your children to show them the strength that takes."

The low flames are reflected in her dark irises; there is fire in her eyes. She draws a breath. "Sherlock Holmes, in all these years I have never asked you for something you were not already prepared to give. But you will do this for me. You will make this vow," she says, voice slowing, intimating at an old promise, the first of its kind he'd ever made, and his supposed last. "Promise me, Sherlock. Never again."

What more can he say? What more can he do to prove that if there is anyone who can make him a good man again, it is her. He leans his forehead to her. His throat aches under the great force of all his suppressed emotion. "I promise."

She gathers him in her arms. He feels the press of her wet cheek against his collar.

"I love you," he swears. "That has never changed."

"I know," she says, releasing him. "That's what makes it so much worse."

A great many things have been altered in the time he's been away. Sherlock stares at the email on his phone from Jack and Anna's school, confused. "Why are there two Mr. Hazads at Latymer?"

Over her tablet and a pile of notes, Molly looks up at him. "What?"

He indicates toward his phone. "Either there are two of them, or the administration has recently favored a far more more progressive educational model—unlikely at best." He frowns. "Or they...share an instructor? But why?"

Molly looks back to Mr. Alan Foyle's post-examination write-up. "Because they're in the same class."

Frowns again. "No they aren't."

"Yes, they are," Molly repeats, returning to her tablet. "Jack was moved up."

"Jack was moved up, but not Anna?" He scoffs, offended on his daughter's behalf. "That makes no sense. Jack has superior natural intelligence, but puts far less effort into schoolwork. Given her dedication and obsessive compulsion to best him, Anna should have been a candidate for promotion as well. So why didn't they bump her up as well?"

Molly taps at her screen.

"Molly," he badgers, "why wasn't Anna advanced?"

With a huff of annoyance, she sets her tablet down and rubs her temples. "I can't prove it, mind, but yes, the proctors did have her take an upper level proficiency exam."

"And?"

"And, she failed by just enough to disqualify herself; I suspect she gamed the system," Molly says. "I didn't test positive for the deceit gene, so she must have gotten it from you." There is no bitterness in her voice, but the remark is not the casual, teasing quip it might once have been.

He looks away, focusing on the question at hand. "Why? She wouldn't want to be held back. She'll go mad."

"No, she won't," Molly answers, attempting to keep her cool. "She doesn't 'go mad' if she isn't given a problem to work through. She has patience–well, some; when she chooses to– and plenty of interests to occupy her time." She pauses, rolling her pen in her hand. "She gets anxious around strangers. She didn't want to start over in a new class filled with unfamiliar faces. Jack might be an unending source of competition but he's also a steadying presence. David, too. And Gemma and Min-yi and Laura, and all her other friends. She didn't want to leave them behind just because she's smarter than everyone."

"That is…"

Molly narrows her eyes at him. "Sentimental? Trite? Foolish?"

Sherlock looks away. "'Understandable,' I was going to say."

Anna Holmes frowns. "Why is he here?"

"We were all invited," her mother replies.

Anna's eyes narrow, flicking over her father in distaste. She wishes he'd never come back. "No. It's David's party. He'll ruin it. He always ruins it."

"Anna!" Molly exclaims, whirling around to angrily stare at her daughter.

Anna looks at her spitefully. "You're worse than him. You're an idiot for staying. He won't even marry you. He'll leave. He'll relapse or, or–something. He says he won't do it again. And he always does it again. I've read about him. I know about his drugs and his other girlfriends and –"

"Anna Hooper Holmes!" Mary Watson sidesteps past her mother, roaring into the fold. "You do not know." She glares daggers, keeping her voice powerfully measured. "Upstairs. There will be no arguing. You will go to David's room. Now."

Anna stares up in shock for a long moment, unaccustomed to anything other than the sly, wicked, awesome Mary. She scowls at the authoritarian who apparently has stepped in her godmother's shoes. "Fine," she spits, throwing her tablet into the armchair. "FINE! I don't care about him!"

She slams the door angrily and sends a plastic Chitauri battle-droid flying across the room with a well placed khao yao kick.

Her phone buzzes. "Sorry I wrecked your party," she grumbles into the pillow, holding it out so small camera can catch her face.

"You shouldn't have said that," David says to her over FaceTime.

"Go away."

"He saved my life, Ace. He saved your life."

"And then he left us." More defensively. "He got tired of us. And he killed that man."

"A kidnapping tosser who probably did a lot worse to a lot of people. You saw the articles online about it. Also, my dad was in the army. He's killed people. So have Greg and Sally and your uncle."

She scowls. "Not the same."

"You're being stupid."

"You're being a dick."

"Seriously," David deadpans. "You know who you sound like, right?"

Anna grits her teeth; he sounds just like bloody Mary. "Go away, David!" She switches the video off and hurls her phone across the room at his beanbag chair in abject frustration. It would be so much better if Mum just left. If she would just have some sense, maybe they could just be normal?

Mary raps at the door, a plate in hand. "I come bearing cake."

"Not hungry," Anna huffs.

"Aww, chicky. Can't fool me. No matter what your father says, you'll need your strength if you want to keep up performances like that one. I'd know. Seen him eat half his weight in tikka enough times."

Anna scowls and turns over, her back to Mary.

"Kiddo. I know as well as anyone he can be a jerk. And I how badly it hurt when he left. But I do promise, he's seen his mistakes for what they are. And what they've cost him."

David's bedding is covered with rocketships and constellations. She traces the lines of Pegasus between the stars. "I'm so mad at him," she says, fingers digging into the pillow.

Mary leans on her arm, and running a hand through Anna's long hair and curling around her. "I know. It's okay. I am too. But you can't always be angry, or it will just keep on hurting."

"Why did he go away?" she whispers, turning over. Why won't someone explain? She's desperate for answers. "Why did he leave us?" she pleads, looking up at Mary.

"Just because he's smarter than just about everyone doesn't mean he has any grasp of emotional intelligence." Mary sighs. "He loved your Mum for years before he was able to find the words to say it. For him, the most difficult things in the world to understand will always be what comes easiest to most people. Friendship. Trust. Love." She pauses, tips her head to the side. "I'm not sure if you've noticed but he's a bit of an idiot."

Anna's mouth quirks up, but she tries to hide it. "Massive idiot. Sometimes."

"Yeah. He's not perfect. Guess what, sweet pea? Me either. Or John or Mrs. Hudson or even your dear, dear uncle," Mary says, tapping Anna's nose "We make mistakes. We're all idiots in our own ways, Anna Holmes."

"Mum especially." Her nostrils flare as she screws up her mouth.

Mary snuggles down into the pillow. "You know, I honestly can't decide if she's the wisest person I know, or the biggest fool of the lot."

A small smile. "What's that say about me?"

Mary grins. "Everything, chicky. Everything. Now let's eat my son's birthday cake so he's none left to rot those teeth out of his head."

He finds Sherlock smoking on the stoop. For all of Anna's anger at her father these days, they are so incredibly alike, and never more so than in their lesser qualities. Both are petulant, easily offended, and prone to hurtful outbursts. Sherlock takes a long drag. "You were right John."

"First time for everything, I suppose," he jokes.

"Indeed."

"Not the being right bit, the you admitting it part."

Sherlock gives him a look. Sure. That. He looks away. "I made a gross miscalculation at the start of all this."

"Start of what?"

"Ten years ago you tried, as my friend, to reach out and give some very sound advice. I did not give it the value it deserved, and for that I am truly sorry."

John shakes his head. "Look, she's pissed. And I don't blame her. We all were, and frankly you deserve it. But Sherlock, it's not too late."

"Mycroft says it is."

"Your brother's wrong."

"He's never–"

"Yes, he is. You know how I know that?"

"How?"

"'Caring isn't an advantage.' His favorite aphorism."

"Yes?" Sherlock's eyebrows raise in genuine confusion.

John grips his friend's shoulder. "Sherlock, you cared about my son. And that saved his life."

A shout jolts her out of sleep. A shout, and a crash from the living room Molly startles awake, blinking furiously. She bolts out of bed in a panic, her blood pressure rising at the myriad possibilities awaiting her. Her heart aches at what she does find.

Sherlock flails wildly, falling to the floor. "No, no!" he shouts at some unseen torment. He stumbles through the darkness, tangling in a blanket upon the carpet. His hands scrabble at the floor, searching. She realizes he's still half asleep, still caught in the nightmare.

She slips to the floor beside him, wraps her arms around his shaking frame. "It's okay, I have you. We have you. You're home. Safe."

"Safe?" he croaks. "They're safe?"

His face is wet with silent tears, his body shaking. She pulls him against her, forcibly, and Sherlock finally relents. She runs her hands through his hair, making soft, soothing sounds as he snakes his arms around her waist and buries his head against her belly. He shakes terribly, and holding on to her for dear life. The worst of the tremors fading, she helps him to his feet and pulls him with her to bed. And for the first time in ever so long, he falls asleep in Molly's arms, holding onto her as if his life depended on it.

Sherlock is considering her very-well organized Google Calendar, mystified by the sheer number of interests that his children have developed in a year's time; the volume of clubs, sports and classes appears to have quadrupled. "I'm not sure they have enough activities. They have a whole twenty-five minutes free next Tuesday."

"Before or after Dr. Langdon?" Molly looks up, surprised. "Oh, you were making a joke."

"Therapy…" he grumbles, tossing the phone on one of the lab work stations.

Molly looks at him pointedly. "Yes. Therapy. They don't go as much anymore, but they're normal children who were exposed to very real trauma. You can't treat them differently, Sherlock."

"They are different," he protests airly.

"No," she says with a small sigh. Disappointed? "They really are not. How is it you of all people don't see that?"

Winter passes into spring and Molly's words (her disappointment) linger in his mind. He watches. He gathers data and considers her point. Slowly, the truth behind her words begins to sink in. Molly Hooper is deft at sidestepping her children's casual genius (she has, after all, had a great deal of practical experience in the matter) to the point where she is able to encourage and nourish it, but without calling attention to it. And, though they learn like breathing – reflexive; beyond their control – their children are anything but atypical: They read John Green books and the Hunger Games, listen to pop music that irritates him to no end. They bicker and laugh and make up games on the Tube. Ciphers and cryptographic codes (thanks to Mycroft; or, on second thought, perhaps Mary) anagrams and mathematical puzzles in place of Angry Birds (sometimes) or I Spy, but they are games, and Anna never ceases to sulk when she loses to David Watson or her younger brother. They are, by rights, brilliant, devious, irksome. But mostly, they are normal. In every way that children are.

His greatest surprise of all is not in the ways that they have changed in the year he has been gone, which is to be expected, but how much they have developed as individuals in that time. They less like children and more like...small persons.

His children are growing up, Sherlock Holmes begins to realize. And much too fast for his liking.

Jack plays football (not badly, but not well) and is in every musical group and society available to his age group. Anna acts in school plays (her lines are always perfectly accurate, though her delivery leaves something to be desired) and is a minor force of nature in mixed martial arts. Most amazingly of all, unlike his own childhood, they have no issue relating to other children. They have a hundred friends (whose names he probably should remember) and make play dates and watch terrible television.

They have bad habits and impulse control issues:

Sherlock frowns. "There is an arrow in your closet door."

Anna touches the screen of her upright tablet, swiping to a new problem set without raising her head. "It was raining."

"Mmm, which explains why you made your door a target how, exactly?"

She looks up, annoyance written across her face. "Obviously because I didn't want to get wet."

They fight over walking the dog:

"Jack will take him."

"I did it this morning, you do it."

"Ripper, go to Jack."

"Ripper, go away!"

"'All children should have dogs,' he said," mutters Molly Hooper, taking the leash off the hook. "'They'll go everywhere with him,' he said."

They fight over how to take the stairs:

"Move!"

"You move."

"Your stupid guitar-thing is in the way."

"It's bass! You can't tell a bass from a guitar!? What's wrong with you?"

"Shut up."

"Are you blind? They don't even have the same number of strings."

"I don't care if it has eleventy-seven strings and is bedazzled with the bloody Crown Jewels. It's in my way."

"'Of course I want babies,' I said," mutters Molly Hooper, placing herself bodily between them. "'Children would make me so happy,' I said."

They fight over the proper German cognate for 'subterranean,' West Ham vs. Arsenal, and which Hogwarts House they belong to on some idiotic website:

"Let me guess: You got Sorted into Slytherin. I knew it."

"Better than being a Hufflepuff."

"Gryffindor, actually. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Hufflepuff, Mum," Jack says in an exaggerated tone of lovingkindness. "Even if auspiciously awful Anna thinks there is."

"So says my baby brother, the appallingly alliterative arse–," Anna grumbles under her breath, eyes glued to her tablet, as ever.

"My sweet, verbose darlings," Molly quips from her seat on the kitchen floor. She sets her wrench aside and retrieves a petri dish from the cabinet, makes some scrapings from beneath the sink. "Interesting mold here, Sherlock," she says without glancing at him. "Have a look."

Jack grins, shaking his head. "Mum, I love you, but you are really weird sometimes."

Molly meets his sunny smile with its mirror image. "Explains where you get it from then, doesn't it?"

From the sofa, Anna cackles mischievously.

They have useless, dull hobbies:

"We're one galaxy out of billions. Circling one sun out of trillions," Anna marvels, rewatching a remake of Cosmos from some years back.

He rolls his eyes. "So they say."

Anna looks sharply at him, indignant. "It's true."

"Sure. But does it matter?" he asks, ever the devil's advocate.

"Yes."

He waves a hand, dismissive. "What possible relevance does it have in your life. Why is it somehow significant if we sit at the center of the universe or some other bit of matter and energy?"

The look Anna gives him is derisive but also...sad?

"It matters," she says, "because we don't."

"Why are you here?" she scowls.

"Mmm, pretty sure I read somewhere that parental responsibilities include posting bail."

"I don't need bailing out," she sniffs. "This isn't prison."

"No, not at all." He takes a seat beside her crossing his ankle over his knee, gaze sweeping down the hallway of austere, high-paneled walls and ornate, closed doors. "You're just forced to wear uniforms, have little to no control over your daily schedule, and answer to the whims of an authority figure whose literal position is...?"

Anna shifts her jaw in annoyance.

"That's right—Warden. Be grateful you aren't boarding. Speaking from experience, the metaphor is all the more suffocating." He folds his hands in his lap. "So?"

"So what?"

"Why am I here?"

"Why don't you just deduce it," she grumbles, refusing to look at him.

"Because I'd rather you tell me."

She purses her lips, playing with the hem of her skirt. A bright blue ribbon has come out of its bow in her hair. He turns her shoulder and reties it. Better.

"Cedric was being a prick," Anna says, blunt.

"Who is Cedric?"

"Cedric Collinswood. He's my year. Said...not nice things."

"About you?"

"No."

"About your brother?"

"No," she grits her teeth.

"David?"

"About you," she says, looking down at her clenched hands. "He said you were a nutter who left because you didn't want us anymore. He's a Neanderthal, and a moron in anything that doesn't require boots and a ball." She sniffs. "His parents read the Daily Mail," she adds, by way of a final, most hideous truth.

"Criminal," Sherlock adds.

"I wish. Then you could toss him in prison."

"So what happened with this moronic, football-mad troglodyte?"

"I might have...lost my temper. A bit."

"Might?"

"I...sort of...kicked him."

"Anna…"

"It's not my fault he's such an oaf. I wasn't even trying to lay him out. I might have bloodied his nose, but the broken tailbone was just gravity at work on his great, useless lump. And I don't care if the Warden," she says with contempt, "saw. He deserved it." She holds her head high.

He smirks, imagining his six-stone nine-year-old employing her considerable martial arts prowess against a bullying classmate. He should not be so delighted (though he is utterly delighted). "Blue belt?"

"Black. First degree," she says, the smallest hint of pride creeping into her voice.

He grins, whispers. "Stop smiling. It isn't decent."

"You're smiling."

He straightens, affecting a struggle to contain himself. "Right. Now look terribly upset and wail about my taking your tablet away."

She giggles, but summons her best acting skills. Crying and sobbing about everything that is Just! Not! Fair! she throws her head on her arms on the bench outside the Warden's office, wailing, as Sherlock affects his apologies for the scene and suggests it would best to take Anna–

"–and Jack–" she hisses. Hiccup, hiccup, wail.

–and Jack, home for the day. He smiles brightly.

"Excellent timing!" Jack exclaims, twenty minutes later on the Tube. "I was about to get told off for not having done my French homework."

"Why not?" Sherlock asks.

"Ennuyeux," Jack answers. Boring.

Fair point. "Be grateful you escaped this time. But finish it in the future," he advises. "If only because they tend to make you repeat the more tedious work over and over as punishment."

"Speaking of which," Anna sighs.

"Speaking of what?"

"Punishment."

"Whose?"

"Mine. You aren't really, are you? Going to take away my tablet?"

"Why would I do that?" he asks, baffled.

"Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

Sherlock scoffs. "Stupid."

She looks at him with suspicion. "You're not very good at the whole disciplinarian thing, are you?"

"Mmm, Molly is," he says, as they arrive at their stop. "So it probably evens out. On that note, we should probably alert her that you've been dismissed from school. Wouldn't want her to worry, would we?"

Molly blinks at the text photo Sherlock's sent. Jack beams for the camera, and even Anna is wearing an amused half-smile (in her father's presence, a minor miracle, that). Behind them the bright internal workings of a...clock face?

He wouldn't, Molly Hooper thinks.

Have Jack and Anna. Home later. Bonding. - SH The text below the photo reads.

Sherlock Holmes you're not where I think you are, she sends in return.

I'm sure that would be against The Rules. - SH

A few minutes later.

WE ARE THE LUCKIEST! - JHH

"God help me," she sighs, but cannot suppress a snort of laughter and a smile.

Furtive voices disrupt his thoughts. He sits upright at the sounds.

"Mum! Mum!"

"It's okay, Ace. It's okay," Jack soothes.

"Get off!" Anna cries.

He's on his feet before she can get to the bottom of the stairs.

"Where's Mum?" Tear tracks line her face, her cheeks pink and ruddy from crying.

Panic flashes. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"He killed us," Anna cries. "He killed us and he killed you and David and John and Mary, and Mum was all alone and she had to cut us up and–" her voice runs together in near hysteria.

"Come here." He scoops her up in his arms, like he hasn't since she was younger. She'd shot up to her height quickly some years before, but she was still well under five feet when her first growth spurt ended; she seems so much smaller like this. He makes shushing sounds, the way Molly does, and strokes her dark, shiny hair. "I'm sorry," he holds her in his arms and she curls into him like a cat, her tiny, white feet perched on his thigh as she shakes and shakes. "I'm so, so sorry. Does this help? It helps me."

She sniffles, wipes her nose on her pyjama sleeve. "You have them too?"

"Yes."

"And," she swallows thickly. "Mum holds you when you have nightmares?"

"Yes."

"Me too." Sniffle. "She's good at it. Making me feel better."

"She is," he struggles to say, "the best."

Her face crumples once more. "Why did you go?" she cries, fresh tears running down her face.

He stiffens, unable to find the right words and terrified of upsetting her more. "I was...scared. I thought I was responsible for you being taken. They tried to hurt you, my best things, because of me."

"You found us, though. You and John."

I know, he wants to say, but his voice won't come. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

"Please," her mouth quivers. He knows that lip quiver, and hates it. "Don't go away again."

He folds his arms around her, remembering the vow he gave to Molly. "I won't. Not ever. I promise."

"Daddy." And as she says it, finally, his heart cracks. Tears of his own slip down his face as Anna sobs her heart out into his neck, her small hands holding onto him for dear life. He tucks her head under his chin, and tries, tries, tries to make it right. The only way he knows how.

He carries her to bed when her sobs have calmed. "My girl is the queen of the savages..." he sings, repeating the silly, special verses, over and over, softer and softer until both Jack and Anna's steady breathing is the only sound in the room.

He presses a kiss to their brows and descends to the stairs, where he knows Molly is waiting, perched on the bottom step. She leans her forehead against his.

Kisses him.

Takes him to bed.

"Who wants orange juice?" Molly asks over the din at the breakfast table, where a YouTube video is being played, three children and four adults are currently talking over one another while Ripper nips at their socked feet, hoping for scraps of bacon.

"Got one with vodka?" Mary asks under her breath.

"Don't tempt me," Molly whispers back.

Sherlock shoots to his feet. "Lestrade has a case. Finally!" He reaches for his coat. "John!"

John blinks in disbelief. "I just sat down, mate. Can we do coffee first?"

"Oh, right. I'll just explain that to the family members of our triple homicide. Bit of a delay, sorry. But the coffee was fresh and you know how important that is. Case, John!"

He presses messy kisses to the children's heads that elicit groans and cries of annoyance before dashing out, coat and scarf in hand. John sighs and follows him out the door.

Molly hears him a pause, then an exchange and suddenly he's leaning back into the doorway. Molly glances at him, not sure what he expects. "Um, bye," she says.

He learns over and kisses her deeply, lustily, like last night, and before that like he hadn't in, oh, too, too long–

"Gross," Jack grins.

"Disgusting," Anna groans.

"Know the feeling," David sighs, pushing his glasses up.

He breaks away, leaving her breathless, her head spinning. She goggles at little as she attempts to right herself while he smirks. Prat. He brushes her fingers in final parting, and ducks out again.

"Yowza," Mary says. "Still not used to it, are ya?"

The corner of her mouth quirks up. She shakes her head. "Honestly, it's been ten years. Not sure I'll ever be."

"'Being dead?'" he reads, sliding next to her on the sofa.

"Novel," Molly responds.

"Literature. Boring. Another paranormal teenage romance, or have we exhausted the planet's inexplicable supply?"

"We have not; though it isn't."

"Some harlequin travesty, then."

She gives him a look over the edge of her book. Snob. "No. Bit up your alley, actually."

"What then?"

"Broadly speaking, it's about a murder. A pair of scientists are killed on beach."

"And?"

"And they die, Sherlock. You're familiar with the concept, I thought."

He leans head in hand against the arm of the couch, flippantly gesturing at the offending text in her hands. "I was lead to believe most mystery novels had a more complicated narrative."

She shakes her head. He seems determined to interrupt her. She sighs and sets her book in her lap. "You miss–" she starts to say. "It isn't Cluedo, Sherlock. It's not always about who did it, with what weapon, and what the motivation is. All those details are presented right up front in the first scene: Nameless thief; concrete block; greed. But that isn't the point." She fixes him with a look. "The story is about what happens after they die–"

Sherlock scoffs with derision. "So it is a supernatural love story..."

"Not to them. The characters are dead. The people they were, anyway; the story is about their bodies. What becomes of us when the biochemical processes in our lungs and heart and brain give up the ghost. It's about reclamation, I suppose. The way the land and birds and insects dissolve and dismantle flesh and bone and returning all parts of us to the elements." She lifts one shoulder, contemplating the theme. "It's about the life that comes from death, and how ultimately, they're two sides of the same coin."

He watches her face, catlike eyes sparkling. There's the shadow of a smile hiding in the corner of his mouth, though he's doing a good job of keeping it in check. Always a disguise with Sherlock Holmes. "Mmm, marginally more interesting than expected," Sherlock comments, ever flippant. "But still: Dull. At least Twilight makes for an excellent cautionary tale on the dangers of unhealthy relationships–"

"As does my journal," Molly quips.

"–not to mention the dangers of bad writing. Stephanie Meyer makes John look like Christopher Marlowe," he sighs, tossing his mobile on the coffee table.

"What you've suffered," Molly deadpans, picking up her book up once more, thumbing for her page.

"You don't get enough death and decomposition as it is?"

She shrugs. "Sure but it's different. I think–" She pauses, perhaps a teensy bit embarrassed to admit it. "I think it's sort of romantic, in way."

He looks her over. That hidden smile, again. Only this time, not-so-hidden. "You're a very strange woman, Molly Hooper."

"Yeah? No kidding," she says, pointedly.

Something settles between them. A comfortable, if fragile, silence. Reaching out, he takes the book from her hand, flips it over several times and tugs her down against his side. She stiffens at first, still unused to close contact, after so much time. Still, she thinks of his trembling hands on her the night before, somehow more tentative than even during their first sexual encounters. Their walls are beginning to come down, Molly knows, and the greatest destruction is done to them through the smallest of acts; the mundane; the intimate.

"'First light, at last, for Joseph and Celice. A dawning death.'"

From the third floor, Jack strums his ukulele. His singing voice carries down the stairs, settles on the moment, bright and cheerful. Anna jumps in, ever slightly off-key.

"'The doctors of zoology were out of time, perhaps, but they can be rescued from the dunes by memory...'"

Sherlock's deep and rhythmic voice settles some of her frayed nerves. She relaxes against him as Jack and Anna pluck out their strange sort-of anthem from the floor above.

Rescued by memory, Molly thinks.

Perhaps they all could be.

The knock at her door roused her from a doze. Satisfied the nausea was somewhat at bay, she raised her head. "I thought this was supposed to be over weeks ago," Molly groaned.

"While typically ending after ten to twelve weeks of pregnancy," Sherlock said, "morning sickness can persist well into the second or even third–"

"Don't tell me that!" Molly huffed. She rested her head against the blissfully cool tile of the bathtub, willing the nausea to reside. Sherlock moved beside her, rubbing her shoulders and neck, easing some of the tension away. "You don't have to do this, you know," she told him. "I'm fine."

"You are more than fine," Sherlock corrected. "You are healthy enough to conceive and successfully gestate a fetus–"

"Bloody parasite," she croaked, feeling the waves of nausea again. "Get out," she groaned.

"Why?

"I don't want you watching me throw up."

"What does it matter?"

"Boundaries, Sherlock!"

He rolled his eyes at her. "Molly, considering the number of highly intimate things we've done, you should hardly be self-conscious about a little morning sickness."

Sliding her teeth together she growled, "I'm sorry, did you just equate vomiting to having sex with me?"

He shrugged. "A certain analogy can be made. They do both tend to involve bodily fluids and it's over once specific contents have been expelled–"

"Get out!" she snapped.

"Fine!"

She threw up for another twenty minutes, comforted only by the fact that she was alone. But when she collapsed on the sofa with every intention of sleeping the worst of it off, he lay beside her, armed with crackers and ginger ale, and pulled her against his side. "Better?" he asked.

She ran a hand across her abdomen, smiling into his dressing gown. "Better."