A/N: Special thanks to my beta, Xaraphis. Hope you all enjoy!

She should have been prepared for this.

As she sat there, listening with carefully concealed horror to what the Dean of Pathology for Johns Hopkins University was proposing, all that Molly Hooper could think was that she should have known that this would happen sooner or later. The past, in her experience, never did very well at staying where it bloody well belonged.

"I know this is short notice and I know how much you hate this kind of thing," Dean Jackson said, the sharpness of his tone softened by the harried expression on his face as he leaned toward her across his desk, "but as the Senior Researcher on the project, you're the obvious fill in for Vandemark. No one knows the work like you do, Hooper."

Molly stared down at the square of thick vellum in her hand – an invitation from The Royal College of Pathologists, no less – eyes tracing over the words spilled across its very expensive surface in a particularly fine calligraphic font. He was right, of course – little though she liked to admit it. She was the all-too-obvious fill-in. If it weren't for the fact that Doctor Vandemark was brilliant at networking and fundraising, she would have been the departments first choice as speaker.

In fact, as Senior Researcher, Dean Jackson had come to her as soon as he had received the invitation, asking for her input as to who they should send. She had been the one to immediately suggest Doctor Vandemark and the Dean had agreed, not even bothering to ask if she would have preferred to go instead. He – and everyone else in the Pathology Department – had known better.

Everyone knew that Doctor Molly Hooper far preferred the quiet confines of a well-equipped lab to the glittering opulence of a lavish gala, and attended them only when absolutely necessary. Unlike most of her colleagues, she was uninterested in the limelight and entirely uncomfortable with the concept of celebrity – even of the academic variety. She liked her quiet and she like her privacy, neither of which were terribly compatible with a life lived within the spotlight of fame.

Molly shifted uncomfortably in her seat, eyes caught and stuck to the single most disheartening word curled across the paper…

London.

It would, of course, be London – the one place on the entire planet that Molly had never had any intention of setting foot in ever again. Three years ago, she had left it behind…along with a great many other things that she preferred not to think about.

Don't go.

The words whispered through her head, as rushed and stilted as they had been on a rain-soaked afternoon nearly three years prior. Steeling herself against them now, just as she had then, she lifted her head and met Dean Jackson's eyes.

"I'll need tomorrow to pack," she said, determinedly ignoring the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Dean Jackson smiled, relief written all over his face. "Of course! In fact, why not take the rest of today as well? Call it an extraordinarily inadequate thank-you."

Molly's return smile felt too tight on her face, her cheeks aching with the effort as she stood and shook his hand. She smiled as she collected her things, informing her co-researchers of her temporary departure; enduring their genuine excitement and sincere congratulations with increasingly miserable discomfort.

It wasn't until she was in her car, heading east toward Ellicott City on I-70 – toward home, she told herself vehemently – that her smile faltered.

Memories – long banished – came creeping in along the edges of her mind. The doors of her past had been cracked open after years and years of disuse, and she suddenly found herself remembering things that she really would have preferred not to. Some were good. Some were not so good. And some…

Well.

Some she had never really managed to forget in the first place…

He had taken her home once she was released from A&E.

The ordeal of the past few days had taken its toll – her two-day stay as Jim Moriarty and Sebastian Moran's hostage had left her bruised and broken in the most literal sense of the words. Luckily though, she had managed to keep just enough of her wits about her to catch them off guard. Moran, in particular, had failed to appreciate what she was capable of.

That John and Emily Watson had been able to escape because of it had been a bit of luck. Thankfully, Sherlock had found her fairly swiftly afterward – John's doing, no doubt – and very soon after that, Jim Moriarty had joined his Lieutenant in death.

For certain, this time. Mary Watson made very, very sure of that.

'Once again, Molly Hooper, I owe it all to you. Without you…' he stopped, swallowed hard, shifting nervously as he paced in front of her sofa, one hand in his hair, the other gripping the back of his neck. Suddenly, he stopped and spun toward where she was curled into the corner of the couch, a thick blanket wrapped around her. He was staring at her desperately, as if he feared she might disappear at any moment.

'The past two days have been awful,' he admitted quietly, taking slow, measured steps toward her as he spoke. 'Without your courage, it could have been so much worse than that. If he had…" he stopped again, dropping now to his knees before her, reaching out a shaking hand to brush ever so gentle fingers across the violently purple and black bruise that covered nearly the entire left side of her face. 'I have long known that you mattered, Molly. But I never realized…that is…I never imagined that I could want…that I could need…'

He dropped his hand, collecting hers from her lap; his fingers found the thrumming pulse at her wrist, pressing against it almost reverently, his beautiful eyes sliding shut as he measured the beat of her heart.

She sat, frozen and confused – staring at him as if she had never seen him before. At the very least, she had never seen this side of him before…and certainly not directed at her, of all people. Molly tried to sit up straighter, wincing at the ache of her carefully wrapped ribs. 'Sherlock…what do you need?'

His eyes snapped open, a fire burning within the swirling blue-green that took her breath away.

'You,' he said, just as he had, so long ago. But this time, he didn't stop there. 'I need you, Molly – you are…you have become essential to me and I find that I…' A pause. He swallowed hard and ducked his head, strangely reticent suddenly. 'that I…love you. I know how that must sound to you – I know what I am. I know that I am not…good. But I want to be better. For you. Would you…perhaps…let me try?'

She blinked against a faint burn of tears; fingers clenched tight around the steering wheel as she steeled herself against the siren song of remembrance. It had been so long since she had allowed herself to think about any of it…particularly about him. He had haunted her at first, the memory of him proving as impossible to ignore as the reality of him had always been and for several months, Sherlock had followed her everywhere.

The long, lean stretch of his shadow had lingered around every corner; the rolling timbre of his voice had filled every silence. He had been a vivid ghost, in those early days. A vivid, invasive, unrelenting remembrance of everything she had craved for so long…and everything that she had walked away from, in the end.

'I am well aware of what he said, Doctor Hooper,' Mycroft drawled the words, the sympathetic look that accompanied them so patently false that it made her skin crawl. He cocked his head to the side above his steepled fingers, settled like a King on a throne in one of the Diogenes Club's plush arm chairs, a cup of tea and tray of sandwiches on the table beside him. 'My purpose here is to tell you what he means.'

He leaned forward then, uncrossing his legs and laying his arms imperiously along the armrests, his cold, blue eyes spearing her where she sat across from him. 'It is not love that my brother offers you, my dear…it is gratitude. You saved him. More importantly, you saved the Watsons. As such, he considers himself to be in your debt, and in his own, inimitable Sherlockian way, he has decided that the only way to repay you, is to give you what you want most in all the world,' he paused, offering her an icy smirk, even as he broke her heart, '…himself.'

Molly tightened her grip on the steering wheel, swallowing against the bile that had begun to creep up her throat. Even now, after so long, those words cut deep. At the time, they had positively gutted her; carved up her heart as nothing had ever done before. In less than five minutes, Mycroft Holmes had managed to accomplish what even Jim Moriarty's best efforts could not achieve.

He had driven her away.

Not with cruelty – though there had been an element of that to his speech. Nor with his scorn – though there had been more than enough of that as well. No…in the end, it had been the sense in his words that broke her. The seemingly obvious truth of them that sent her running.

Sherlock's declaration had been so sudden, so wholly unexpected, that it had been easy to believe Mycroft. Easier, in fact, than believing in the alternative. The elder Holmes had done little more than give voice to all the darkest whisperings of her own doubts and fears.

And it had worked. She ran farther and faster than she'd ever run before, grabbing onto the fresh start that had been offered to her with both hands. She'd buried herself inside the new life that Mycroft had arranged for her, thankful for his intervention and utterly convinced that she'd made the right choice.

Three years later, those effusive thanks had tempered…and she wasn't terribly certain of anything anymore.

Molly steered her car into the small garage that sat at the rear of her townhouse, emotionally exhausted and ecstatic to be home. Turning the engine off, she flopped herself back against the seat, head thumping against the headrest as she stared, unseeing, up at the roof of the car.

Regret, thick and suffocating, pressed in on her and she brought a hand up to rub at her chest, desperate to ease the ache that bloomed there. What if Mycroft had been right? What if it had been gratitude rather than love that had motivated Sherlock? Honestly…would that have been so bad? She knew for a fact that he had, at the very least, cared about her, in his own very Sherlock way…and she had utterly adored him. Couldn't that have been enough?

In the end, wasn't a little bit of happiness better than none at all?

She squeezed her eyes shut, inhaling sharply before letting out a long, trembling breath.

"Sherlock…"

His name rolled off her tongue, the shape of its syllables painfully familiar and tasting of a want that she still had not managed to master. The face that went with the name swam behind her eyes, the ghostly tingle of those perfect lips brushing so, so softly against hers…

Molly…my Molly…

Inhaling sharply, Molly's eyes flew open and she spent several long seconds taking long, slow breaths, combating tears that had begun to creep into the corners of her eyes. Not the time, she told herself sharply; really not the time. Once she had mastered herself once more, she stepped out of her car and headed into the house, not stopping until she had shut the door of her room gently behind her.

"This is the final boarding call for passenger Margaret Hooper, booked on British Airways flight 228 to London. Please proceed to gate E1 immediately. The final checks are being completed and the captain will order for the doors of the aircraft to close in approximately five minutes time. I repeat – this is the final boarding call for passenger Margaret Hooper. Thank you."

Molly, cringing at the use of the first name she never used, lifted her glass from the bar top, gulping down the rest of her pint. She had officially delayed the inevitable as long as humanly possible. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a twenty and tossed it down on the bar, thumping her empty glass down beside it.

Bag slung over her shoulder, she hurried across the terminal to her gate. After a quick and not entirely pleasant exchange with the annoyed gentleman who scanned her boarding pass – she wasn't in any kind of mood for sarcasm, thank you very much – she stalked onto the plane, stowed her carry on and took her seat.

Too out of sorts to sleep, she spent the better part of the flight staring glumly at the progress tracker splashed across her in-flight entertainment screen. As she watched their tiny plane inch its way across the large, blue swath of pixelated ocean, counting off each mile that fell away beneath those little wings, the tension in her stomach began to coil tighter and tighter.

By the time they landed at Heathrow, she was thrumming with so much nervous energy that she thought she might be on the verge of a full on panic attack. So much so that she nearly plowed over several of her fellow passengers as they strolled far too leisurely down the jetway toward the gate. A few minutes spent catching her breath in the first relatively quiet spot she had come to later, Molly was beginning to feel quite thoroughly annoyed with herself.

Yes, her personal life was an utter train wreck. Yes, she'd been the one to drive the sodding thing straight off the bloody tracks. But really…what had that to do with anything?

This was not a holiday. She was hardly going to be seeking out the people and places she'd left behind. This was, from start to finish, a business trip. She would attend the conference, give her speech, shake a few hands...and when she was done with what was required of her, she would take herself straight back to Baltimore with a brand new feather perched high atop her professional cap.

Feeling slightly better – and vigorously ignoring the little voice in her head that scoffed at her for being horribly naïve – Molly collected her checked bag from baggage claim and then handed herself into a black cab. During the ride to the hotel, she stared determinedly out the window, taking in the sights of the city she loved and reminding herself of just how big it actually was.

Over eight million people called London home…what were the odds of running into one particular person in a crowd that big? It was ridiculous to worry herself sick over the extraordinarily slim possibility that she would run into him. Ridiculous to even imagine what it might be like…

"Here we are, ma'am…Grosvenor House."

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Molly forced a smile for the grinning cabbie, passing him her fare and then offering that same, strained grin to the uniformed porter waiting patiently for her to step out of the cab. Later, once she was settled into her room, she came to the very firm decision that she was no longer going to allow her past to inform her future.

With a handful of empty hours before the welcome reception scheduled for that evening, Molly dropped herself onto the bed after switching on the telly. Back against the headboard and bare feet crossed at the ankle, she flicked aimlessly from one channel to the next, all the while telling herself with utmost certainty that she was laying the past to rest. That she was finally ready to get on with her…

"There was quite the scene today as famous – and some would say infamous – detective, Sherlock Holmes was caught on video pursuing a suspected arsonist through the streets of Mayfair. Holmes, accompanied, as ever, by his associate – Dr. John Watson…"

The remote dropped from Molly's suddenly nerveless fingers – hitting her hard on the hip before rolling off and falling to the carpet with a muted thump. Heart in her throat and feeling very much like she'd just been punched in the gut, she leapt up from the bed. Lunging at the telly, she mashed the power button on the side of it so hard that the entire thing scooted sideways.

Breathing hard into the silence that had fallen when the screen went dark, Molly just stood there, frozen in place and feeling very much like she wanted to cry.

She still loved him. Of course she still loved him. Despite the time apart…despite the distance she had put between them…Sherlock Holmes was still everything that she had ever wanted. Everything that she still wanted.

And everything that she would never have again.

Three years ago, she had walked away from him – from them – because she had been too much of a bloody coward to even try to see what might have come of it; to see if the gratitude he felt might have eventually become something more. Instead, she had broken his trust, betrayed his friendship…and Sherlock Holmes, she knew for a fact, was not a forgiving man.

Yes, in doing what she'd done, she had well and truly made her bed. What choice did she have now but to lie in it?