I'm sorry I'm a little late, but I hit a block where this story is concerned. Thank you for all those reviews, I loved so many of them. Incidentally, devilgrrl gave such a nice analysis in her comment that I've used it in the fic.

There's also a continuation error that I didn't notice: Molly should have a scar for her father. I've fixed that now, and thanks Aphreal for point it out!

Anyway, I think I had one more thing to say - I know the tally system doesn't work perfectly, and there's a certain amount of hand waving in this chapter. Part of it is a failure on my part as writer to make it make sense perfectly, and the other part is AUs like this being complicated and hard to work with.

GUEST 1: Thank you!

GUEST 2: Hahahah, thanks :)

GUEST 3: I generally DO deliver on angst, it is true XD.

SherlollyShipper: Your impatience is touching XD. Here's the next chapter.

Unicornlover123: Here's minor relief for your pain 3

Mia: Thank you, and I hope it was up to standard.

GUEST 4: For his mom, and his dog. His dog's turned into a scar though.

GUEST 5: Thank you :D

He had never considered exactly how horrible the tally system was.

For him, it was both a convenience and an inconvenience. Having liabilities on your sleeve was one aspect, knowing the liabilities of others was entirely another. He had never really considered what happened when the very intimate working of your regard for people was displayed.

It wasn't an inconvenience – it became a reminder. A proof of pain – instead of your affection for someone being something to know, privately, internally – it was pasted out for you to see. Your conviction and belief in your relationship would never be valid. Marrying someone without a tally for them would become impossible. The internal conflict of the blasted thing wasn't something out of a romantic novel; this wouldn't be something that an author would be able to put a positive spin on, because once you knew what the tallies were, they were your monsters. Your ghosts. Your shadows, defining every single sunny day.

No wonder it became popular to hide them. He hid them out of convenience – Molly must hide them to keep herself away from them, to distance herself. Or to avoid the pity of others.

"Something on your mind?" asked Mycroft coldly.

"Nothing you haven't already considered," said Sherlock.

"Somehow, I really doubt that," Mycroft said, watching the landscape pass outside the window of the car.

Sherlock remembered every detail of Molly – everything. He had deduced her over and over again, in an effort to find the root cause of that happy loneliness that baffled him. It had never made sense – something that had eluded him for years.

His fingers clenched into a fist when he remembered her arm.

The red was incomprehensible, unimaginable. Molly was so good. She was so kind, so capable.

Sherlock snorted to himself. He sounded like a lovelorn sap.

The complexities of human emotions often went beyond his grasp, but it didn't make sense for no one to have ever noticed Molly enough to merit a black tally on her arm. It didn't make sense that she had maintained the red, through hell and high water. It took a special kind of idiocy – strength, his mind said traitorously – for someone to continue with the red. To continue loving, in spite of terrible odds.

How could someone not love Molly Hooper?

She was inexhaustibly interesting, which was rare, in this world of IQs in double digits. Her interests were wide, varied – she could talk about literature, poetry, music, about death, about biology. She was always conscious of what she said, of how she phrased herself – stumbling over her words, at time. An almost crippling social awkwardness, which didn't stop her from talking to people. She hummed when she baked, and she baked well. There were monetary advantages to having Molly Hooper around – she cooked well, and she was good at managing things like grocery shopping. She gave body parts to people who needed them for experimentation.

There were emotional advantages to Molly Hooper, as well – she may be unable to comprehend intimacy due to her past with it, but she was comfortable enough with herself to not demand more. When she was thinking, she would constantly touch her hands, her fingers, and tap them. It was easy to tell what she was thinking about with such an easy tell. When she was nervous the tapping increased more, when she was thoughtful, feather light touches were on her fingers.

She bit her lip when she didn't know what to say, and if she was nervous, sometimes, there was blood. Her ability with the scalpel was unparalleled, her technique really perfect. She rarely cried – which was another advantage to the emotional aspect of loving her.

But when she did cry, Sherlock's knuckles turned white.

His arm burned. He couldn't pull his sleeve down in front of Mycroft, it would be too telling. But he knew, without needing to check – there was a second tally on his arm.

Black.

"Molly, can I speak to you?"

Molly looked up. It was John, and he had a strange sort of burning fire in his eyes.

"What's up?" she asked.

He dragged his sleeve down. Molly raised her eyebrows. There were five tallies on the sleeve, and out of them, four were black.

"His tally hasn't turned into a scar," said John shortly.

"Um, well – anomalies like that happen…" said Molly.

"Are you sure he's not alive?" asked John.

"I did the autopsy, John," she said testily.

"Because anomalies don't stay for so long, normally," he said. There was a genuine, strong, hopeful look in his eye.

And Molly knew she had prepared for this moment well.

"The tally isn't normally a reflection of the other person's state, you know that, right?" she said. "It's a reflection of your own internal state. When you can't accept the death of someone, the tally stays. When you feel pain because of them, when they cause you happiness, they burn or tingle respectively. It's not related biologically to the person you love, it is related to your understanding of them."

"I know," said John. "I went to medical school as well, Molly."

"Then?" asked Molly.

"It's odd that more than a month has passed and the scar hasn't appeared."

Molly fell apart inside. She had to do something particularly cruel at this moment.

"One moment," she said gently.

She walked into her office, and dragged her sleeve up. She put one of her arm patches on, right up till the relevant strip of skin that she needed to show John.

She walked outside. "That's my scar for him," she said simply.

He didn't say anything, regarding her carefully. The pain was palpable, inexplicable – without any definition, and without any comfort.

"If you still can't accept it," she added gently, "you could seek help, John."

And he nodded jerkily. She didn't know what to say. He walked outside the morgue, his movements robotic. As soon as he was gone, Molly curled up under one of the tables, wanting, desperately, to cry. She was trying to convince her friend that he was going mad with grief, that he needed psychological help.

She had to kill Sherlock for all his friends. It was eventually going to happen that John will start thinking that Sherlock was truly dead, that he was no longer in this world. The scar would appear, eventually – after he accepted that Sherlock was dead – a mark of an internal decision to accept that Sherlock was no longer in this world.

The tallies didn't always work in the way they were supposed to, it was true. The only time the tally made a biological connection to the person it existed for was when… the other person loved you back. And this was an internal state on the part of the person involved, not yours.

And Molly would have the burden of scarring herself just to prove that yes, Sherlock Holmes was dead. He was very, very dead.

Her arm burned again – it had happened more and more recently, with whatever she had had to do to prove Sherlock's death to her colleagues. She had to take a knife and scar herself very strongly to make sure she could tell them what, exactly, had happened on the roof had not been a lie.

Meena had started coming over almost every day after Molly opened her door for her. She hadn't been able to, for a month, because of Sherlock, but now she needed her friend.

They'd have wine and chocolate, and Meena would never make comments about how glad she was that they were talking about things other than men.

"So, how's work?" Molly asked.

"It goes," shrugged Meena. "I honestly think you made the right choice. Dealing with living people is the worst."

"Hey, you get to save them before they die," said Molly, her eyes trained on the TV.

"Sometimes I think they would prefer to die just to prove me and my hypothesis wrong," said Meena darkly.

"The drug trails?" asked Molly.

"We're managing," said Meena. "I was actually wondering if you could come in and consult on that. We have some issues to sort out there –"

And Meena would be off. She started bringing Molly in for consultations a lot more, because Molly's expertise in the chemistry of the body was beyond comparison. Meena herself wasn't very shoddy with organic compounds. Meena wasn't shoddy at her job at all, actually. She was smart, and with a meticulous mind for trial and error.

"You know," said Meena, as she watched the nine o'clock crime show that was coming, "one of these days the creators of these shows should really call us for consultation. I think they would be surprised by how much they got wrong."

"Yeah," said Molly, considering everything that could go wrong when someone actually tried to fake their death. "No sense of reality."

Sometimes, when she was alone, she would open out the sleeves and stare at the second black tally.

It was a very tenuous connection, something with a profound importance that no one, not even Mycroft Holmes could take away from her. She refused to say the words out loud, because once she did, the connection became real – it became something that could potentially be broken.

The black almost scared her. Almost. When she found herself really terrified, she would go to her piano and play.

The petunias in my window sill are thriving, Miss Montague, thank you for asking. – MH

You don't happen to know how much water you use on them? x M

These days, not as much as you would hope. – MH

Oh. That's not very nice to know. x M

I wouldn't worry, Miss Montague. The more important affair on my mind is our trade deal with India. – MH

And that goes well? x M

Compared to the amount of water and nourishment the petunias receive? Splendidly. – MH

Molly shoved the secure phone away. That was all she needed to know for now.

The code used by herself and Mycroft was very simple: Molly began by asking about something benign, such as flowers, or the state of his dining table – something incredibly domestic. This was normally a method to tell Molly whether Sherlock was alive.

The second aspect was something related to policy. A trade deal with India, sometimes with Belgium, sometimes with some other country. This was a report on whether Sherlock's mission was going well.

The secure phone Mycroft had given her didn't buzz everyday. It happened very occasionally, only once a month. That's all she really needed – a periodic confirmation that Sherlock was alive. Nearly five months had passed since his going, and John had stopped talking to her almost entirely.

She missed John. She went to Mrs. Hudson's house very regularly, to give the old lady company. She was angry at Sherlock and John in equal measure.

"It's nice of you to stop by," she said.

Molly sat down, taking off her coat. "I'll put the kettle on?" she asked.

"That would be nice, dear," said Mrs. Hudson. Molly had come often enough for her to know where everything was, and what to do with it. "But you needn't worry yourself over me, you know, Molly dear? I'll be fine by myself."

"I doubt I will," said Molly with a wry laugh as she filled with kettle with water. "I'm a little lonely, Mrs. Hudson. I come for your company."

"A nice young girl like you, looking for company?" asked Mrs. Hudson, kindly.

"There's not a lot of room for company that isn't sociopathic, psychotic, dangerous, or former owners of drug cartels in my life," said Molly. Mrs. Hudson laughed.

She was curled up in her sofa one night, working on one of her researches, when the secure phone buzzed. A month hadn't passed, so she was alarmed at the early buzz.

The diplomacy meeting with China has gone very well. Chinese officials might be coming to England very soon. – MH

Molly's eyes widened. She typed back furiously:

Are they coming for work? x M

Partly, yes. At least, that's what they have told me. – MH

What else are they coming for? x M

I suppose sightseeing. The view from London is supposed to be marvelous, wouldn't you say, Miss Montague? – MH

Molly bit her lip.

Gorgeous. x M

She tossed the phone away again and got to work. She had to go to the grocery store and pick up some food for him to eat. Eight months since his return… and Mycroft's petunias had been rarely watered in that period. She picked up pasta, meat, lettuce, ingredients for pancakes in the morning, cereal, and whatever else she could get. Even if he didn't turn up tonight, at least she would have restocked her larder.

When she came back to her apartment, it was still very empty, and quiet silent. Toby had gone off somewhere (presumably, sleeping on her side of the bed).

She began to cook dinner. Some white pasta, along with garlic chicken, she decided fervently. Salad with a lot of greens, because he wouldn't have been getting a lot of fruits and vegetables.

"You know, you'd have a lot more luck making me take vitamin supplements," came a deep baritone.

Molly jumped.

"Christ, Sherlock!" she exclaimed.

"You didn't get new locks," he said.

"Nice to see you too," she said, annoyed.

He smiled shortly. He didn't look good – his hair had become too long. He wasn't wearing his customary bellstaff. Molly had never seen him in jeans and t-shirts, but that t-shirt seemed to look like it had seen better days.

Molly didn't say anything about her tingling black tally.

"I was wondering if Mycroft would have told you about my coming. Hearing you cook what looks like a meal for an army made the deduction simple."

"You could, I dunno – tell me yourself," said Molly.

"Too risky," he said. "I've instructed Mycroft to keep you updated. Has he been doing so?"

"Yes," she said. "You're both a bit paranoid."

"And you still haven't changed your locks. I think you could use a little paranoia. I told Mycroft to assign a security detail on you."

"Oh, is that the black car that's been following me?" asked Molly pleasantly.

"And if it hadn't been?" asked Sherlock dryly. "If it had been another notorious super villain?"

"I was fairly certain it was Mycroft. Balance of probability and all that."

"You could have just asked him," he said.

"And risk breaking a thousand codes? I doubt it. It took me so long to get a proper hang of the one we use right now."

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"So… have you… been well?" she asked.

A sheet came over his eyes. "I've been fine."

"Fine?" she asked.

"Yes. Would you mind if I used your shower?" he asked.

"Um – go ahead," she said. "Some of your old clothes are lying – in –"

"I know," he said.

"Er – right. Go on," she said.

He left the room, and Molly took a deep breath of relief. She didn't understand what was wrong with her. Any form of intimacy just seemed to terrify her at this point. She was hoping Sherlock was in the frame of mind that considered this… thing a liability. If he did, he wouldn't get closer. If he didn't, she'd be fine. Her heart could bear distance.

She finished making dinner by the time he was done by his shower. She put out the table, and felt better seeing him in one of his old dress shirts and suits.

"What?" he asked.

"You look more… yourself," she said lamely.

"A sentimental notion," he said.

Molly shrugged. "Come and eat, Sherlock."

He couldn't sleep.

Molly had insisted on taking the sofa, as usual. Sleeping in her bed was not very hard – it had adequate support, and was fairly comfortable. It was Molly that was the problem in this equation.

He was hyperaware of her being in the other room.

His finger traced his tally for her over and over again. He didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Sentiment is a chemical defect on the losing side.

He climbed out of bed, pacing the room. She had given him cookies and ice cream for dessert, with an apologetic, "I bake when I'm stressed." He didn't complain. They were delicious. She must have been very stressed recently, because her baking had become very good.

He wanted to tear his hair out. Molly looked inexplicably tempting in her pink pyjamas (favourite, he thought with a certain amount of anger). She looked like she'd been through a lot. She looked exhausted. He had never seen her look so worn out and tired.

It wasn't difficult to deduce what had been going on in her life. Her apartment was an open book. The biscuits in her larder suggested that she'd been to see Mrs. Hudson a lot. John hadn't been contacting her very much. The updated medicine cabinet made him thoughtful. Along with what looked like a first aid kit that could manage quite well in a situation of extreme trauma (an investment that was probably prompted by his existence on planet earth), there was a small bottle of sleeping pills. The medication wasn't particularly addicting or dangerous, but sleeping pills were never a good sign.

The black tally tingled every time she laughed.

He had known Molly had cared for him. He didn't know she was stupid enough to love him.

He didn't know he was moronic enough to reciprocate.

Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side.

He wished he could cut off his arm. For a second – a very brief second, he imagined what it must be to be Molly.

Why did she love so easily? He had always known she had a select set of friends. Some from university, some from work. In total, the number ten made sense. Why on earth did she love them all? Wasn't it a dangerous thing, to give out your love in such a manner?

It was ridiculous that he had kept one of her arm patches, but it was his reminder of being alive. Molly Hooper was the only one keeping him alive in London, the one connection to his past that wasn't Mycroft. One thousand drug dealers, crime lords, snipers, men dealing with ammunitions the way some men filed taxes, had left Sherlock numb to London – apart from Molly.

There was a tap on the door. "Um, Sherlock?" she said.

He opened the door.

"I needed to use the bathroom," she said apologetically. There were no demands in her eyes.

Once she was in the bathroom, he wondered. She didn't deserve this.

"Sherlock, is something wrong?" she said.

"Why do you have sleeping pills?" he said with speed.

She blinked.

"Um. Well, it's been a stressful few weeks."

He frowned.

"I don't know. I just can't find it in me to sleep these days," she said.

That didn't sound promising.

"Plus, I need them. The sofa isn't conducive to sleeping."

He froze.

"Take the bed," he said.

"What?" she said.

"Take the bed," he repeated. "Don't be slow, Molly."

"I can't help it, being around you," she said with a smile. "Sherlock I'm not entirely sure where you have been sleeping in recent months, and I'd prefer it if you slept somewhere comfortable."

He bristled. "I'll be fine," he said. He left the room immediately, not leaving her with the time to register exactly what had happened.

It wasn't an uncomfortable sofa, but he had a strong suspicion that discomfort with the sleeping arrangement wasn't what caused his inability to sleep.

He was gone by morning.

She was unsure about where to go from that point forward.

Another couple of months had passed since he had visited her unexpectedly, and left just as unexpectedly. She will admit that she was confused at his leaving, even more at his visiting, and most of all by the fact that Mycroft Holmes seemed very exasperated by his brother on text. She absentmindedly touched her black tallies, quite by herself. The silence was always comforting – solitude was very good company.

Did he expect a romantic relationship? Were they going to shag and be done? Was there going to be commitment involved?

Did he want a romantic relationship?

She doubted it. She doubted he wanted anything. In fact, after his last visit, she didn't think he would want to acknowledge it. Hell, even Molly hadn't acknowledged it. She hadn't even said the word involved in the change of colours to herself.

"Hi Molly," came a voice, snapping her out of her reverie.

She blinked to see John Watson.

"Oh, hi John!" she said warmly. "How have you been? Heavens, it's been nearly a year now."

"I know," he said ruefully. "I've been well."

"You have?" she asked earnestly.

"Yes," and he did it again. Smiled.

"Well. Um – last time we met –"

"I know, it's just short of a year since Sherlock's death, Molly," he said gently.

Molly didn't want to smile, but she did. "I really like seeing you happy. Have you been to see Mrs. Hudson?"

"No," he said. "Not yet. I can't. One step at a time."

Molly bit her lip. "She misses you," she said.

"I know," he said. "How's your research?"

And Molly launched into what she was studying. John commented with his own work periodically, and Molly encouraged him.

"Um, do you want to get some coffee?" she asked.

He hesitated. "Yes," he said finally.

Molly grabbed her bag. They walked together in companionable silence to Molly's favourite coffee house. She watched the way the city passed them by in an odd sort of mix of noise and silence. It was interesting being quiet – particularly with company.

"How have you been?" he asked once they were seated.

"Um – busy," she said. "Lots of work. Meena keeps dragging me all over town, obviously."

"You're looking exhausted," he told her frankly.

She smiled tiredly. "I know. People have been saying that to me. Most recently my mum."

"I never thought of you as having family."

"I have a step family. And a mother," said Molly shortly. "Not exactly people you visit on Christmas. Have you… been visiting people on Christmas?" she asked tentatively.

He smiled again, this time with a certain amount of comfort. "I did meet someone," he said.

"Yeah?" asked Molly.

"Mary. Mary Morstan," he said.

"I like people named Mary," nodded Molly. "Reliable name, that."

John laughed.

"Let's order some coffee?" she asked. He nodded.

"It's good to see you again, Molly," he said as she peered at her menu.

She blushed. "You too, John."

She came home really late one night in November.

It had been a very, very long day. After a shift for nearly ten hours at Barts, she had to go and visit her Mum. Mum was in another hospital, practically across the city. She managed to make it in time – her Mum was quiet when she saw Molly.

"Always wearing the same frumpy clothes," she murmured to herself. "No sense of regard for yourself – Molly, please stop cutting up dead people. I hate it – I hate you for doing that."

And Molly had swallowed the lump in her throat.

Her Mum was dying, that much was obvious. Misdiagnosis on misdiagnosis didn't help this at all, obviously. Molly was shouldering all the bills.

Hepatitis. Paired with low immunity and tendency for colds.

Well, it had progressed to a point where it couldn't be helped at all.

Molly clenched her jaw when she thought about. Her Mum murmured to herself, unaware of her company.

"Never liked it. Hated you for it. He left me with you. Where's David? I want David…"

Mum's tallies had increased by one. Molly didn't know whether it was for David or for her step father.

Her step father had gone home. He'd asked Molly if she could keep an eye on Mum for a while, and Molly had. Molly had, Molly had, Molly had.

It was a very long day.

It wasn't always this terribly long. The shift at Barts was possibly what had her collapsing.

"What a tragedy my life is," she said to Toby. "Right out of a soap opera, wouldn't you say, Toby?"

The cat purred.

"Mmh. Exactly. What a mess. It's so dramatically tragic that I can't even feel sorry for myself."

She took off her shoes and her coat.

"Oh, heaven on earth," she said, turning on the machine for messages.

"Hello dear! I was wondering when you were coming over next? Ring me when you feel up for it! But don't bother if you're busy, I know your Mum is unwell." Mrs. Hudson. Molly would visit this Saturday. It had been too long.

Besides Meena, Mrs. Hudson was her only friend, after all. John hadn't been talking that much, apart from that meeting. She had no idea about when she would meet Mary.

She collapsed on the sofa. Toby meowed softly. She had so much work to do – paperwork was left, post mortems to be done, endless blood work panels, and her research.

"Just a few minutes," said Molly, cuddling into herself on the sofa.

Just a few minutes.

She was sleeping on the sofa when he came.

There was nothing covering her, her mouth was a little open. Her face looked haggard.

Sherlock surveyed the small woman quickly. She'd lost weight – a lot of it. She'd not been sleeping, and she had the unmistakable signs of working herself too hard. He felt angry at her for making these terrible decisions regarding her health. Molly shuddered as he watched her.

He noticed that her vegetables were uncooked, that she hadn't been baking.

Was she… not eating?

Molly Hooper seemed to have a death wish. She looked so small in the sofa, carefully curled up. Her cat wandered around, proud as a peacock.

One of Molly's sleeves slipped upwards, and he noticed all those tallies. He spotted the two black ones, feeling the sinking feeling in his stomach settle. However, there was an extra tally – a scar, rather. Out of the ten he had seen (including the scar for her father), Molly seemed to have an eleventh.

His first thought was a blindingly red hot mixture of pain. John would tell him that this was something akin to jealousy, but Sherlock preferred not to think about it that way. That was when he noticed that it didn't look like a tally scar. It was too jagged, too deep – she had made it herself.

His second thought was panic. Molly Hooper hurting herself made him incomprehensibly angry.

However, it made no sense to have one scar. Deducing logically, removing the element of sentiment that was clouding his logic – he could see that she wasn't doing this regularly. She had done it with something else in mind. His eyes swept over her, making quick deductions, and across the apartment.

The image of John came to his head without provocation.

Molly must have done… that to convince him. She had taken every measure possible to make his death real.

Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose, unsure of what to do. After – after his time in Russia, Africa, and how many other countries, the entire 'sentiment' thing made lesser and lesser sense. There were monsters on every corner of the world, monsters that took advantage of creatures like Molly and John. Monsters that could destroy her little neck without thinking about it twice, who could drown John without considering the fact that John Watson being dead might have lead to murder on Sherlock's own part.

He scooped her up, carrying her to her room. There were fresh sheets on her bed.

"Sh'lock?' she murmured as he put her down.

He didn't say anything.

"You're back," she said softly. She didn't open her eyes to look at him even once.

"How do you know it's not someone else?" he asked.

"No one else does sh- shtuff – like this," she said sleepily. She turned away from him.

"Stuff… like this?" he asked.

"This. Breakin' an' enterin'," she said. "You musn't have… eaten. I'll just get some –"

"You're asleep, Molly," he said patiently.

"No," she protested as he threw a blanket over her. "No-oo. I am very a'ake. Just watch, Sh'lock 'Olmes. I'm gettin' up."

"You're staying in," he said firmly.

"Fine," said Molly quietly. She buried herself into her blanket. "You also sleep."

"I'll take the sofa, Molly," he said.

"No, don't do that," she said. "C'mon. I'm bad at… this shtuff. This whole – bein' – close to people. I get awkward, they get – what'sh the word? Weird. My Mum is dyin'. She says she hates me."

Molly was talkative when she was sleepy. She tugged at his sleeve.

"C'mon, Sh'lock. I promise to… keep your virtue intact."

He smirked. "I'll stay," he promised.

"Good," she said. "Good. Good. Go –"

She was asleep. He was surprised at how endearing it was.

When she woke up, she was alone. She could have sworn she slept on the sofa – she had the most curious dream about a gigantic lizard attacking London. Sherlock had to solve the case on it, and John was furious about the fact that she didn't tell him he was alive. Mary was holding him back, and for some reason, the 'Mary' Molly had imagined looked very strikingly like Kate Winslet. The lizard turned out to be a genetic mutation created by Moriarty, and Sherlock lost his mind when he saw Moriarty.

It was a lot vaguer than this – the details came in bits, and never fit the entire picture. That was the general gist of the dream.

The second, (vaguer, and more impossible) dream was Sherlock coming into her apartment and carrying her to her room. She was sure she said some embarrassing things.

She got out of bed groggily. Padding to the door, she walked outside to find Sherlock sleeping in a sitting position in one of her chairs.

"Sherlock?" she said loudly, genuinely surprised.

"Good morning," he said without opening an eye lid.

"Hi –" she said, still surprised. "You're here? That wasn't a dream?"

"Don't be slow, Molly." Not a peep.

"Oh, wake up, Sherlock," she said. "How are you here? Why didn't Mycroft warn me? Have you eaten? Have you slept? How is the mission? Did you take a bath?"

Sherlock opened his eyes. "Molly," he said slowly. "Go away."

Molly looked away, disappointed. "Fine," she puffed. "But come on! Have you eaten?" she walked over to his chair, and poked him.

"Oh, for God's sake," said Sherlock. "You don't plan on resting until you've taken Mrs. Hudson's entire book, do you?"

Molly jutted her chin out. "No. I mean – yes. You know what I mean."

"Fine," he snapped. "I came because of some strange activity in the States. Mycroft arranged a stopover in London. I'm leaving by tomorrow. Mycroft didn't warn you, I suspect because you haven't checked your secure phone ever since you started taking care of your mother. I haven't eaten. I was sleeping. The mission is fine. I have taken a bath." She didn't bother asking him how he knew about her Mum.

"Oh," she said. "Alright."

"That's all?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes," she promised. "You look…"

He raised his eyebrows.

She bit her lip.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"You bite your lip when you're nervous. What is it?"

"You won't like it," she said.

"I rarely like anything," he said curtly.

"You look lonely," she said quietly.

He didn't say anything. He looked at her, getting up. "And you look tired." He was terribly close to her, she noted with numbness. She could count the number of colours in his eyes. For some reason, neither of them were able to breach the barrier of touch.

Molly turned away from him. "My Mum's not well. I've been taking care of her."

"I deduced as much," he said.

For a millisecond as she turned, her hand brushed across his.

"Miss Hooper… I'm so sorry."

A beat.

"You did this! You didn't take care of her! You said you would!"

Molly curled up in her bed, without bothering with a blanket. It was freezing winter – Christmas was on its way. She wasn't wearing anything warm, the heat in the apartment was off, and she was freezing.

She noted that someone was entering her apartment, but she didn't pay attention to it. If it was anyone other than Sherlock it was either Meena, who was fine, or it was a murderer, and she didn't care to be murdered right now.

The person opened the door, and by the walk itself Molly could tell it was Sherlock. She didn't say anything to him, remaining curled up in the bed.

He threw a duvet over her – he didn't ask her why she was sitting in her dark apartment, freezing her arse off. She supposed he didn't need to or something. She was unsure how people operated in tragedy, even lesser how she was supposed to operate in tragedy.

The scar on her arm didn't help. It hadn't even presented itself for a couple of days. Mike had let her have the time off, and Meena had visited practically every day, until she had asked her (with a lot of politeness) to go home. Molly didn't understand why she couldn't be alone, why Mrs. Hudson insisted on calling her, and why Sherlock had turned up from whatever corner of the world he had been in to be with her.

Don't be stupid, she told herself.

Regardless of why, he was here.

He settled down on the bed beside her.

"You don't normally do that," she said more to herself than him.

"It's freezing. Your furnace stopped working maybe a day back, and you haven't bothered getting it fixed."

"Full points," she said dourly.

"When I was a child – well, smaller in stature and emotional stability, in any case – I had a dog."

"Sherlock, I don't want to hear about your dog –" it gave her some amount of pleasure to hurt him. Meena didn't deserve cruelty directed towards her, she had been nothing but a good friend. It wasn't hard to be unkind to Sherlock, for the first time. She wanted to be angry at someone – anyone.

"Redbeard. That was his name," said Sherlock. Molly almost waited for him to finish the story, but he didn't.

She remembered the ice in her step-father's face, in the way David had looked at his step-mother. She didn't like the way they looked at her, and she didn't like the fact that she had no one left in the world. No more Christmas, she thought numbly.

She turned to Sherlock, burying herself into his chest.

The spokes in the wheel of a bicycle are at perpendicular tangents from the ground. – SH

Molly smiled.

I know that, Mr. W. I did attend physics classes at uni, unlike someone. x M

… They didn't teach that. – SH

It was something to infer. x M

She shoved the secure phone away from her.

The days slowly passed into months, and the months disappeared in bits and bits and bits, being reduced only to the number of times she went to pick up groceries, or nights spent with Meena.

Her mother didn't haunt her memory or anything half as dramatic as that. She missed the woman periodically, and memory had this funny way of romanticizing the death. She remembered bits of her mother which had been good to her, and then bits in which her mother had hated her. She wished she had explanations for either, but she didn't – and she didn't bother finding out.

She was a mess when the woman died. And then, inexplicably, the ridiculous bundle of complex emotions had been solved by one simple act: Sherlock had spent the night with her.

There hadn't been any sex involved, which was odder. Molly wanted to not dwell on it – but she couldn't help it. It had been a long time since she had sex, and she could easily chalk it up to hormones. However, she seemed to be maintaining some sort of fidelity to this man who had last made her orgasm in two years. She didn't know why any more than he did.

The media finally caught onto the fact that no, Sherlock wasn't a fraud. It was all very late, and much too difficult to reconcile with. John had called her once again – primarily so that she could meet the fabled Mary Morstan. Mary was fairly perfect for John, Molly noted, what with her grin, the twinkle in her eye, and what Molly suspected was a very sharp eye for detail.

It hadn't been a good place to be – her mother's death. She had gotten out of it very gradually, piece by piece – and the eventual discovery was not grief, or pain, or numbness.

Freedom.

The tallies didn't hold her down anymore. They didn't seem to control her every move, her breathing. She didn't know what to make of that.

Sherlock had been sending messages himself through the secure phone. He didn't do it very often, and it was often bizarre. Generally a scientific fact – or an experiment. At first she thought it was a code – but after researching every possible code and even covertly asking Greg, she had nothing. It seemed to be his way of – saying… something.

She responded in kind – with facts, or experiments, or updates on the latest science fiction she would be reading. Predictably, she could sense his scoffs at those messages.

When he did turn up, Molly wasn't surprised.

Nearly two years had gone by since he left. It would take a miracle for him not to return – even Jim Moriarty didn't make so comprehensive a crime network. And even if he did, Sherlock couldn't eliminate crime.

And, in true Sherlock fashion, he was dramatic.

She had been having some muscle pain in her shoulder recently. Due to her dramatic weight loss, she had started eating healthier and doing exercise. This didn't help muscle cramps even a little bit.

She opened her locker, with every intention of calling it a night when he simply turned up.

She noticed him in the mirror and nearly had a heartattack.

Unlike all the previous times, he didn't turn up in odd clothes which made him look unlike himself. He was wearing his belstaff.

He was back.

"Oh," she said softly.

"Molly," he said evenly.

"Sherlock," she said. He was looking at her with a curious expression on his face. Of course, he had been punched very strongly.

"John?" she asked.

"Who else?" he said with a sliver of humour.

"You have a way with words," she teased.

He didn't say anything. He walked up to her, and Molly took out some of her clothes.

"Did you know that when a new queen bee emerges in a hive, she "pipes" to incite her worker bees to fight for her if another queen in the hive needs killing?" she asked pleasantly.

He looked surprise. "Yes," he said.

"Shame," she said. "I was hoping to surprise you."

He smiled. A very rare, very Sherlocky, very humorous smile.

"It's good to have you back, Sherlock," she said. She didn't ask him for permission as she laced his fingers in his. He looked at her with that curious expression he wore from time to time. Molly smiled uncertainly, unsure about her next move. As she moved to remove her hand from his, he held on to it, tugging her into a kiss.

Molly pulled away breathlessly. "You know, warnings are appreciated."

"By all means, as my mind to alert me when it decides to take control of my body without giving me so much as a notification," he said, his eyes trying to pick apart hers.

She searched his face. "You – um, you know that you don't owe me anything, right?"

"I would hardly have presumed that," he said crisply. "I am – unsure… about how to – move forward."

Molly untangled herself from him, pushing her sleeves back, displaying her red tally marks, two scars, and two black tallies.

"I'm as lost as you," she promised.

And this time, the expression was very visible. The anger, followed by the compassion, by empathy – eventually, replaced, with dilated pupils.

She tiptoed, kissing him gently on the lips. He didn't seem to want to yield – but he gave away after a minute. It was bloody terrifying, she knew – the black could fade, her tally could fade, it could scar, anything could happen. Anything.

And yet, for some reason, it didn't seem as important as it was to kiss him – to remember the way his arms snaked around her waist, the way his tongue flicked across her lower lip, the way his hair felt under her fingers, the way her arm tingled over and over and over again reminding her that she was alive, she was real and she was susceptible to burns.

Thanks for reading, and please review!