Every action has a reaction. Sherlock Holmes knows this better than most. But, what will his reaction be when those actions have possibly cost him one of the people he cares for most in the world? Spoilers for the final episode of Series 4 of Sherlock.

Disclaimer: Cover image is from Google. I own nothing.

Sherlock had gone to her house first, but the lights were out and her coat was missing from the hooks by the door; yes, he peeked through her window and he wouldn't be apologizing for it anytime soon. Then he'd gone to Barts Hospital, checked all of her little spots there. The morgue itself where she spent a majority of her time. The breakroom where she most often ate and did her ridiculous little crossword puzzles. The lab where she ran tests on samples from the morgue, the same lab where she most often 'babysat him', as John had a foolish fondness for phrasing it. The little flower garden outside where she sometimes snuck away to eat or sit in silence or work on some of those equally absurd sudoku puzzles. He'd even gone to the employee's' locker room, a simple enough feat if one simply walked like they belonged. It was an equally simple feat breaking into her locker-combination locks truly were useless. The payoff was only worth the effort he put in because he found absolutely nothing inside, proving only that she had not retreated to her work as a distraction from everything.

Not at home. Not at Barts. In a last ditch effort, he checked a few cafes near her flat, those she would be most likely to frequent given her tastes and location, only to come up with more of nothing.

In the end, he wasn't entirely sure himself where the inclination had come from, some processing of the background data that escaped his conscious mind, some subconscious observation of her that he couldn't even acknowledge. Whatever it was, it lead him to stand under the shade of that tree at 6:34 at night, looking out at a battalion of headstones, gray soldiers all standing in neat little rows for their mourners to look upon. Standing there, in a coat a touch too large for her small frame, was a tiny pathologist. As she stared at one of the stones, the terrible image of that plain coffin with its practical frugality and its mere existence struck him hard, and Sherlock bit the inside of his cheek to keep from growling.

He could see it all there, the havoc wreaked of a one minute and fifty-six second conversation. Her shoulders hung low, an exhaustion that was mirrored by the more apparent blood vessels beneath her periorbital skin, that which surrounded the eyes. Her eyes were red but dry, indicating previous tears which had ceased to fall some time before. Her expression was empty as though hollowed out by everything that had come before. It was as he stood there, trying to pluck up the courage to approach her, that Sherlock remembered that her father, at least, was dead-he knew nothing of her mother. People did that, right? Went to their parents for comfort?

"Terribly dull, isn't it?"

Sherlock ignored the not-really-there voice of the man he would never be free of, always locked away inside his mind palace.

"So predictable, these little people with their little lives and their emotions," he drawled. "Perhaps you would have been better off just letting the clock run down, don't you think, Sherlock?"

Then the detective envisioned thirty-seven different ways to kill an already dead man and ultimately decided that he was too aggravated and she too raw. Speaking with her would have to wait for another time.

He was halfway home when he decided that it would be cruel to confront Molly. He was only trying to alleviate his own guilt, was he not? Would it not behoove Molly to think he'd been the only one listening, that there had been no spectators as he'd stripped her dignity from her on the whim of his sister? So, he told the cabbie to veer right instead of left and wound up back at Molly's flat while he knew she was out.

Breaking in was easy for his practiced fingers. He went to her kitchen and paused a moment, reconstructed those video feeds to locate the cameras based on their trajectory of the room. He had all three in hand in short order but decided he wouldn't risk any others on Molly's privacy-people always stopped at three, but this had been his sister, who could hardly be grouped alongside the 'regular people'. Her cat, Toby if he recalled, followed him about the flat as searched for more cameras, and Sherlock ignored the tiny deductions his mind made as he rifled through her place. He was a touch surprised to find no other cameras in the place and revelled also in the assurance that there were indeed no explosives present. As he retreated back downstairs to leave, Toby rushed past him on the stairs, a flying blur of fur that nearly tripped him.

He understood why it had happened too late.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Sherlock's eyes, wide in surprise, snapped up from his near tumble down the steps to find Molly standing in her own entryway, her expression livid as she observed her intruder. His mind failed to grasp at a feasible reason for his presence that was not his actual purpose as Toby meowed up at Molly from down by her feet.

"I was just checking on Toby."

That really had been the best he'd been able to come up with in that moment, although he later thought of more than two-dozen other things which would have sounded more feasible.

"What?" Molly narrowed her eyes at him, clearly not believing his terrible lie. Her eyes flashed down to his hand and Sherlock uttered a mental curse. "What are you holding?"

"Nothing," he wasn't too quick to say, and some swift slight of hand left the tiny devices in his pocket and out of sight, allowing him to reveal his empty palms to her.

Molly's anger only seemed to intensify, quiet waves of potent fury rolling off of her small frame.

"Whatever it is you've always thought of me, I am not an idiot, Sherlock Holmes." He winced at her angry tone and knew he wouldn't be able to talk his way out of this, not if he didn't want to hurt her anymore than he already had. "Now you'd better use that big brain of yours to think long and hard before you lie to me again. What the bloody hell," the words were harsh, harsher than he'd ever heard from her, "is in your pocket?"

"They aren't mine."

He needed her to understand that first and foremost.

"Are you saying they're mine? Have you come just to take something else from me?"

He ignored her first question because they both knew he wouldn't steal from her. Her second accusation, however, hit Sherlock harder than any well-deserved slap to the face ever could. Because he had taken something from her, not matter how necessary it had been.

"They aren't mine. You have to know that."

Molly didn't make to answer again, her eyes steely as she stared him down, and Sherlock sighed. Slowly, he pulled the tiny devices from his pocket and showed them to her. Her brows knit together as she failed for a moment to recognize what they were.

"What-" But, then she knew. "Is that-" and she looked like she was going to be sick, like she may dump the contents of her stomach right there on the floor in front of her. "Are those cameras?"

When she looked at him again, there was accusation and so much pain in her eyes.

"Wasn't enough to do it over the phone? You had to watch, did you? Did you record it too, make a little video that you can watch whenever you need a laugh?"

"I told you, Molly. They aren't my cameras."

"Oh, but you just wanted in on it, didn't you, this sick little joke? How fun it is to make fun of poor little Molly Hooper with her sad little life and her feelings."

"No, damn it! Aren't you listening?" Sherlock was unable to control his tone as she continued to throw these false words at him. "I had nothing to do with the cameras!"

Molly continued to glare at him, and the detective made himself take a breath, told himself that she was the one who had been wronged in this scenario and that she had every right to her anger whereas he did not.

"Then who did, Sherlock?"

"My sister."

She went quiet, her eyes boring into him, and for a moment Sherlock thought that perhaps this had surprised her enough that she would listen to whatever else he had to say. But, it wasn't surprise. Molly dropped her gaze and pointed to the door, stepping back to give him a path.

"Get out."

She didn't believe him.

"Molly-"

"Get out!"

"Damn it, just listen to me!"

Molly turned away, pulling out her phone, and Sherlock glimpsed her thumb tap down onto the bold '9' on its face just before her back was squarely to him, her intent quite clear.

"She was behind Moriarty's false return."

Molly was still, the tone of that last of three nines never sounding, and Sherlock breathed a little easier, finally allowing his tone to drop to regular volumes again now that he knew he had successfully caught her attention and stalled her efforts to summon the police on him, to forcibly remove him from her home and her life before he could hope to say anything.

"I blocked her from my memory, convinced myself so completely that it was only me and Mycroft that I forgot she even existed. But, she was there, Molly."

He couldn't see her expression, couldn't read whether she believed him, but he could see in her posture that she was at least listening, that she was no longer pushing everything he had to say into the 'rubbish' bin inside her mind.

"She was there when I was a child. She was there until she was deemed too dangerous," he explained in the vaguest of terms. The details about why didn't matter, not here, not for what he needed her to understand. "My brother had her moved to a specialized facility where the British government contains the most dangerous criminals our country has to offer."

Molly still hadn't moved. She hadn't even reacted when her cat had trotted after her and rubbed on and deposited its fur all over the bottom of her pant legs in an effort to gain her attention.

"She learned from him how you-" feel about me...

Sherlock swallowed, struggling and eventually unable to say such simple words, unable to reopen her wounds in front of him, to see her bleed again right there for him to see. It was still so fresh in his mind from the first time and he was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to stomach a second viewing.

"And then she told me, in not so many words, that you could die or I could destroy you, force you to say-"

Molly's body tensed, a mere instinct of a reaction at the memory, but it shoved the words right back down his throat all the same.

"I could make you say those words, or I could watch you die."

He had to swallow but struggled to past the expansion of his glottis, that infamous 'lump in the throat' sensation.

"I chose the former, Molly, because whether you ever forgive me or not, the caveat remains that you must be alive to hate me."

And after that, there was nothing more to be said. He could tell her about the threat of a bomb, take away her peace of mind inside what should be the safety of her home to make her see what threat had been made to drive him to what he'd done. He could tell her about his experience as a lab rat through the most morbid of trials, make her understand how desperate he'd been for her to say those words for his most recent 'case' if only to save her life. He could even apologize to her. But, none of that really mattered and those final words would ring false because he would choose her life over their friendship every time he was asked, and he would never regret the choice for an instant. Grieve for it, yes, but he would never, not once, believe it was the wrong decision. So, he waited. In silence. And for a long time, Molly continued to say nothing as well.

Nothing, that is, until she asked, in a voice so small he could hardly even classify it as a whisper, "Are those the only ones?"

The cameras, only a measure of ounces, became suddenly quite heavy in his hand.

"Yes."

He'd been thorough in his search of the house.

Molly turned, tucking her phone, the screen long since having gone dark, away into the confines of her pocket. She didn't look at him, her head dipped low, and she held out a hand towards him. The tears on her face, shed so silently that he hadn't even noticed an alteration in her breathing, stilled his heart a moment. Sherlock had to consciously resume his own breathing before he was able to reach out to place the small trio of cameras into the cold and pale of her waiting palm.

She closed her slim, trembling fingers around them, and then she said, "Please leave."

Her voice was equally as small as before, as small, in fact, as she'd said those three little words earlier. As small as she appeared in that moment.

"Molly-"

He didn't want to leave her broken.

"You put me through the wringer. You tore me apart," and he hated himself for it despite what the alternative had been, despite the fact that, given the same choice, he would do so again. "And now you're telling me that I can't even hate you for it."

"That's not what I-"

He wholly expected her to hate him.

"Please, Sherlock…" Her small voice broke on his name, a sound that caused him a very physical hurt. "Just go."

Unable to refute her this one thing, to deny her the solitude she desired, Sherlock nodded and turned. He retreated through her front door and heard the lock engage automatically behind him, a feature he knew was intended to ensure the safety of her home, favored by those hurried or distracted individuals who often forgot to lock up themselves. And then he stood there for hours that were in reality only seconds, his hand like iron around the doorknob that would no longer yield to him, and it was so fitting, so poetic. He had just stepped outside of her door and he could not get back in.

When he looked up, looked inside through the front window, he saw Molly with her hand clapped over her mouth as tears spilled anew down her cheeks. He watched her sink to her knees and break down and it took all of his strength to not break that door back in, pushed him well beyond his limits to go a step farther and release the handle. And it ripped his heart right from his ribcage when he turned and walked away, leaving a broken Molly Hooper on the floor inside her little flat, weeping for what, in the end, had never been required to take from her.

She may have understood. She may not have even hated him after everything had been said. But nothing, Sherlock realized, would ever be the same between them. That bridge, he knew, had been burned the moment she'd answered the phone.

Which was exactly why it had surprised him to one week later receive a simple text. Just three little words. These ones were not forced, were not even asked for. He'd entirely expected to skip off to the lou every time she came round to pick up little Rosie, if only to spare her the grief of looking at him and being reminded. But, Molly never failed to surprise him. He never could delete that text, kept it tucked away inside his phone. He didn't look at it but the once, but there it remained.

I forgive you.

-MH

And perhaps everything would be alright after all.