author's note: will almost certainly delete to repost when i've finished the rest. let me know how this is - and if any of y'all would like to beta-read it, please let me know, it's insanely long and i'm drowning but having fun anyway 3

Sherlock Holmes doesn't remember the first time he met Molly Hooper. He assumes it went something like this:

"Hi! I'm Molly Hooper, assistant pathologist at—"

"Doctor Molly Hooper, I should assume, despite the attitude and the overall appearance of oh dear god what am I doing." Snarky voice, tone going up and down and down and up. He was very high. Cocaine and heroin. A glorious combination. "You just finished your postdoctoral work and you've just gotten this job at St. Bart's, quite the accomplishment for someone whose mother still doesn't think you'll amount to anything. Congratulations on rising up from your lower birth."

Stifled gasp and sob. Molly pulls herself together. "Detective Lestrade says that you're going to be helping with police investigations—"

And then he usually doesn't think about what he would have said next. It would have been very cutting and very impolite but mostly true, enough to get him dragged out by the scruff by an angry Lestrade. He knows that Mycroft told Molly the next day that he was Sherlock Holmes, resident genius and druggie. She was to ignore him if at all possible but give him free rein of the lab. Molly would have nodded, staring at the British government with no small amount of fear and curiosity.

He remembers the next time they met. She was quiet, too quiet. Lestrade was tense, ready to drag him out at the slightest provocation. He quickly deduced the highlights of the previous meeting and he tried to show off the fact that he'd been sober for two and a half months, something that was probably not as noticeable in him as in most former drug addicts.

He notices her light. Even though she's shrinking into the lab benches like a particularly pretty mouse, she's… glowing. If he were the type to use hallucinogens, he would assume that she was an angel.

Over time, she timidly helps him with his experiments. She accepts him in her lab as if he was automatically supposed to be there. She doesn't think he notices her. That's true, part of the time, especially after he meets John Watson, but she's always there, in the back of his mind.

He compliments her hair to get his way. She introduces him to Jim Moriarty, even if she didn't understand the full implications of that new relationship. (None of them did.) He kisses her on the cheek when he accidentally tears her heart to shreds. She's always there for him, no matter what's going on. That's why he can turn to her with anything.

Sherlock steps into the hallway to the labs at St. Bart's, John right behind him. "Molly!" he says blithely.

She's wearing that strange cherry-printed blouse again. "Oh, hello, I'm just going out." As was implied by the fact that they almost hit each other with the door as they tried to go opposite directions.

"No, you're not." He gently spins her around with a hand to her clavicle.

"I've got a lunch date," she tries, blinking at the sudden turn of events. And the fact that he just physically turned her around, Sherlock considers. A literal turn.

"Cancel it. You're having lunch with me," he declares, adding joy into his tone to inspire his troops.

"What?" He feels her shock behind him, then her slight disappointment when he brandishes the crisps. They're her favorite kind, though, so she shouldn't be too disappointed.

"Need your help. It's one of your boyfriends, we're trying to track him down. He's been a bit naughty."

"It's Moriarty," John says with no small amount of shock.

"Of course it's Moriarty." He grabs the door. Sometimes John can be a bit thick, he muses for the hundredth time.

"Jim actually wasn't even my boyfriend," Molly inserts with a rare show of complete bravery. "We went out three times. I ended it." He's even more in awe of her than usual. Molly Hooper broke up with the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.

He feels oddly obligated to break this bubble of joy. "Yes, and then he stole the Crown Jewels, broke into the Bank of England, and organized a prison break at Pentonville. For the sake of law and order, I suggest you avoid all future attempts at a relationship, Molly." Also for the sake of his own mind. He brandishes the crisps once more and steps through the door.

An unknown number of minutes later, he stares down at the computer, watches the glycerol molecule spin around and around in his head. What are you? Then he looks back into the microscope, acutely aware of Molly standing next to him.

Suddenly she speaks. "What did you mean, 'I owe you'?"

Sherlock glances up at John. He's not paying them any lick of attention. John may have to be renamed "Mr. Oblivious" in his mind palace now.

"You said, 'I owe you.' You were muttering it while you were working."

"Nothing. Mental note."

She keeps talking and being distracting. "You're a bit like my dad. He's dead. No, sorry."

Why is she apologizing? She isn't apologizing for anything she's actually done. "Molly, please don't feel the need to make conversation. It's really not your area." He needs peace and quiet to figure this out and Molly and conversation and her cherry jumper are not helping.

"When he was dying, he was always cheerful; he was lovely, except when he thought no one could see. I saw him once. He looked… sad."

"Molly..." he says warningly. She looks sad.

"You look sad. When you think he can't see you." They both look at John. John is glancing through the pictures of the crime scene, mercifully oblivious to their conversation. Sherlock looks at Molly, who's staring straight at him. "Are you okay? And don't just say you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one can see you."

"But you can see me."

"I don't count." He stares at her. In the end, somehow, she's the only one who counts, in Sherlock's mind. What's wrong with her and her self-esteem? "What I'm trying to say is that, if there's anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me." She smiles, then frowns, then shakes her head a little. She's gone and confused herself. "No, I just mean... I mean if there's anything you need... it's fine." She looks away.

He stutters for the first time since he was ten. "What—what could I need from you?"

Molly looks back at him. "Nothing. I dunno." She thinks about it for a moment, regains a backbone. "You could probably say thank you, actually." She nods encouragingly.

"Thank you?" New words associated with Molly. He logs them in the Molly Hooper room in his mind palace. It's gotten bigger and brighter over the past hours of research.

"I'm just gonna go and get some crisps. Do you want anything?" He tries to say something, anything, to keep her in the room. "It's okay, I know you don't."

"Well, actually, maybe I'll..."

"I know you don't." She dashes out of the room and he stares after her. It's days like this that he remembers he really doesn't understand the human race, and she's one of the highest on the list that he can't figure out.

Then John changes the game with the breadcrumbs and he remembers the fairy tale. They find the children and they save them, just barely in time. They run from the police and they meet Richard Brook.

And Sherlock realizes something, something that he's really known for a long time but hasn't wanted to admit it to himself until now. He needs to die. And there's only two people who can know.

His brother, of course, because he probably can't pull this off without the British government… and her.

Her.

He opens the lab once more, stands in the dimness, waits, allowing himself one last moment of useless drama before the true acting must begin. Molly soon opens the door and steps into the lab with a sigh. She grabs the doorknob and he stops her.

"You're wrong, you know." She gasps and turns around to face him. "You do count. You've always counted and I've always trusted you. But you were right." He turns around to look at her, and he knows his face is a mess of confused anguish.

"Tell me what's wrong." No questions, no concerns. Sometimes he thinks he could lo—What did he do to earn her respect and admiration and… love?

"Molly, I think I'm going to die." Her mouth falls open just a bit and her eyes start to water. What did he do to make her mourn him before he's dead? He's been nothing but terrible to her, for so many years; how could she react so quickly?

"What do you need?" she asks softly.

"If I wasn't everything that you think I am—everything that I think I am—would you still want to help me?" He needs to shatter her illusions of his greatness, make her realize that the man she's in love with is nothing more than a man. High IQ, yes; deductive strength, yes. But in the end, he's nothing more than a desperate man who doesn't want to watch his friends die.

"What do you need?" she repeats.

He stares at her and the glow of her presence. Steps closer. Farther into the light. "You." His voice is gruff and emotional.

What has she turned him into? In this moment, she's made him into a man. Nothing more than a man who doesn't belong anywhere, not on either side of the final battle, floundering toward the side of the angels, of whom she is the brightest. And in this moment, he can't really stop himself. He leans forward and kisses her.

She makes some cute sound of confusion but doesn't push him away. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her until he can't breathe and he's all wrapped up in her. His senses are overloaded with information, but he's muddled and can't understand anything except Molly.

Then she pulls away. "What was that?" she whispers.

He pauses. His mind palace is blinking, a blaring alarm telling him of the increased emotions and hormones. "I don't know."

Molly stares at him for a full minute—he counts the seconds—and reads him. She's no great woman in the world of deduction, but she knows him. Sometimes, she knows him better than anyone—better than his parents, better than Mycroft, better even than John. He watches as she sees his pain and his desire to live. He doesn't yet know how he feels about her but she must see something he can't comprehend. She sees that there's something growing. She reaches up on her tiptoes and kisses him again.

He sighs, the noise pulled from his chest unwillingly, and lets his hands weave into her hair. He feels her hands creep under his coat and he pulls her closer.

That night, in her bed, their clothes still tossed around the room, once they've regained their breath, he tells her what's going on. Moriarty changing his identity. Mycroft's plan. Sherlock's need to leave and dismantle Moriarty's network. Molly sits up a little and leans her head on his shoulder. He tangles his fingers with hers again.

Why is he happy?

His friends are going to die if he doesn't, and he's lying in bed with Molly Hooper after sex, trying not to smile, and whispering about his plans to die like they're discussing their honeymoon plans.

Why isn't he running? Why isn't she running? Why are they still here? Why did this even happen in the first place? This whole situation is absurd.

"What do you need?" she asks again. "I assume you need the body of the man who kidnapped the children, just in case Moriarty doesn't die on the rooftop."

"I'm nearly sure Moriarty will kill himself on the roof. Mycroft calculates a seventy-six percent probability that he will shoot himself. I'm putting it at closer to eighty-two percent. But I think it would be wise to have my doppelganger around, just in case." He kisses her forehead.

"I'll need to find the body and that may take a little longer than you want, but I'm sure my security clearance, so to speak, in St. Bart's will be enough to find it," she murmurs. Her forehead crinkles, just a little, and he smooths it out with a gentle touch without thinking.

"Stop thinking," he says, closing his eyes and stretching for a second. "It's too loud."

Molly laughs. A true laugh, not one of her usual inane giggles. He memorizes the sound and places it carefully on a pedestal in her light-filled room in his mind palace. Tonight has really been an excellent night for furnishing that room. "Lestrade said that you told him he was thinking too loudly once."

"Why would he repeat that conversation? And yes, Gary tends to think too loudly and work too hard at thinking. You don't think loudly. You think too much and it's a jumble of thoughts coming at me."

"Greg. His name is Greg," Molly whispers, walking her fingers across his chest.

He grumbles unintelligibly and pulls her even closer. She giggles again. "What?" he bites out.

"Would never have expected it. The great Sherlock Holmes likes to cuddle."

He grumbles again. He doesn't like to cuddle. She's warm. He's cold. He wants to be warm for the first time in his life. He doesn't want to leave. "It's going to happen in a few days. Will you be ready, Molly?"

She nods into his shoulder. "I can get the body in two days, at most. The blood is easy. You're B positive, right? Just for accuracy. Are you bringing your homeless network into it?"

He darts a somewhat surprised stare down at her. "Yes. How did you know about the homeless network?"

"I do notice things, Sherlock." He can practically hear her roll her eyes. "I've seen a lot of homeless people around my flat, and they never ask me for anything. They just watch me and nod when I pass. But you've talked to them and given them money and extra scraps of paper. Not hard."

Sherlock gazes down at her, her face perfectly innocent and sweet. She's beautiful. He leans down and kisses her, hard. She laughs when he pulls away. "Irene Adler had one thing right," he muses. "Brainy is definitely the new sexy."

Molly sighs, the barest of smiles on her face. She apparently decides not to pursue that line of questioning—their time, the time they shouldn't have taken in the first place, is far too dear to discuss The Woman—and hums thoughtfully. "What about Mycroft?"

"He's the only other one who will know, aside from you and the network. I have to leave the number as small as possible. He's going to check on the scenarios I've made and make sure they look logical. They do, but he's got to check up on them anyway, apparently," Sherlock sighs. "I'll also have him check up on the remains of Moriarty's network as I take it down."

They lay on Molly's bed in silence for a few minutes. Then Molly sniffles. "What about John, Sherlock?"

"He can't know. It would destroy him—"

"This plan is going to destroy him. He's going to have to mourn you, and he's not going to understand why you couldn't—couldn't tell him that it was a trick, once you get back."

Sherlock pulls away, just a little, so he can see her face better. "You have to keep it a secret, Molly. John Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade—they can't know."

"They can't know that you're going to kill yourself so they can live. They can't know that you're sacrificing yourself to save them—"

"They have to believe that I committed suicide off the roof of St. Bart's Hospital."

Molly groans. "The irony."

"What irony?"

"You're going to jump off the roof of a hospital, and even with all of the doctors and nurses in there, you'll still die. They won't be able to save you. The doctor for dead people is the only one who'll know."

"It's necessary—"

"I know, Sherlock." These are the sharpest words Molly's ever said to him. "I'm going to help you kill yourself—"

"Why do you keep saying it like that? I'm not actually killing myself, and you're certainly not killing me," he says exasperatedly.

"To the rest of the world, you are. To John, Greg, and Mrs. Hudson, you'll be dead. I'm going to be doing your postmortem. I'm going to be proving to the three people you love the most in the world that you're dead. To them, I am going to be killing you."

She says it too calmly. Like she's been processing it for years, the fact that she'd be killing Sherlock Holmes. Doing his postmortem, proving his death to the world, helping him through the final moments—she has been planning this, he realizes. For years, ever since Mycroft told her about his drug addiction, from the day she first saw him as high as a kite so many years ago, ever since she knew what he was capable of doing to himself, she's been thinking about the day he'd die. Whether from drugs or a bullet or falling off a building, Molly Hooper has been remembering that Sherlock is nothing but a man. Barely even a man.

She's always known, somehow, even when he didn't, that it would come to this.

He turns to face her properly and rolls her over to face him, kissing her gently. She responds with desperation, tugging him closer until he can't remember where she starts and he begins. It's the closest he's ever been to anyone, and in that moment, he knows he loves her.

He pulls away when he feels tears on his face, and he holds Molly Hooper close as she cries.

"I'm a fake."

"Sherlock..."

"The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly... in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes." If he is to die, he will die without dignity, just as Moriarty wanted. He glances back at the body behind him. Blood and brain matter still drip from the exit wound. There's a sudden wave of uncalled-for nausea, and he turns back to John.

"Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met... the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?"

He chuckles. The faith that John has in him. "Nobody could be that clever."

"You could." John's belief in him is overwhelming, just like Molly's. He hears the murmur in his ear, the background music of Molly saving him. The body is ready; the stage is nearly set. The play is truly beginning.

Sherlock stares down at his best friend, recites the lines he wrote himself. The lines of lies that make him into a magician or a monster. "I researched you. Before we met I discovered everything that I could to impress you. It's a trick. It's just a magic trick."

John shakes his head, like he's trying to block out what he's hearing and it's not working at all. "No. All right, stop it now."

He's getting too close to the death site. "Stay exactly where you are!" he shouts at John. "Don't move."

"You're right," John says softly.

"Keep your eyes fixed on me," Sherlock demands. He can't hold back the emotion in his voice.

He finally understands what Molly meant. He's not just dying—he's not just saving his friends—he is killing himself. He's forcing Molly to kill him. What is he doing, what is he doing—

"Please, will you do this for me?"

"Do what?"

"This phone call—" he nods, deciding his last words, "—it's my note. It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?"

John pulls away from the phone like it's burning him, like Sherlock's final words are scalding him. "Leave a note when?" His voice shakes.

Go, Sherlock. Now. Molly's voice in his ear. She'll guide him. Sherlock takes a deep breath. His last words. The final words of Sherlock Holmes. "Goodbye, John."

"No. Don't." John is pure desperation and he shakes his head, willing this to not be true, anything but this. Sherlock takes one last look at John, then he drops the phone. "SHERLOCK!" is the last thing he hears before the wind takes all noise from his ears.

"Sherlock. Come on, Sherlock, you have to get up, John will get up in a few moments and he can't see you. Please, Sherlock." Molly's voice pierces through the ringing of SHERLOCK! in his ears. That desperate sound will never leave him. He takes one look around before climbing off the inflated mat. Molly stands next to him, her hand ready to catch him.

He wobbles when he stands on the ground again. The mat is deflated and moved. The doppelganger is in place. He glances at the dents in the face, the blood splattered around, but can't change anything because he and Molly have to move.

"Did you account for the proper amount of air resistance according to current atmospheric pressure, not just standard?" he asks Molly as she pulls him away. It's a stupid question—of course she did. She made sure everything was perfect. He trusts her to have made it perfect.

"John won't have to look for long before knowing it's you," she says, tears pouring down her face. "It's okay. I would think it was you until DNA analysis and I'm the—pathologist."

They disappear into the bottom floor of St. Bart's, a windowless room. The homeless network volunteers help John, pull him away from the body. Molly surrounds herself with Sherlock's arms and coat, lets her tears soak into his shirt, and he buries his face in her hair. They have to wait for John to be taken away, probably back to Baker Street.

John's scream still echoes in his ears.

Finally, one of the homeless gives them the okay, and they leave the building hand-in-hand.

Sherlock doesn't remember that night very well. He remembers lying on Molly's bed while she patches up the few scrapes and kissed the bruises he'd gotten from landing on the air bag. He remembers Mycroft stopping by Molly's place to tell her when to check her phone for Lestrade's report of Sherlock's death. He remembers never letting go of Molly's hand. He remembers John stopping at Molly's flat, begging for comfort and reassurance, hiding in Molly's room until John left. He remembers salt streaking down his face when he hears John and Molly crying.

Neither of them sleep that night. Their legs are woven together, their fingers entwined, and their foreheads touching. Molly whispers reassurances, and he tries not to remember that he's a dead man still breathing. SHERLOCK! rings in his ears.

Molly does the postmortem the next day, and he hides in her house. When she comes home she cries again, burying her face in his shirt until he has to push her away just far enough to kiss her. It's only this week. Then he'll leave Molly and become the Consulting Detective again.

He'll cast away Sherlock Holmes and become no one.

"You need to leave tonight, Sherlock," Mycroft says, sitting in the middle of Molly's couch. He says nothing about Sherlock's hand in Molly's beyond the faint lift of an eyebrow when he first noticed it. "I have a list of Moriarty's known associates, and you need to check up on them. Make sure they're naught but Moriarty's little goldfish."

"I'm going to leave tonight," Sherlock says dully. "Did you get my will made out properly? Must I sign it?"

"Yes, it is made out to your exact specifications, strange as some of them were." He darts a glance at Molly, but she ignores it. Sherlock's hand is shaking again, but he manages to sign the new Last Will and Testament of William Sherlock Scott Holmes. "I will inform your lawyer to order a court summons in a week for the reading."

"Give me the list," Sherlock demands softly.

Mycroft hands him a piece of paper upon which are written a list of names in black pen. Sherlock stuffs it into the pocket of his Belstaff without looking at it. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you—"

Molly clutches Sherlock's hand a little tighter and he nods. "I'll do my duty, Mycroft. You don't need to fear that. Now leave."

Mycroft holds his hand out to Sherlock, and he reluctantly lets go of Molly's hand to stand and shake his brother's. They exchange one long look, Mycroft telling him to be careful and Sherlock telling him to watch out for John and Molly.

They promise. Even if they've spent most of their lives hating each other, they're brothers; they'll keep their promises to the end. Even if one of their ends has already come.

He whirls around and kisses Molly, the kiss rougher than he intended but he's leaving her. He's having to leave her behind, to be dead and alone in the world. She'll have to wait for him, to be strong for herself and their friends. Molly wraps her arms around his neck immediately, pulling him closer until all he can see, smell, and sense is her. This is how he will survive being dead, these memories. He pulls away as quickly as they surged together, and he walks to the door, yanking it open as he grabs his scarf from the hooks behind the door.

As Sherlock steps out of the door, he watches Mycroft slowly pull a sobbing Molly into his arms. He can leave; he knows this now. He'll keep her safe.