Molly has no idea how this happened. She's gone from barely recognizing John's presence, to being acquaintances, to friends, to dating, and all this time she's been hiding from him that the man he- loved, maybe, or dedicated his life to at the very least, is still alive, running about the world somewhere to protect John, and DI Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. What sort of a monster is she, that she can kiss this man and hold him when he wakes up from nightmares of Sherlock jumping of a building and not tell him how it was faked, how she helped, how she forged a death certificate and helped mutilate a corpse, how she has nightmares too, and they're worse when she sleeps with John because the guilt is worse there, but hers just don't wake John up?

And she wonders what sort of a monster she is to hope that Sherlock never comes back, because she doesn't want to give this up.

[*]

And then it's Sherlock's birthday and John asks her to come to the grave with him and Mrs. Hudson, which he never has before. Molly thinks maybe Mrs. Hudson will hate her for replacing Sherlock, even if that's completely not what she's doing, but the older woman just pats her hand and thanks her for being there.

When John wants some time alone with the grave, Mrs. Hudson produces a few biscuits wrapped in napkins from her pocket and offers them to Molly. She nibbles on one while watching John worriedly. "How is he doing, you think?" she asks, awkward around this woman she only barely knows, but too concerned for that to hold her back. "I mean. I think he's- better, at least, but I didn't know him too well before this all happened." She waves vaguely in the direction of Sherlock's grave and then calls herself an idiot inside her head.

Mrs. Hudson doesn't take offense, however. "He has been better since you came along, my dear. I think you've been a very big help. Losing someone you love is never easy."

Molly turns back to the other woman and her hair hits the side of her face. "You think he loved Sherlock?" she asks, voice squeaking slightly.

"Why, of course he did." Mrs. Hudson arranges her wrap around herself and gives Molly a sharp look. "Just look at the man."

Molly looks at John, still standing in front of the grave fifteen minutes later, and… and she's afraid.

[*]

"Ms. Hooper."

Molly spins around. She's working the night shift, and there's barely anyone in the morgue, and everyone who should be here knows better than to sneak up on her. The deceptively innocuous man with the umbrella definitely should not be here. "M-Mr. Holmes," she stutters, barely keeping herself from cringing at how nervous she sounds. "What are you doing here?"

"My surveillance tells me that you've been spending a lot of time around Baker Street as of late," he says casually, like his eyes aren't effortlessly burning through her skull. What is it with these Holmeses and their ability to see straight into her soul? "I do hope you haven't told him anything about our arrangement."

He makes it sound like… like they're criminals or something. She'd be angry if she wasn't so afraid. "No, I haven't."

"Good. Ms. Hooper," Mr. Holmes says, stepping forward around the first autopsy table, "this secrecy is not for fun. I would like nothing better than to let all my brother's loved ones know that he is alive and well. We must keep this quiet for his sake."

"I- I know," Molly insists, "it's just that, John misses him- we all do, but John most of all-"

"He will come back," Mr. Holmes interrupts.

"When?"

Mr. Holmes purses his lips. "I don't know." It looks physically painful for him to admit that. "Moriarty's network is proving slippery. But he does intend to return as soon as is safely possible. In the meantime," he steps even closer, until he's only on the other side of her desk, "we must do everything we can to protect him."

Molly nods anxiously, feeling all the questions bubbling inside her, and suddenly she finds the courage- or maybe just the stupidity- to ask. "Does Sherlock love John?" she blurts.

Mr. Holmes' eyes narrow just slightly, like he's analyzing her. It nearly makes Molly shiver, reminds her of a computer hitting refresh, like he's double-checking that he's pegged her right. After just a few short moments, he steps closer. Somehow, it makes the whole encounter seem more personal. "My brother very rarely connects with any individual person, Ms. Hooper. He is dedicated to his work. Does that answer your question?"

Not really, but Mr. Holmes makes her so nervous Molly finds herself nodding. He squints at her again. "If you want to know whether Sherlock will take offense to your relationship with Dr. Watson, I'm afraid I don't know. As he has said himself, sex and other intimate relationships are not his forte. However, he seems unusually possessive of the doctor."

Molly's thoroughly confused and thoroughly creeped out by now. Mr. Holmes gives her something resembling a smile and walks away. At the door, he turns back, and Molly feels comforted, just for a moment, because she thinks she knows where Sherlock got his sense of drama.

"I wish you the best of luck, Ms. Hooper."

[*]

Her sister invites her over for dinner and Molly mentions it nervously, looking up at John through her lashes. She's not had a huge amount of experience with relationships that have lasted this long, so she doesn't know if he'll assume he's coming, or assume he's not, but in any case he asks, "Should I come?" through a mouthful of scone and she says, "If you'd like, my sister would probably have a cow," and he chuckles and says, "In that case, I'd love to," and that's decided, then.

Her sister does, in fact, have a cow, particularly when John says they've been together nearly four months- which is unfair, Molly thinks, considering half of that was the pizza-and-movies stage before they actually started dating.

Her sister gets grumpy- she's always enjoyed showing off her perfect marriage and offering Molly advice on how to hook a man- and coos sweetly at them and asks too many searching questions. Molly gets annoyed and goes into detail about some of the bodies she works with, and that line of questioning quickly shuts down.

John remains completely blank-faced until they manage to get alone, and then laughs into her shoulder. "That was wonderful," he whispers, aware of Molly's nephews in the next room.

"You don't think I was too mean?"

"I have a sister of my own," John reminds her. "It's not just love, it's war."

They pass complicit looks through the rest of the evening, and Molly has never enjoyed a visit with her sister's family more.

As they drive back to the city, though, she remembers the four-month thing. "You told her we'd been dating four months." She pokes him in the side, and he twitches away because he's ticklish and glares at her playfully before focusing back on the road.

"Well, that's as long as I've fancied you, plus the wedding photos were a bit much."

Molly purposefully ignores the second half of that comment; there are times she wishes she could delete things the way Sherlock can- could. "You fancied me?" she asks. Then, realizing how strange that sounds, adds, "For that long?"

"Well, I didn't know that's what it was for a while," John admits. "Like you said, you weren't my usual type. I normally went for women closer to my age."

"You're only six years older than me," she points out. "Five, for a few months of the year."

"Don't remind me," John groans.

Molly giggles. "I just- you really did fancy me?"

Then she shrieks as the car swerves and stops abruptly, but it's not a crash, it's just John pulling the car over and turning to face her in his seat. "You, Ms. Hooper, are really quite fanciable, and I don't know why you don't realize that."

"I'm not," she giggles, blushing, and he leans forward to kiss her until she hasn't the breath to giggle.

"You really are," he whispers, and she begins to maybe believe it.

That night she stays at his, and wakes up at three in the morning with his elbow in her side as he cries out to Sherlock not to do it. As she shakes him awake and holds him while he gasps and tries to get a hold of himself, she wonders how much 'fanciable' can stand up against the world's only consulting detective who jumped off a building to save John's life.

[*]

They solve a murder together, just the two of them and a dead woman with an adulterous husband in the morgue; no police, no forensics, just their minds and Molly's lab and it's utterly brilliant. DI Lestrade- who insists she call him 'Greg'- takes them out to the pub as congratulations, or a thank you, or a 'sorry I haven't spoken to you in half a year, been a bit busy' and admits he's been going through with the divorce this time, for real. He insists he doesn't want to talk about that, though, and asks after them.

Molly freaks out for a second that John won't want to tell Greg, who knew Sherlock, who knew JohnandSherlock, and spends a moment looking like a guppy, she's sure, when John takes her hand and holds it up for the detective to see. "We're dating," he says simply.

Greg raises his eyebrows, and she blurts out "Just a bit!" and then accepts the strange looks she gets from both men. "I mean, not for very long. Well, a few months, um." God, why does she even open her mouth sometimes?

"Well!" DI Les- no, Greg, says, surprised and clearly puzzled. "Good on you, then. So you're the new crime-stopping unit in town, I suppose?"

Molly looks anxiously at John, who's glaring slightly at the detective, but Greg doesn't seem to notice, inspecting his drink. "Great job you did on this one, anyway," Greg says, and John seems to make a concerted effort to relax, and so Molly does, too.

"Sally and Anderson have shacked up, officially. Never expected that one."

"What, he's left his wife?" John asks, astonished. Molly knows these people professionally, but not enough to ponder their dating lives.

"More like she found out that he wasn't just working overtime all those nights away from home." Greg makes a significant expression and Molly decides she's probably better off not knowing.

Later that night, after Greg leaves for the night and before their taxi shows up, they're standing outside the pub. It's awkward, somehow, and Molly doesn't know why, so she bounces slightly against the chill and smiles at John and hopes she isn't wearing her lipstick too bright again.

He frowns. "What was that about, though?" he asks, like he's continuing a conversation they'd already been having. "When I told Greg we're together. 'Just a bit'?"

"I- I don't know," she mumbles.

"Did you not want him to know?" John turns his body sideways and looks at her suspiciously, and she jumps to reassure him.

"No, of course not! I thought you wouldn't- I mean."

"You thought I wouldn't want him to know? Why the hell not?"

"Because- because- I don't know, I just thought it, just for a second," she lies wildly, trying to pretend she hasn't been questioning their relationship since day one and even more so since she found out he's in love with his not-actually-dead flatmate.

He looks angry. "Why would you think that?"

"I don't know, I just did!" Because you loved him, and he's not here now but he will be, and then you won't want to have to correct everyone about who you're with.

"That's ridiculous, Molly," John says decisively. He grabs her hand. "I'm not hiding you from anyone."

"I know, I know, I just panicked," she tells him, and that, at least, is honest, because even if she doesn't know what he feels for her or why, she knows that John Watson would not hide from anyone. She knows him that much.

"Okay, alright, let's just… pick up a Chinese and go home," he says, and it sounds like defeat. But it makes Molly pictures her flat where she sleeps two or three nights a week that she'd thought was small and cozy and now feels too quiet and hollow.

"Okay," she agrees.

John pulls her close and presses their cheeks together, and Molly squeezes her eyes shut to feel him better. "Okay," he says, letting her go as their cab pulls up. He tugs her over by her hand and doesn't let go, not once.

[*]

They're out walking, and it's very nice, just walking in the park- holding hands, and she always imagined that one day she'd do that with someone, but it had never seemed very likely. Except now she is, and it's wonderful, but… it just couldn't last, could it?

They're out walking in the park, and she has to let go of John's hand to take out her mobile, and she's distracted so she flips it open without checking the caller ID. "Molly Hooper."

"It's time," Mr. Holmes says.

She can imagine how pale her face gets in just a few seconds, because John steps in front of her and tips her chin up to look her in the eye. 'What's wrong?' he mouths.

"What?" she mumbles.

"You should bring the doctor to Baker Street. There's someone here to meet him."

Molly closes the phone, slowly.

"Who was that?" John demands. "What'd they say? Molly, are you alright?"

"We should go," she says. Her heart is racing, but at the same time it feels like everything is slowing down. She stares at John with a sort of desperation.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asks, and she can see 'doctor mode' starting up, and she shakes her head.

"I mean, yes, it's fine, we just need to go." She tugs him toward the nearest park entrance and the taxi bay, where there's a cab waiting. "221 Baker Street," she requests.

"Was it Mrs. Hudson, is she alright?"

"It's fine, John, everything is fine, will you just stop!" Molly snaps, and her hands are shaking and today.

"Alright." He sits back with a grumpy expression and a 'that's women for you' look to the driver and a concerned glance at her and why can she see all this? A few months ago she wouldn't have known the difference between him tired at the end of a long day or tired from thinking too much, or his face when he's really happy versus when he's pretending for someone else's benefit. Why did she do this, get so close to someone when she knows they're going to be taken away?

By the time they reach Baker Street, her heart feels like an anchor dropped to the bottom of her gut. As John helps her out of the car, even more worried-looking, she glances up at the windows to 221b and sees a curtain move.

John helps her up the stairs, holding her tighter when he feels her trembling, and her eyes are locked on the door to the flat as he unlocks it and opens it and, like a dream, Sherlock walks in from the next room.

John stands there, dumbstruck, and Sherlock's looking at him in a way Molly saw before, when he thought no one was looking. Sherlock steps forward, and Molly shifts so that when John moves, she slides right out of his grasp, leaving him free to move to Sherlock.

"Are you-"

Sherlock grabs John by the shoulders, staring at his face like he's memorizing every new wrinkle that's formed since he's been gone, and for all Molly knows he is. Then he kisses John, and then they're hugging so tightly like they'll never be parted again, and she doesn't move. She doesn't feel like she can move, not at all.

Until Sherlock opens his eyes and sees her, and sees her, and frowns just a tiny bit with the skin between his eyebrows and opens his mouth, chin still tucked into John's shoulder, and she shakes her head and tries to smile at him and leaves.

She makes sure her footsteps on the staircase are quiet. She doesn't want to interrupt their reconciliation, for one, but she also wants to get away clean, unnoticed, so she can collapse at her own flat and try to find some way to not act completely gutted by the next time she sees them, running around London together like madmen, hands clasped together like lovers.

The cab is gone and there's none in plain view, so she starts walking in the direction of her flat. Who knows, maybe an hour-long walk through London is exactly what she need right now. She hasn't reached the end of the street before she hears John calling after her, and she quickly swipes at her cheeks and forces herself into a more stable bearing before she turns around.

"Molly, I had no idea- why did you leave, you must want to see him-" John's babbling and grinning like a loon and rubbing the reddened knuckles of his left hand, so she assumes he's thoroughly conflicted about Sherlock's reappearance.

"You two need to… We can talk later," she says, even managing a smile as she watches his ecstatic face. She's never seen him that happy, that alive, not with her. Only with Sherlock.

"Alright, I guess…" John looks confused, but nods. "I'll call you tonight, shall I?"

"Might wait til tomorrow." Molly needs time; her chest is already hurting in a prelude to the massive night of sobbing she's going to have, if only he'll go back to Sherlock now and leave her alone. "You two… you've got a lot to talk about."

John catches her arm before she can walk away and looks at her suspiciously. "You keep saying that, 'you two'. What do you mean?"

"I mean- you and Sherlock." Her voice catches, just a bit, when she realizes that's going to become a thing again. John and Sherlock. Sherlock and John. SherlockandJohn.

No more John and Molly, much less JohnandMolly.

"What are you- oh." His eyes widen and she tears away, hating that look of pity, of someone else seeing her biggest vulnerability and judging it. She's had far too much of that in her life and now that Sherlock's back he'll probably needle her every time he sees her for being in love with John. And she won't even be able to hate him because she knows he doesn't mean to hurt her, but it still does hurt so much.

"Molly!" John whips her around like she weighs nothing, and she feels a bit startled but mostly just disoriented because there are tears in her eyes and then there's a very angry John's face in her face. "You need to stop being so damned insecure!" She won't look at him, looks anywhere but at him. He grips her a bit tighter, trying to make her look, but she won't. "I'm not leaving you for Sher-"

"I knew he was alive!" she cries, shouts, actually, in his face. He freezes, and she pulls away so hard that his fingers scratch her arm, and he's going to leave her so she might as well get everything out now, nothing more for later. "I helped him fake his suicide and his brother contacted me, once a month, to let me know he was still alive."

"You-" John is shaking his head, staring at her, only feet away but somehow miles, like he's a complete stranger, even more than before they were friends, except so, so close that this betrayal is like getting stabbed in the back and she can see it on his face. "I can't believe this."

"You have no idea, how sorry I am," she tells him, and it feels like she's ripping the sentiment from her very soul, so ingrained has the guilt become in the last few months, how very much a part of her.

"I don't care!" he shouts, and she steps back, because he suddenly looks distraught and angry enough to kill. "How could you do this to me? I told you everything, I trusted you!"

"I know," she moans, and there's people watching them, just random people on the street, and oh God, what must they be thinking about them, this man with a cane but no limp and his heartbroken, murderous face and the cringing, pathetic woman before him, the traitor.

"Go," he orders, demands, and she nods, but until he jabs a finger behind her- a still hand and a shaking mouth- she doesn't move. And then she stumbles back and turns and flees, tears coming down like rain now, and this isn't the time for an hour-long walk anymore, and thank God the cab comes easily and the woman doesn't say anything besides 'Poor dear' as she drives.

[*]

Two days later, Sherlock bursts into her lab, just like always. She doesn't startle, or maybe she does, but her reflexes are too dull at the moment to respond before she recognizes who it is.

"Molly, beautiful Molly, how are you?" He's sweeping around like he's high on a case, and who knows, maybe he is. A year ago she'd already be stammering at his presence and the compliment, but now she barely looks up from her microscope.

"Fine," she lies.

"I've come to thank you." She looks up and he smiles, and he's still gorgeous, even though he's dyed his hair red for some reason and has a nasty bruise on his right cheekbone. "None of Moriarty's contacts had the slightest idea I wasn't dead. You must have played your part like a master, which was quite unexpected."

An insult wrapped in a thank-you. How surprising.

"Sure."

"And Mycroft tells me you've been looking after John as well, and for that, I am grateful." He stares at her intently, and Molly would probably blush if she didn't feel so dead inside. "I know how guilty he always feels, and I'm glad he had someone looking out for him. But it's all over now," he pushes off the lab bench and heads for the door, "and everything can go back to normal now." He spins around and winks before disappearing through the door.

"That's great," Molly whispers, and takes another sip from the flask she'd nabbed from her boss's desk.

[*]

It's another two days past that when John comes in, except she doesn't quite notice him because she hasn't been sleeping that well and even if she's good at faking being alert, there's only so far that goes. She'd be concerned that one of her colleagues might notice, except they never notice her and if her output's been down this week, it's still tonnes more than most of them, so who'll care?

John looks like he does. When she looks up from the tox analysis and startles like she used to at Sherlock, seeing him standing on the other side of her bench like that, he looks sad, doctor-y but also not. "What are you doing here?" she says intelligently, nearly dropping the sterile beaker she's holding.

"Greg said you were looking a bit run-down."

Oh God, Greg. Or probably DI Lestrade again, considering how angry he was when he saw her. Apparently John had told him that she'd known Sherlock was alive, because he came in and demanded to know why she hadn't told them and when she tried to explain that Sherlock and Mr. Holmes had made her promise he'd stormed out again, but not until he'd shouted for a few minutes and made all her colleagues snicker, and when he was gone she'd locked the doors to her lab and pretended, just for a few minutes, that she was someone else.

"Molly?" John says, louder, and she must have zoned out again.

"Yeah, sorry." She tries to look attentive and not like seeing John makes her feel like her ribs have been snipped off and her heart is completely vulnerable to anything he might say or do.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Why does he care, why is he being so gentle? "How are you?"

He blinks, looks around them as though for anyone else in the vicinity. "I'm sorry. Sherlock explained why you couldn't tell me, and- I get it. I shouldn't have shouted, and- the rest. You were wonderful, honestly, I don't know how I'd have managed without you."

"You're welcome," she says, and nods, and looks back at the tox analysis and prays that he'll just leave and prays that he won't, and it's probably painfully obvious that she's not really reading the analysis, isn't it?

"Molly…" he sighs. So he's not going, then? "I'm really sorry."

"I know. You said." Why's he still here?

"So what do I have to do for you to forgive me?"

"I do." She smiles quickly. "It's fine."

"You don't look happy."

"I am!" She can be. Maybe. Can't she have a week, please, at least, to get even the slightest bit over this before having to smile at them? "I'm happy for you two."

"No," he blurts out, shaking his head. "No! There's no 'you two', how many times- I'm not with Sherlock!"

"But… he kissed you."

"That was just- actually I have no idea what that was, it's Sherlock. But I'm pretty sure it was just a 'glad to see you' kiss, and he's married to his work anyway." John stares at her. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

"It's Sherlock," Molly says like that explains everything, which, well, doesn't it? "You love him."

John rolls his eyes heavily. "For one, why does no one believe me when I say that I'm straight? And for two, I love you both, in very different ways."

"You… you love me?"

John looks startled. "I- did I say that?"

"Yes, you did." But maybe it was just a mistake?

"Well… yeah. Yes, I do," he says more surely, even nodding firmly, and she's not sure she believes it, but he did say, and maybe that means-

"So you're not mad then? About- that I didn't tell you?"

"No," he says, like he's tired of saying it, "I'm not." And he tugs her into a hug that's just as tight as the one he'd given Sherlock, and she closes her eyes and thinks, 'Thank God!'

"You look a wreck," he murmurs into her ear, and Molly giggles just a bit because, to be honest, he is completely right. He pulls back enough to look her in the eye, still holding each other while he brushes her cheek with a thumb. "How about you take a personal day- we'll call it extenuating circumstances- and we'll get a pizza and watch something terribly on the TV?"

"That sounds great," Molly agrees. "Will, uh- will Sherlock be there?"

John looks a bit shifty. "He can't take any cases for a while, not until they file the paperwork to make him legally alive again. So yeah, he's- he's experimenting." She opens her eyes wide, a bit frightened from the stories John's told her about Sherlock's experiments- she never asked what he did with the body parts he requested- and John hastens to explain. "It's nothing, really, just some ligaments in the freezer reacting with different acids- he's quite harmless, actually." Molly giggles, and John shrugs. "You get used to it?"

"I guess I'll have to," she whispers, and he smiles.

"I hope you will. Now let's go."

Molly saves everything and shuts down her equipment, and John flicks off the light switch as they leave, locking the doors behind them.