*Slowly cracks open door**Peeks inside* Sherlock fandom? Can I join you, please? See, I wrote this little AU story... I don't know, sometime last year. After we found out about Mary's existence, before Tom's. Also, I only just got to watch The Empty Hearse last night, so if we could avoid spoilers in the comments, that'd be great.

WARNING for non-graphic references to torture. SERIOUSLY non-graphic. Like, this probably isn't even deserving of the rating, but I'm just covering my bases. I own nothing.

Molly Hooper has been gone for ten minutes. She ran out of the lab to get some very important files for Sherlock, and she has yet to return. Which is quite annoying, really, since the consulting detective really needed them two days ago, and this extra delay, small as it may be, is aggravating.

Finally, with an aggrieved sigh, he stands from the microscope and strides out into the hall, wondering what shiny thing or pretty boy has distracted her now.

There's blood on the floor, a small puddle, with a single rose petal floating delicately in the center.

Molly Hooper has been missing for four days. Police have crawled over every inch of the building twice, and John and Mary have come back early from their visit to Harry's to help out.

Sherlock is a machine, less human and more indifferent than usual, and if anyone notices the way his hands shake as he downs his fourth coffee of the evening, they don't say anything. Sherlock has analyzed the blood - definitely Molly's - and the petal - a normal red rose grown in someone's garden. He has taken samples of everything there is to take a sample of, and still there is nothing. John has to drug the coffee to get him to sleep, and when he wakes up Sherlock yells at him for nearly an hour before he returns to work.

Molly Hooper has been on the news for a week. The reporters talk about the woman who helped the famous Sherlock Holmes fake his death and about how even the great man himself is at a loss. Sherlock lets loose with the longest string of swear words Lestrade has ever heard, but at least it's quiet. He's lost his voice after all the yelling he's been doing.

But even he somehow finds his voice to shout when another puddle of blood is discovered in Molly's office right in the middle of the desk. There is a little more blood this time, and the petal is brown and dry around the edges.

Molly Hooper has been presumed dead for nine days. Another puddle of blood was found, this time in her apartment, and the petal in it was so dead and dry that it crumbled when Sherlock tried to pick it up.

Everyone else keeps looking but loses hope. Sherlock, who never had any hope in the first place, becomes even more determined. He thinks he's found a clue, a tiny little thing that even he overlooked at first: not many people know, but Molly hates roses.

Molly Hooper has been hidden for twenty-two days. When Sherlock bursts in, she cries and tries her best to cover herself because her ripped and torn clothes aren't doing a very good job. She's bloody and beaten and her hair has been cut off, but she's alive. She doesn't let anyone touch her, and she absolutely refuses to go to the hospital, her apartment, or Bart's. She doesn't feel safe there.

Molly Hooper has been staying at 221B Baker Street for a week and a half. She wakes up screaming at night and sits quietly on the couch and watches Sherlock work during the day. He tries not to leave the apartment, because she won't go outside but she doesn't like to be alone. Mary comes by once or twice to visit and sit in silence as they drink tea. After she leaves Molly nearly has a nervous breakdown, and Sherlock requests that Mary doesn't come back.

Molly doesn't talk about what happened, and the man that captured her - an ex-boyfriend from her university days - is completely insane. Lestrade can't get a word out of him, but when the Detective Inspector tries to interview Molly, Sherlock nearly punches him before he tells him to leave.

Molly Hooper has been sleeping in Sherlock's bed for two nights. The first night back at his apartment she slept in John's old room - he had to clear off the papers and body parts to make room for her - and she had horrifying nightmares and woke up alone. The next night, she slept on the couch, because she could see Sherlock's door from there. That worked for nearly a week, but then she started worrying that maybe he wasn't really inside the room, that he had snuck out somewhere and left her alone.

He started sleeping with his door open after that, which makes it better.

It doesn't help with the nightmares, though, the recurring dreams of tears and blood and loneliness, and Molly takes to standing in his doorway for minutes at a time, watching him pretend to sleep, until she returns to the couch and stares at the ceiling for the rest of the night. Her thirteenth night at the flat, when she's been standing in the doorway for nearly ten minutes, Sherlock sighs and lifts one corner of the covers and tells her to either stand there for the rest of the night or just get in, already.

She scampers over and sleeps better than she has in over a month.

Molly Hooper has been scared for two months. The nightmares come and she jerks so violently in her sleep that Sherlock has taken to placing a pillow between them at night to keep her from bruising him. He doesn't say anything, though, when she tosses the pillow across the room in order to curl up against him.

But Molly is still terrified. Small noises make her jump, and other than the screams at night she hasn't spoken in days. A colleague at Bart's sends her a card telling that everyone misses her and hopes she can return to work soon. It's nice and almost makes her smile, but when she turns it over there's a rose embossed on the back, and she starts screaming again. Sherlock burns the card, but John says he's not allowed to kill the woman who sent it.

Molly Hooper has been sick for twelve days. She hasn't been eating or sleeping properly, and with all the stress her body's been under it's no surprise that Sherlock returns to the flat one day to find her passed out in his bed, feverish and bordering on delirious. He takes care of her at 221B for over a week, coaxing her to eat and drink, but when her fever spikes dangerously high and even he can't get any fluids in her, he caves and takes her to the hospital. She's there for three days before the fever finally breaks, and when she wakes up Sherlock is waiting for her. He rolls his eyes and says that he really had much better things to be doing and could she have picked a worse time to get sick, anyways?

She laughs for the first time in months.

Molly Hooper has been home from the hospital for two days. She's sitting on the couch reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Sherlock strides into the room, tosses her coat to her, and announces that the doctor said fresh air would be the best thing to help her recover, so they're going for a walk. She protests and tries to argue with him; he argues right back. It's only when he threatens to carry her outside that she finally agrees to go, pulling a cap low on her head to hide her ragged hair, only a few inches long, and Sherlock helps her into her coat. It's the first time she's willingly gone outside in weeks, and she cringes every time someone passes too close. She presses close to Sherlock's side, and he, with a put-upon sigh, wraps an arm around her shoulders to keep her there.

They sit on a bench, and Molly, exhausted, falls asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Molly Hooper has been going to therapy for six weeks. It was Sherlock who suggested it, quite matter-of-factly stating that it would be beneficial to her health and his, because Molly is still leaving bruises when she's caught in a nightmare and he has to hold her down until she wakes up. She wants to say no, that she's not going to talk about it and he can't make her, but there are dark circles under his dead eyes, too, and it's because he's been getting just as much sleep as her lately, considering that he stays up with her after her nightmares. So she says yes, and he introduces her to a woman in her sixties named Anne. Molly tells her she looks like the kind of lady that should just bake cookies all day and live in the country in a grand old house and smile at everyone. Anne says that's the greatest compliment she's ever received.

She won't talk to Anne, though, unless Sherlock is in the room. The couch is big enough for the two of them to have plenty of room, but Molly still sits so close she's very nearly in his lap, clutching his hand in both of hers like a lifeline. He lets her.

Molly Hooper has been sleeping through the night for a month. She finally told Anne and Sherlock what had happened during her three weeks of captivity, breaking down in tears as she recalled it, and since then the nightmares have, if not stopped, at least become less vivid. She moves back to John's old room after a week of bad dreams rather than nightmares, and when she wakes up the next morning it is to see Sherlock asleep in bed next to her. He informs her that it's only precautionary in case she does have a bad nightmare again and hurts herself, then requests that they move back to his room the next night because John's bed is smaller and it's much less comfortable to sleep there. She smiles at him, says yes, and kisses his cheek.

Molly Hooper has been working at Bart's again for two weeks. Sherlock says that there's a dead body he really needs to examine for a case - the first really interesting one he's taken since Molly disappeared - and that she's welcome to come with him. She does, and they promptly kick out the young man who has gotten Molly's old job. Sherlock examines the body, and Molly fetches books and coffee and microscopes and the riding crop. The next day, when they go back to Bart's, Molly requests that she be given her old job back, or at least one similar to it. When Sherlock, standing silently behind her, raises a single eyebrow, her old bosses scramble to obey. She and Sherlock ride to work together in the mornings, except for the days when he has to stop by Scotland Yard or John and Mary's for something, and Molly takes the cab to work by herself. It's sort of okay, actually, and she even smiles at her coworkers some days.

Molly Hooper has been dating Sherlock Holmes for three months. Maybe it's a bit euphemistic to call it dating, but they live together, sleep in the same bed, occasionally kiss, and are rarely seen without the other. Sherlock even compliments her sometimes, in his own backwards way, and he keeps the nightmares at bay. The sessions with Anne help more than she thought they would, and as they reach the five-month anniversary of Molly's disappearance, she takes his hands in hers, takes a deep breath, and informs him that she's going to start going to start seeing Anne on her own, not because she doesn't want him there but because she's getting better and she needs to start standing on her own two feet again. He interrupts her with a proud smile and a kiss that leaves her breathless, and she can't help but laugh.

Molly Hooper has been gone for six months. And now, she's finally back.