Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own Sherlock or Molly. I wish I did, though.

Sherlock sat in the cafeteria of Barts, he had just returned to London to save the paranoid government of a terrorist attack, mainly because of his brother. He had donned a white wig and some glasses and was gazing at the woman that had always counted, the woman that had helped him when he had been helpless, vulnerable, the woman who was nice and gentle to him, when he was nothing but cruel and harsh to her. The woman otherwise known as Molly Hooper.

The aforementioned woman was sitting across from a brown-haired man, who was fiddling with his fork as Molly giggled and blushed like a schoolgirl.
Fiance, detective story lover, tea drinker, public schools, teen gangster, hidden tattoo, not enough sleep, drools when sleeping... Countless deductions flashed in front of Sherlock's eyes, but the only phrase he could see was Molly deserves better.
Sherlock swallowed the atrocious coffee that the cafeteria offers and strode out the door, flipping his phone in his hand as he went.

Molly giggled again, the man in front of her was funny and charming. He had recently proposed to her, and she had said yes. Her friends had all been quite shocked when they saw Tom, for some unknown reason, sure his attire is somewhat familiar, but that can only be an coincidence, right?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she excused herself, Tom was understanding, he was always understanding if not too much so. She glanced at her phone, and her face visibly paled as she read the simple message.

I'm Back.
SH

Those initials stared back at her, it was the initials of the man whom she had yapped and flustered around like a puppy, the man whom she had been hopelessly in love with, the man whom she had helped fake his own death. I'm Back. She re-read the short sentence, can it really be? After two years of people accusing him of being a fraud, being a fake, and being a hoax, the media had loved the story of a suicide of a fake genius, it made a catchy headline, after all.

"Molly, do you feel fine?" Tom asked, concerned, "You look pale."

"I'm fine, I'm fine." She repeated, as if saying it twice will make it come true, "I have to go back to work now,"

"Do you want me to take you upstairs,"

"Nah, I think I'll manage." She smiled weakly, and let Tom lean down to kiss her lightly on her cheek. Tom is amazing, he really is, he is all she can ask for, but he is not Sherlock Holmes. His hair is wrong, so is his scent, but Sherlock Holmes is the one man that even the most beautiful women cannot get, let alone the plain, dull Molly Hooper. But still, why had Sherlock Holmes even bothered to inform her of his return to London? She had expected him to just burst through the lab door one day, as if nothing had changed, and ask for some severed fingers. The idea nudged her in the back of her mind as she struggled to concentrate on her work, but the place she works at was full of shadows of him, elbows deep in a man's insides, she was reminded of his lean form whipping the IT technician, in the lab writing reports, she can see his curls bobbing around, his piercing blue eyes gazing into the microscope. She told herself to cut it out, she had eventually came to turns with his reluctance on relationships, but the shadow of him still haunted her on a regular basis.

Molly signed, she had survived another day working in the morgue. She rolled her shoulders as she entered the locker room and fished out her keys from her lab coat. Slamming the door open, she jumped back in alarm. There, reflected in the tiny, smudged mirror, was the all too familiar piercing blue eyes and sharp cheekbones. She turned around slowly, as if he would be gone if she made sudden movements, and once she had accomplished the task of turning 180 degrees, she gazed into those eyes for the first time in two years.
"Sherlock?" She finally managed to splutter, she was leaning against the locker, the ledge of the open locker cutting into her back,
"Molly." He said, and his baritone brought back a flood of memories.
"Sherlock, you came back."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I have disabled Moriarty's criminal network, and London's in need of me once again."
"Where have you been?"
"I was mainly in Russia and Siberia," Sherlock began, smugness and pride laced in his tone as always when he gets to talk about all the things he had done, "But Moriarty's network spread much farther across the world than I had anticipa-"
Molly's phone rang and the screen lit up, showing Tom's face with the blue scarf,
"Sorry, I have to take this." Molly smiled apologetically, "Hello? Yes... Just got off from work... I'll be home in...twenty minutes? OK, love you, bye."
"So anyways, as I was saying, Moriarty's-"
"I'm sorry, Sherlock. But I have to go home now." Molly said, and she shouldered her bag, walked around Sherlock, and pushed open the door into the empty hallway. Sherlock stood rooted to the spot, still looking at the space where Molly had been moments ago, and an unexpected pang of loneliness hit him like a flood, suffocating and drowning him.

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