A/N: As promised - an ending. In fact, this is my first completed Multi-Chapter fic!
Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed and showed the love. It means a lot!

It had been over five weeks since Molly had returned to work. Five weeks of autopsies, blood tests, ph analysis and chemical spectrographs. Five weeks of home-cooked dinners, and while she didn't relish eating alone, she was finding real food a blessed relief after the room-service diet she and Anthea had been subsisting of while surveilling Sherlock.

Sherlock.

It had been almost weeks since her return to work and the near-run in with him in the darkened hallway. And no sign of him since.

She didn't dare raise the detective's absence with the Watsons, instead choosing to focus on the fast-growing Isabelle and the latest cute thing she was doing. Yesterday, Molly was firsthand witness to Isabelle's new favourite game - picking up duplo blocks and pretending to use them as mobile phones. Molly watched for nearly five minutes as the industrious 18 month old pantomime-acted texting and talking into the plastic rectangle just as she had seen her parents doing.

"Once I caught her yelling 'shut up you git!' down the phone. There's no point guessing who she heard that from." Mary gestured with her eyes towards her husband who seemed too concentrated on his phone to respond.

Molly didn't dare take the bait. No matter how hard she had worked to compartmentalise all that she had been through in Vegas, she was still not ready to practice her resolve, especially not in front of Sherlock's two best friends.

Instead, Molly did as she had for the last month, smiled warmly and spoke of happier things – the beginning of summer, the latest events in her family, the new episode of Outlander. Anything she could feign an interest in enough to distract herself from thinking of what happened in Vegas.

That was all in the past. Molly had erased Cindy leaving her behind with her costume in Vegas. Fishnets, high heels and sexy lingere were all abandoned when the operation went south, and Molly was not tempted to recreate to wardrobe back in London.

Costume gone. Act over.

Of course, there was the matter of healing, and that took time.

But as she packed up and readied herself to head home after work the next day, Molly realised it had been almost 24 hours since she last thought about Bill. Or Sherlock. Neither of them had crossed her mind all day.

Of course the moment she realised it, not only was the spell broken, but the mere thought was almost powerful enough to the man appear in the flesh.

The lab was dark. Molly could hear the echo of her shoes on the linoleum. The back-lit cabinets provided unearthly glows and dark contrasting shadows in the areas their light couldn't reach.

She thought she was alone as she headed towards the office to grab her coat and bag and head home.

"Who am I?" A deep baritone voice shocked her, causing her to jump and her heartrate to soar. She'd know that voice anywhere, even if the man it belonged to was still hiding in the shadows, lurking the lab just as he had done the night before he'd told her he thought he was going to die.

Fear forgotten, she headed towards the source, even if she still couldn't make him out in the gloom.

"What?"

"Who am I?" He repeated, his voice more forceful, yet his tone much more uncertain.

She didn't provide an answer, instead answering his question with a question. "Who do you think you are?"

"I don't know. Am I an addict?"

Molly responded the only way she knew how: with the truth.

"Yes."

"A Junkie?"

"Yes."

"A compulsive gambler?"

"Yes."

"A Liar?"

"Yes."

Each word he said was laced with such venom. Each response from Molly, such patience and grace.

"Who do you think I am, Molly?" voice hoarse, emotions raw.

She paused, surveying his face in the dark glow of the lab. Taking a moment to consider her response.

"You are Sherlock Holmes."

Her response was meant to comfort him, but the look on his face was so pained, it was as if she had knifed him with a dagger so sharp, a wound so mortal.

"And who is Sherlock Holmes?"

Molly had never seen him so lost, not even when he came to her the last time in that lab, so alone, so uncertain.

She swallowed, steeling herself before replying.

"Sherlock Holmes is all of those things – addict, junkie, gambler, liar," statements of fact, each of them. Molly reached out, placing a gentle hand on his chin, tilting his face up to meet hers.

"You may be all those things, Sherlock, but you're far greater than the sum of them."

Sherlock's eyes closed, he inhaled deeply as if breathing for the first time after almost drowning.

"Thank you." He whispered, his hand touching hers as is still rested on his face, removing it and interlacing their fingers.

"Sherlock?" Molly began, snapping him back to reality, "Who am I?"

He smiled broadly.

"You're Molly Hooper. You always were."

Six words, and an acknowledgement that what happened in Vegas wouldn't stay there.

Coda

John Watson directed the cab to stop right outside 221b. He considered bounding up the stairs, barging down the door, and demanding why Sherlock had gone off the radar again.

It had been five days since John and Mary had shared their concerns about Molly and ask that Sherlock investigate. Now neither the detective nor his target had been heard from since.

Well, John corrected himself, that wasn't entirely accurate. There was a cryptic email from Molly to Mike Stamford about needing to take "personal leave" for the remainder of the week. And Mrs Hudson did tell John about a terse phone call she received from her tenant the night after his visit to John's. According to the landlady, Sherlock had all but demanded she take the train to visit her sister in Cornwall while he was working on a "highly sensitive case," as she put it.

The details of the phonecall were recounted to John in a tone of shock and offence which could not hide the infinite patience and love John knew Mrs Hudson felt for Sherlock deep-down. A demand which was not received too favourably by Mrs Hudson but was soon smoothed over by Sherlock's offer to pay the first-class train fair as well as provide his landlady with 500 pounds spending money – all charged to Mycroft's expense account, as John would later discover when he called the elder Holmes looking for any signs of the younger one. When John pressed for more details, there was a muted sound on the other side of the call which he could almost have mistaken for laughter, if he didn't know Mycroft hadn't laughed in years.

But, as he arrived at Baker Street that afternoon, Mycroft's final words rang in John's ears.

"Proceed with caution. You might not be prepared for what you discover."

John cursed the Holmes family trait for theatrics, puzzles and cryptic messages, but respected Mycroft enough to tread lightly when warned.

Instead of bounding up the stairs, yelling ahead of himself the myriad curse-words that were running though his mind, John walked calmly, barely making a sound. Instead of knocking, John used the key he had had ever since moving in and had never bothered to return to his friend.

It was only when he turned the corner into the kitchen that the true meaning of Mycroft's warning was revealed.

There, John was met with a sight more extraordinary than anything he'd ever seen in Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes, hair astray, stubble grown at least a week's length, clad only in pyjama pants was wrapped in a passionate embrace with Molly Hooper, herself showing signs of time recently spend in bed – not only with her hair wild and loose around her shoulders, but the fact that she was clad in only a bedsheet (from what John could tell at a quick glance).

Both of them blissfully unaware that their private moment had been intruded on.

Sherlock broke the kiss, stepping back and looking deeply into the petite pathologist's eyes.

"I love you Molly Hooper."

John never thought he'd hear Sherlock declare his love for anything other than the puzzle, the chase or the game. More surprising to John, however, was the look of pure joy on the detective's face as he said it.

Looking into her beloved's face, Molly smiled, a truly happy smile. John hadn't seen Molly like this in months.

"I love you too Sherlock Holmes," she replied.

John very quietly backed away, returning as swiftly and as silently out of Baker Street as he had arrived. He knew there was a story behind the strange events of the past few months. But it was one he was willing to hear about another time.

A/N: Done! Phew! Now, on to another one of my WiPs. Feel free to drop me a line to tell me which one you think I should work on next!