Disclaimer: I own nothing but my mind, my dears.

Summary: So, Molly Hooper stays because Sherlock Holmes wants-needs-her to stay and she's always done everything for him, so why should she stop now?

A/N: Oh yeah, just totally ploughed out another one-shot this afternoon. I've been hit by the writing bug again. I love you guys so madly. Seriously. You are all fantastic. I hope you enjoy this latest offering! Reviews are always appreciated and any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Hope you enjoy!

We move lightly

One-shot

It's exactly one year since Sherlock Holmes jumped off the roof of Bart's and died.

No, Molly reminds herself as she stares at his tombstone, not dead. He's not dead. You know he's not dead.

Except, everything feels so real. She didn't attend the memorial service earlier that day. Mainly because they were short-staffed and needed her in the morgue but the predominant reason is that she can't be around Greg, Mrs. Hudson and John (oh God, John) for too long. Because then the guilt starts to eat at her. She's lying to them. Deceiving them. Every time, Mrs. Hudson remembers a story that she can never finish because she's overcome with emotion so strong, it chokes her, Molly feels her heart break.

Every time, Greg confesses to her that Sherlock Holmes made him want to be a better Detective Inspector, there is a feeling in the pit of her stomach that consumes her.

Every time, John comes to her, eyes vacant and body weary asking her if there was anything strange, "anything at all? Molly, please, anything." She feels her resolve start to weaken. (She always responds with a lie, "no, John. Nothing strange. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.")

So, she leaves them to their mourning and she mourns in her own way.

She places a hand on the tombstone in front of her and lets out a sigh, one of these days, he's going to come back and everything will go back to normal. One day, she won't be the keeper of his biggest secret anymore.

(Molly doesn't know why that thought makes her want to weep.)

Dusk is starting to settle over London as she leaves the cemetery. There is a familiar sleek black car waiting for her in front of the iron gates.

She sighs and gets in without question.

The moment she sits down and stares at the man sitting across from her, she knows something is wrong. The car moves and Molly knows it's going over the speed limit (not like they'd ever be caught) and it's in the way it swerves and passes other cars, oblivious to the honks and rude gestures shoved out of rolled down windows, that Molly definitely knows something is wrong. "Mycroft?" She asks, her voice soft, weary but still holds confusion and fear. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest, oh God, something's happened to Sherlock.

Mycroft sighs and gestures to the bag on the floor of the car. "Everything you'll need is in there."

"What's going on? Where am I going? Is he okay?" She knows that Mycroft's car is the last place to ever be bugged, but she's still careful to not say Sherlock's name.

"I'm afraid, Doctor Hooper, that I cannot tell you."

The car comes to a stop and the door is opened for her. She looks out at the jet, roaring to life and waiting for her. She looks back at Mycroft and for the first time, sees Anthea, sitting in the corner, blackberry discarded as she openly stares at her. "My-"

"Everything will be taken care of." Mycroft informs her. He pushes the bag towards her and gestures to the jet. "Time is of the essence, Doctor Hooper." She grabs the bag and knows she must have imagined his soft, whispered, "save him please."

(It's only when she's on the jet and thousands of feet in the air, does she realize that she didn't have time to change. She went straight from work to the cemetery and from the cemetery to a jet, leading her to God only knows where.)

She's led from the jet to another car and from the car to a gated house.

She doesn't even bother to wait for the car to come to a complete stop, she throws open the door and rushes into the house, the black bag thudding against her legs. She follows the voices that she hears coming from inside the house. Up elaborate stairs and whizzing by paintings, that in any other scenario, she would have been transfixed by.

Instead, as she pushes open the door and the stench of blood hits her nostrils, she's transfixed by something else. Someone else.

She pushes away the other doctors, her eyes staring at the tall, pale man with inky wild curls matted down with dried blood. His body is bruised and he grits his teeth against the pain. "Sherlock?" She asks quietly.

His electric blue eyes snap open and they're wild. (The only time she ever remembers them like that, is the time she accidentally came across him in the lab while dangerously high. She still remembers the bruises from when he thought she was someone else entirely. It's the only time she's ever saw him lose his mind. It took Greg Lestrade and three security guards to pull him off of her. She remembers trembling as Greg held her and as she watched the man she was quickly falling in love with, fall apart. He went to rehab the next day and she didn't see him for three months. When he came back, he wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't go anywhere near her. So, she went to him. She infiltrated 221b Baker Street and told him to stop destroying himself over it. "I'm stronger than you've ever given me credit for." She told him. "You hurt me and terrified me but it wasn't you. Not really. I know you'd never purposely hurt me. Just…promise me, you won't do it again." He promises, his voice hesitant and quiet, as if he doesn't believe that she's forgiven him. Things go back to normal after that.)

"Oh, Sherlock." She breathes, fingertips brushing against his forehead to push away stray curls. "What happened?"

"Obviously, I jumped off a building," he hisses through clenched teeth, "this time, you weren't there."

(Molly will never forgive herself for letting him fall and not catching him.)

"You've been to my grave." He informs her sleepily. She practically had to force feed him painkillers. His eyes were wide with panic when she came towards him with the drugs. ("It's not like last time," she tells him gently, "I'm here, Sherlock, I'm here. I'm taking care of you. Please. Please. You're in pain and I can't…Sherlock, please.")

"I always go to your grave." She agrees.

"Why?" He's generally confused, although, that's probably also the drugs working their way into his system.

"To remind myself that you're not actually dead."

(Her words fall on deaf ears. He's asleep.)

Molly stays in her spot, next to his bed, brown eyes vigilant, albeit exhausted, as she counts the times his chest rises and falls.

He gets better as each day passes and soon enough, Molly knows that she's no longer going to be needed. She's served her purpose. She's running her hands over his body, checking to make sure that everything is where it's supposed to be and that he's healing as nicely as she thinks he is.

"You should back to normal in no time." She tells him softly. (She's a pathologist, she deals with dead people, but she's thankful that she's never forgotten the rounds she did in A&E when she was younger.) She takes a deep breath and smiles wearily at him. "Everything will be back to normal."

He opens his mouth to say something but she doesn't let him. Instead, she sucks up whatever courage she didn't think she had and presses a kiss to his cheek. It's eerily similar to the way he kissed her that Christmas. "Stay safe and please stop jumping from rooftops."

And then she leaves.

(Part of her wishes that he would call her back. Part of her wishes that he would tell her to come back and stay with him because he needs her. He doesn't do anything like that. Sherlock Holmes doesn't need her, at least, not really.)

She waits until she's in the jet to cry.

"You're brother is safe." She tells Mycroft tiredly. She's just gotten off the jet and somehow isn't surprised that the eldest Holmes brother is waiting for her.

"Yet you're here and not there."

"He didn't ask me to stay." She says.

"Did you allow him the chance to?" Mycroft Holmes is looking at her like she's the world's biggest idiot and maybe she is.

Three months later, she's ushered from the morgue to the same black car and she stares blankly at the black bag on the floor.

"Is this going to become a thing?" She asks Mycroft.

Anthea snorts and Mycroft stares unblinkingly at her.

They're in Poland (a town just outside of Warsaw, to be exact) this time (one of Molly's ex-boyfriend is Polish. She went to visit his family in Gdańsk once when she was younger. She likes Poland. She really liked her ex-boyfriend too. They lasted until she was accepted into Medical School and he got a job offer in Australia of all places. They broke up amicably; they still talk every now and then.)

She makes her way up the stairs into another house and stares at the man who makes her heart beat faster than it should. He's hurt again but not as badly as the first time and most certainly not as dire as to have her shipped from London to Warsaw. "Please don't tell me you fell off another building."

"A fight with a man who didn't want to die as quickly as I would have liked him to."

She's not stupid. She knows what he's doing. She knows that him tracking Moriarty's men isn't to try and turn them over to the good side, but it still makes her breath hitch that he's so nonchalant while admitting that he's committing murder almost every day. "Let's get you patched up then, yeah?"

(She ignores the way his eyes follow her as she does her best to piece him together.)

"If convenient," he tells her as she's eating her breakfast one morning, "you should stay with me. This way, I won't have to wait an obscene amount of hours for you to arrive."

"And if inconvenient?" She asks him.

"Stay anyways."

(Her heart soars and she shoves a spoonful of cereal in her mouth to hide her small grin.)

Her adventure with Sherlock isn't all it's cracked up to be. He's moody and she tries not to take things seriously, she really truly does, but it doesn't work. Because Sherlock Holmes knows exactly the right buttons to push and tragic way to tear her down.

They're in Australia (Adelaide to be exact) when he says things that make her cry. She knows that he's frustrated and that he's tired of everything, but it still doesn't give him the right to take it out on her. Not when he asked her to stay. Not when she's the one who patches him up every time he so much as comes to her with an injury.

So, she nods absentmindedly, completely focused on biting her lip and making sure not to let out the sob that is working its way up her throat. She leaves the house and hurries down the dirt road. (He doesn't call for her to come back.)

She's walked for longer than she would have liked and she makes her way into a quaint little café on a main street. She orders a coffee and takes a seat next to the window and watches as people pass her by, completely unaware of the heart break raging on inside of her.

When she gets back to the house, darkness has fallen. She quietly makes her way into the house and sighs as she slips off her shoes and walks to the kitchen, flipping the lights on as she walks in. She jumps, hands clutching her chest as she stares at Sherlock sitting on a chair at the kitchen table.

He looks up when she enters and for a moment, just a moment, she sees relief flood his eyes. Then they're back to regarding her coolly. "Are you going to leave?" He asks her, his deep voice rumbling in the stillness of the room (she can hear crickets from outside and in the distance, Molly can hear howls.)

"Would you like me to leave?" She takes the next across from him.

There is silence and then a quiet but reserved. "No."

(So, Molly Hooper stays because Sherlock Holmes wants-needs-her to stay and she's always done everything for him, so why should she stop now? She's falling even in more in love with the man and Molly knows nothing good can come out of it.)

She's lost track of the days, weeks and months it's been since she left London and accompanied Sherlock on his journey dismantling Moriarty's network. She helps him whenever she can (and not just medically) but she's always been extremely good at research, so she's become somewhat of an assistant to him during the time they've been together.

She finds information on the men and women they're hunting down and she keeps him updated. (It's a little like she used to do back in London, but instead of body parts and autopsies, it's what they had for supper, what café they frequent the most and what routes they take to work. She feels a little like a spy and the whole thing excites her.)

She's always in the background though. She never goes with him on stakeouts. She never goes with him when it actually comes time for him to kill someone. Instead, she turns her face and goes to her room or turns on the telly or reads a book or soaks in a bath, anything to keep her busy while she anxiously waits for him to come back home. (Come back to her.)

They've always been careful. Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes are vigilant when it comes to safety, which is why, while Sherlock is out taking care of the one of the last couple of men ("we're close, Molly, can't you feel it? We're close. It's all going to be over soon and I can come back home." She wonders idly if her face fell the moment those words flew out of his mouth in a flurry of excitement) the house suddenly explodes in a whirlwind of gunshots.

She shrieks and then flies to the floor. She crawls on her elbows, through broken glass and hides behind the counter, hands over her head. She fumbles with the gun underneath the counter (he taught her how to use a gun, even though she was vehemently against it) and slips off the safety.

Turns out she doesn't need the gun because the security that Mycroft has in place, shoots the snipers from their spots and Molly hears them slam onto the ground with loud grunts.

"Doctor Hooper?" She hears a voice call out and Molly looks up to see the kind face of the other doctor that Sherlock wants nothing to do with. "Doctor Hooper, I need to see your wounds."

"They're just grazes. I think I may have a bit of glass in them but nothing life-threatening." She lets out a laugh then and she can feel her body start to tremble. "I'm sorry." She tells him. "I'm so sorry. I'm normally…composed. This…is…I…"

"You're in shock." He tells her softly. "Adrenaline is coursing through your body and wearing off. I'm going to clean your cuts but let's sit somewhere that isn't covered in glass, yeah?"

She looks around the house and frowns. "Good luck with that."

She's sitting on her bed in a different house.

Sherlock came bounding in like a madman, his blue eyes searching wildly, until he lands on her. She gives him a small smile and then nods at something the other doctor is telling her. Needless to say, one look at her cuts and grazes and Sherlock Holmes flies into a fit. (She remembers when John once told her about what he did to men who put their hands on Mrs. Hudson and how furious he was and Molly can't help but imagine that this is how he looked like.)

"I'm fine." She tells him. "Sherlock. Sherlock. I'm fine. Everything is fine."

He doesn't listen to her.

She gets up on shaky legs and stands in front of him. Without thinking, she grabs his face and forces him to look at her. (She'll never forget the fear, desperation and hopelessness she sees in his eyes, never.) "Sherlock." She says softly, "I'm fine. Just cuts and grazes. Nothing that won't heal."

(There is so much that she knows he wants to say and she swallows the bitter disappointment when he doesn't say anything. Instead, he just nods and then tells her to pack her things because they're moving into a different house.)

Which brings her back to sitting on her bed in a different house and watching Sherlock Holmes get lost in his mind palace.

He comes out of it an hour later and she's still staring at him. He opens his mouth to say something but Molly doesn't want to hear it. (She has a feeling she knows what it is but she doesn't want to hear it) so instead, she summons up whatever little adrenaline is still in her system and kisses him softly on the lips.

His hands grasp her hips and pull her slowly to him.

"Molly." His voice makes her shiver as he talks against her lips.

She sighs. "I know. I know." (She's always known what he's thinking and she wonders if he's just starting to figure that out.) "Just...just for tonight…I mean…you don't…if you want…oh, you don't, do you? I shouldn't have…" she's silenced by his lips to her collarbone and then to that spot on her neck.

Suddenly they're moving backwards until she falls onto her bed and he falls atop of her.

(They don't say anything the rest of the night. Instead, they're conversation is made out of choked gasps, breathy moans, guttural groans and interchanging breaths. He confesses everything to her without words.)

The next day he puts her on the jet back to London.

She doesn't argue.

(And she saves her tears until she's in her flat, where she slides down onto the floor, leans against her closed door and sobs.)

She's been gone a year and a half and she doesn't realize how tired she actually is until she sleeps for a whole day. She wakes up to loud knocking on her door and she gets out of bed and looks through her peephole.

Greg Lestrade is on the other side of the door, waiting anxiously. She opens it up and before saying anything; he has her in his arms, wrapped in a tight hug. "Where have you been? We've been sick with worry. I've called everyone I know of, John's been to Bart's practically every single day." He pauses and pulls away from her. "Molly, it's been a year and a fucking half. Where the hell have you been? And do you not know how to use a phone?"

"Around." She tells him honestly. "I've been around."

Molly slips back into her job as if she never left it (she really should remember to call Mycroft and thank him for that.)

John is dating an obstetrician named Mary Morstan. She works at Bart's and came in a week after Molly had left.

Molly likes her. She's a fierce woman with kind eyes and blonde hair. Molly doesn't have many female friends, so she's thankful that Mary is eager to become friends with her. And it helps that she's not at all disgusted by the fact that she cuts open dead people but rather, she's actually curious.

They're at a pub, a couple months after Molly comes back, eating dinner.

"So," Mary starts, "You disappeared for a year and a half without telling anyone."

Molly answers slowly and nods. "Just needed a break, I suppose."

Mary cocks an eyebrow. "Right. What's his name?"

Molly chokes on her food. "Excuse me?"

"Molly. Please." Mary's expression softens and she smiles at her, "From the way I hear it, Greg and John love you and the only plausible reason for you not to say you're leaving is because you knew they wouldn't approve. I've two older brothers, trust me when I say, I practically wrote the book on avoiding confrontations with them."

Molly shakes her head and idly thinks that Sherlock will definitely like this woman for John.

Mary sighs. "It's fine, you know. Not telling me. I won't get offended."

"Mary," Molly says, "one of these days, I will tell you. But not today."

She wonders where Sherlock is. She wonders what country he's in. She wonders what he's doing.

She wonders if he's actually allowing the other doctor to fix him or if he's settled for fixing himself.

In the end, she always wonders how close he is to coming back home. Back to her.

It's exactly three years since Sherlock Holmes jumped off the roof of Bart's and died.

No, Molly reminds herself as she stares at his tombstone, not dead. He's not dead. You know he's not dead.

It's been six months since she had sex with him and then he put her on a jet back to London to keep her from harm's way. (He did say she counted once.)

She's at the cemetery. She's always at the cemetery. She wasn't able to come earlier with Greg, Mrs. Hudson and John. She still doesn't feel comfortable mourning with them. She especially doesn't feel right since she was with him, side by side, for a year and a half, fighting to take down Moriarty's network and patching him up.

She places her hand on the tombstone and sighs. It's been six months and she hasn't heard from him and all she can get out of Mycroft is that he's fine.

"You still visit my grave." A deep voice states from behind her.

Molly's blood freezes in her veins. She turns around and her eyes catch his. There is a bruise and a cut with dried blood blooming on the left side of his cheek and Molly can't help it, she lets out a laugh. "I take it you went to see John?"

He scowls and buries his hands into his jacket. "He punched me."

"He watched you commit suicide. At least he thought he did. It's the least he can do."

He walks closer to her until he's standing next to her (Molly wonders if he can hear her heart beating.) "Why do you still visit my grave?" He asks her.

"To remind myself that you're not actually dead." She responds. "So…that's it then? You're back?"

He nods slowly. "Yes. I'm sure it will hit the news tomorrow but Mycroft has at least offered me some sort of reprieve."

She reaches out and grabs his hand, interlacing her fingers with his and she tugs him away. "Come on, let me clean up that cut of yours."

With clasped hands, they walk out of the cemetery leaving behind the tombstone of Sherlock Holmes.

(If Molly has it her way, she's not going to see that tombstone for a very long time.)

"John's moved out of the flat." He tells her that night.

She has her chin propped up on his chest and presses soft kisses on his neck as he traces shapes on her bare back. "I know." She says, "I helped Mary pick out the furniture."

"If convenient, move into 221b."

She moves her body so that she's lying atop of him, her naked body pressing into his. "And if inconvenient?" She teases, her lips a hair's-breadth away from his.

He growls and twists them around until she's under him; his hands placed on either side of her face. "Move in, anyways."

She bites her lip to hide her grin. Sherlock sees it anyways and leans down to capture her lips.

(They don't say anything for the rest of the night. Everything they need to say is in their choked gasps; breathy moans, guttural groans and interchanging breaths. They confess everything without words.)

What's this? Two stories in one weekend? Lawdy. LOL. I hope you all enjoyed this offering, that I humbly give to you. It's been swirling in my head for a while and I just though…you know what? Why not? So, here it is. Molly helping and healing in her own little way and Sherlock taking and somewhat giving in his own little way too.

I hope you've all enjoyed because you guys are kick-ass awesome. I'm serious. Words cannot describe how awesome the lot of you are. You all make my heart soar and swell. Your love is astounding and I want you ALL to know that I've got MAD LOVE AND RESPECT for every single last one you.

Much love,

BB