Wounded With His Wounded Heart, Ch. 13
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Sherlock; it all belongs to the BBC, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, et al. I write these stories purely for enjoyment; no copyright infringement is intended.
Wounded With His Wounded Heart - Chapter Thirteen
Molly arrived about three hours after Greg, surprising them both. When Sherlock had become too physically tired to continue playing his violin, he had migrated to the couch. Still lying much more carefully than his usual sprawl, he was resting his head in John’s lap and had slipped into a light sleep, until there was an agitated pounding at the lower door. In the next minute they heard Mrs. Hudson’s anxious tones, then Molly’s voice, low and angry.
John exchanged a glance with Sherlock as Molly’s steps came flying up the stairs, and they had both just gained their feet when she appeared in the doorway. One glance was enough to tell them that she was furious. Her hair was mussed as though she had been running her hands through it, her lips were pressed into a thin line, and she was trembling like a leaf.
She barely paused in the doorway to confirm Sherlock’s presence and send a glare at him before launching herself straight at him, and Sherlock’s eyes widened as he instinctively stepped back.
“Sherlock Holmes,” she exclaimed angrily, “don’t you ever, ever, ever do something like that to me again! It was cold and cruel and unfeeling, leaving me wondering for a year if you were alive or dead! Making me keep secrets from Greg and John, making me watch John suffer!”
Molly punctuated her wrath by balling her hands into fists and beating at Sherlock’s chest, and Sherlock winced involuntarily, trying to avoid the blows. John moved closer in alarm, but Sherlock gave him a quick look that both reassured him and warned him away. Sherlock managed to catch Molly’s hands and look into her face, and that was all it took for her to collapse.
“How could you?” she wept as Sherlock’s arms went around her. “How could you just leave me to wonder, and not know? To watch Greg grieving for you? Forcing Greg and me to watch John killing himself by inches, working himself to death because he was so empty without you? You are heartless, Sherlock Holmes, leaving me in the dark like that!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Molly,” Sherlock murmured, hugging Molly more tightly as she cried. “I could have told you I was alive one day and it might have been a lie the next, and I did not want to put you in any more danger. I’m sorry.”
“I am livid with you,” Molly sniffled, her voice cracking. “You don’t deserve forgiveness, you insufferable posh prat.”
John choked on a laugh before he could stop himself, and both Sherlock and Molly turned toward him at the noise. He shook his head, pressing a hand over his mouth to try and contain his mirth.
“I just - I never thought I’d see the day where you would call him names, Molly,” he said with a helpless giggle.
Sherlock looked over at John and then down at Molly, his eyes dancing. “He has a point.”
“Oh,” Molly huffed in frustration. “You two are impossible. Don’t you dare come into my morgue for at least two weeks, either of you. I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.” She gave another angry shove at Sherlock’s shoulder, trying to free herself from the circle of his arms, and he sobered again, catching her before she could get away.
“I am sorry, Molly, truly. I never would have succeeded in faking my death if it wasn’t for you, and I owe you more than I can ever repay,” he said earnestly. “You are - invaluable, Molly Hooper. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise, ever again.”
Before Molly could respond, Sherlock leaned in and gently kissed her cheek. She stared up at him with wide, still slightly damp eyes, and then buried her face in his shoulder again.
“I am so angry, but I’m so glad you’re alive,” she said, her muffled voice hitching with another small sob. She gave Sherlock a quick hug and then stepped back, raising her chin and staring at him defiantly.
“No coming to the morgue. I mean it. I don’t think John would let you anyway because you look terrible, but I don’t want to see your face. Don’t you dare. You stay home and get well and let me process this. And when you come back, we’ll be fine.”
Sherlock regarded her gravely, and John could see his mind working as he surveyed every nuance of Molly’s expression. It only took him perhaps fifteen seconds before he nodded. “Understood.”
Molly nodded back firmly, then looked to John. “John, would you walk me to the door?”
John was surprised by the request, but he couldn’t tell precisely why she had asked, so he simply acquiesced. “Sure,” he answered with a smile, and he followed Molly’s determined tread down the stairs, after throwing a quick, reassuring glance at Sherlock, who appeared slightly bewildered.
At the bottom of the stairs, Molly turned to John. “I’m happy for you both,” she said softly. “I want you to know that. I can - I can see it in the way you look at each other.”
John hugged her unabashedly, not caring at all anymore that she’d had a part in deceiving him. She had helped Sherlock, helped him live through something terrible, and that was all that mattered.
“Thank you, Molly,” John said earnestly. “For everything. I’m so grateful he had your help. I thought I might be angry - I was angry, the first time I saw him - but if he had to disappear in order to save my life, to save our lives, I’m glad he had you to help him.”
Tears slipped down Molly’s cheeks again. “He asked. He never asks anyone for help, and he asked. What else could I do? God, John, if you could have seen him when he left . . . he was torn apart over you, John. Please remember that. It - it devastated him to leave you, as much as it hurt you to lose him. He won’t say it, I don’t think, so I wanted to say it for him.”
John hugged her again, unexpectedly moved by her loyal determination. She had no idea it was unnecessary, and it meant the world to John that she cared enough to try and mend things between him and Sherlock. “Thank you. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
“Okay,” Molly agreed, giving him a shaky smile. She gave a little wave as she stepped down onto the sidewalk of Baker Street, and John smiled at her before closing the door and going back upstairs to Sherlock.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Half a dozen paces down the sidewalk, Molly pulled out her phone and texted Greg, swiping at the tears that were still on her face.
Have you seen him? Do you know?
Greg’s reply was almost instantaneous, as she had known it would be; if he knew about Sherlock, he would be waiting for her to contact him.
Saw him this morning. Bit overwhelmed, but so happy he’s alive. You?
Just left. I’m . . . mixed up. Dinner?
She could picture Greg’s worried face as he read her comment, the crinkle between his eyebrows that meant he was concerned, the slight downward turn of his mouth. She wished she could see him right this minute, but hopefully they could do the next best thing.
Sure. I can come to the morgue, as long as something doesn’t come up. Curry?
That would be lovely. :) 7:30?
I should be able to manage that. I’ll call when I’m on my way over.
Thanks. I love you.
Love you too, Molls. See you soon.
Molly smiled, her heart lightening just a little as she read Greg’s text. They had only recently declared their feelings for each other, one lovely night at Greg’s a little over two months ago, and seeing or hearing the words never failed to warm her.
Definitely the best thing to happen this year, she thought as she descended into the Baker St. tube station.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The afternoon dragged. Molly did her best to put aside her swirling emotions and simply work - she had a whole list of corpses that needed to be processed, some unidentified and some who were patients at the hospital before their deaths. She began with the unidentified ones - somehow, today, that was easier. Trying to identify a body always made her feel as though she was doing something good, possibly giving closure to a relative or a whole family. Occasionally, it didn’t turn out that way; some families were estranged from or indifferent to a person they hadn’t seen in years, but for the most part, knowing that their loved one was at peace meant something to whoever remained.
She didn’t get to the hospital patients until about two hours before Greg was supposed to be there, and after the first one, she couldn’t help but think that was a good thing. Every body was Sherlock’s; every cause of death was something that could have killed him, something that she had imagined in the 365 days of fearing he was dead. Bullet wounds, a wide array of illnesses, food poisoning, drowning - too many types of death to think about. Worrying that he would die alone in some horrible way - believing, eventually, that he had died without the presence of anyone he loved - had been almost unbearable, and inexplicably, it hurt even more now that he’d had the temerity to come back alive.
When the door of the morgue opened to admit Greg, carrying two bags of fragrant Indian food, Molly set down her instruments with a grateful sigh. As soon as he had safely set the food in her office, Molly went to him and nestled into his shoulder.
“Hey, love,” he said gently, holding her close and stroking her back. “That bad, eh?”
“That bad,” Molly affirmed, her voice shaking. “He’s alive, Greg. He’s alive, and he didn’t tell me, or you, or John. He let us believe he was dead, he left us grieving for him, and I’m so angry at him and so happy he’s back, all at once. I don’t know what to feel.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” Greg agreed. “But he did it for us, too, Molls. You can’t forget that. I can’t. I never would have thought he cared enough about me to do something so -”
“Dangerous?” Molly suggested sarcastically. “Foolish?”
“Selfless,” Greg corrected tenderly. “So selfless. I saw the file on what he did for an hour today, and I’ll never see it again because Mycroft has it in some secret government vault, but I can’t even begin to describe to you what he’s been through in the last year, Molly. He gave up absolutely everything in order to keep us alive, and I only hope that he and John can help each other heal.”
“Tell me,” Molly requested, her voice softening.
Greg kissed the top of her head, then looked down at her somberly. “I’ll only say this, because there are parts of that file that would give you nightmares, love. He killed people. He wore an incredible number of disguises. He lived on the streets and in apartments that should have been condemned, as well as in the occasional fancy hotel. He was hurt quite badly in a couple of fights, when he was trying to avoid being caught. He saw every single thing that sick psychopath of a crime lord had going in his empire, and I don’t know how he’s ever going to erase some of it from his Mind Palace.”
“Oh, God,” Molly murmured, squeezing her eyes shut and pulling Greg closer. She wanted to burrow under his skin just to feel safe again; she didn’t want to think about this. “And he’s - he’s not -”
“No, he’s not,” Greg agreed quietly. “He shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
He pulled back and gave Molly a soft kiss on the lips before reaching for the food bags. “Now you tell me,” he requested. “I understand that you’re angry because you didn’t know, because you spent a year thinking you had let him walk away and he died,” Greg continued, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. “But what else has you so tangled up?”
Molly sighed, taking a bite of her food and chewing it pensively. “It’s mostly that,” she acknowledged. “I just - I can’t stop thinking about that last day, when he left. I had to tell all of you he was dead, and I keep seeing John’s face, and Sherlock cried, Greg. He cried for John and he held my hand, and then he changed into someone else and left. And when I say changed - I knew he was good at disguises, but he was unrecognizable. I felt so - so scared, watching him go, and we’ve all been living with this emptiness for a year, thinking he was dead. I knew a little bit more than the rest of you, but not much. And so now that he’s back, I - I’m angry with him for inflicting that on us, even though I know why he did it. Even though I never could have been brave enough to do the same. It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Molly said in frustration, stabbing angrily at her curry.
“Well, first of all, I think you’re wrong about yourself,” Greg said warmly, and Molly looked up to see him smiling. “You are incredibly brave when it comes to people you care about. It took courage to do what you did for him. Second, I think being angry makes plenty of sense, even when you’re relieved. He’s alive, so that means he’s here and you can be angry with him. Before, you didn’t have that, and now you do. It doesn’t make you a bad person, love - if anything, I’d say being angry is a symptom of how relieved you are. I’d be angry, too, I think, except I’m so grateful he’s breathing and that he saved my life that I can’t find any anger.”
Greg’s sympathetic tone and his simple explanation soothed Molly’s nerves like a warm balm. She hadn’t entirely understood her own reaction this morning, and having Greg make sense of it in his practical way was immensely comforting.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I know how much you care for him, and how much it hurt you to lose him - I was angry on your behalf, too, I think. And John’s. But it helps to know that I’m not just finally cracking under it all. I am relieved - so much so I want to cry with it - did cry with it, when Sherlock or one of his network snuck in Mrs. Hudson’s scones this morning,” Molly finished with a trembling laugh.
Greg drew her into his arms again, resting his chin on her head. “You can cry all you want,” he said. “I’ll never tell.”
Molly laughed, but it was partly a sob, too, and she leaned in to kiss the hollow of Greg’s throat. “You are an amazing man, Greg Lestrade,” she told him, and then she simply let herself be held.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Molly walked slowly back into the morgue, tears still on her cheeks.
The look on John Watson’s face when she’d pronounced Sherlock dead was one she would remember until the end of her days.
She had left the detective himself sitting curled up on the gurney, looked dazed and still covered in the blood that wasn’t his own. She had wanted to examine him, because God only knew what he had done to himself in that plunge off the roof, but he had appeared able to move under his own power, at least. He had entreated her to pronounce his death as quickly as was reasonable. The charade had to be kept up; it had to be faultless in order for everyone to believe what had happened.
She focused on Sherlock as she neared him, and she noted with alarm that he was shaking rather severely. He looked at her, his eyes almost fearful as he struggled to control his uncooperative limbs.
“Molly - I can’t stop shaking. Why can’t I stop shaking?” he asked, and her heart cracked at the confusion on his face and the uncharacteristic repetition.
“It’s shock, Sherlock,” she said gently, moving swiftly to his side. “Real shock. You’ve never experienced it before?”
He shook his head, still struggling to overcome his body’s reaction to such a traumatic fall.
“Lie back. It’s all right,” Molly said reassuringly, pressing on his shoulder to get him to lie down. She pulled the heavy wool blanket from the bottom of the gurney and covered him with it as he rearranged his uncooperative limbs, finally managing to lie on his back. She took a second blanket and tucked it under his feet so that they were elevated.
“What hurts?” Molly prompted him, praying that it was something she could actually help with, and not something so serious that he should have extended medical attention. He was still shaking, but she wanted to give him something else to focus on; the shock would lessen with a little time.
“My left ankle. Right wrist. A cut or two, somewhere,” Sherlock responded vaguely, woodenly, and Molly’s worry went up another level when she noticed the glassiness in his eyes.
“No, no, no, Sherlock, stay with me. You have to stay with me, do you understand?” Molly said urgently, shaking his shoulder. “I’m not going to know what’s wrong with you if you pass out on me, and I can’t diagnose internal bleeds on the living. You have got to try your hardest to stay awake. I’m not John, and I don’t have his skills, do you hear me?”
She regretted mentioning John almost the moment the words left her lips, for Sherlock’s eyes became even emptier, though he seemed to be focusing inwards, not losing consciousness.
“John. God, John. What have I done?” he said hollowly. “He sounded so - I’ve never heard him sound like that, Molly. He wasn’t supposed to sound like that, he wasn’t - John never sounds like that,” he finished brokenly, and he squeezed his eyes shut, reaching blindly toward Molly. She saw the tears slide out from the corners of his eyes and had to swallow down her own as she grasped his hand.
“Ssh. It’s all right. John will be all right,” she tried to soothe him, stroking her free hand through his curls. How many times had she wanted to do that? - and now that she was, it was tearing her heart out for the wrongness of it, for she wasn’t really the person Sherlock needed or wanted. This had to be the way a mother felt when her child was experiencing pain that it was utterly beyond her power to fix. “John is a soldier; he has survived so much death. He will survive this, too. I promise, Sherlock. He will survive this, too.”
She continued to reassure Sherlock while he cried, silently, and his shivering subsided, and then she coaxed him through letting her take photographs and through bandaging up his sprained limbs and the bleeding scrapes on his arms and hands. By the time she finished patching him up, the shock had passed and he had regained his emotional and most of his physical control. She watched as he retrieved one of the bags that he had stashed in the morgue earlier, and as he became utterly unrecognizable under layers of clothing, makeup, and hair dye.
Just before he left, now a close-cropped blond with brown eyes who was wearing clothing that looked like it belonged to a college-aged skateboarder, he took her hands and gave them a quick squeeze. It was slightly awkward, but Molly could tell it was sincere.
“Thank you, Molly. For everything,” he said quietly. She could still see the pain in his eyes, but he was burying it with determination and analytical thinking.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. She pressed a small plastic bottle into his hand. “Take these. They’re painkillers - from my purse, not the hospital supply. You might need them for a few days. And don’t worry about John. We’ll all look after him, you know.” She couldn’t tell him the truth - that John might survive, but in seeking to save John Watson’s life, Sherlock may very well have broken the doctor’s heart.
Sherlock tucked the bottle into a pocket, and Molly leaned forward and hugged him hard, hoping that he would remember, somewhere in that massive brain, that no matter how far away he went, there were people who cared about him.
He hugged her back carefully, still rather awkwardly, then nodded and picked up his second bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He turned to amble out of the morgue, already slipping into his adopted persona, but as he placed his hand on the door, Molly called him back.
“Sherlock,” she said, and he turned his head.
“Be careful. Come home,” she told him, willing her voice not to break.
A long look, a firm nod, and he was gone.