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“So, that’s it then. There’s nothing else you can do.”
“Stating the obvious isn’t going to speed the process along, Molly.”
Sherlock sat on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. Molly was above him in the chair she’d rolled in from her office; there was a first time for everything, she supposed. She attempted to pull her jumper even tighter against her shoulders. For the past ten minutes of their conversation, she’d been fighting back shivers down her spine. The fact that Sherlock trusted her was enough to take in already, she didn’t know how much more she could comprehend. His plan was so incredibly sick and twisted that it just might work. But the thought of what he wanted to do.. It was mad.
“You don’t agree.” She looked up to see his ice blue eyes boring into her.
“Could you at least give me five minutes to process this?”
He sighed, closing his eyes and steepling his hands against his mouth. “Fine.”
In reality, it was flawless. Bring Moriarty to the top of St. Bart’s to play out the final phase of his “game.” It all depended on Sherlock making him believe that he’d won, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He could trick a man into thinking he was a circus performer, if he really wanted to. But he had to do everything in his power to make it convincing.
“Do you have the rubber-“
He pulled a small rubber ball from his pocket, holding it up for her to see. “Yes, yes, under the arm to hide the pulse. We’ve been over all of this already.”
“Just checking.”
Molly looked at him, really looked at him. She’d known Sherlock for years, and from the very moment he’d stepped into her lab, she knew there was something strange about him. The first time wasn’t necessarily the best, though. It didn’t take a scientist to figure out he was high, but on what, she had no clue at the time. He burst through the double doors, doped up on dangerous levels of narcotics, and attempted to experiment with the white blood cells from a sample he took from his own arm. He was frightening, but even in his state she could tell he was brilliant. She could never really bring herself to ask him to leave. He’d even talk sometimes, though she imagined more to himself then to her. Bringing him crisps and coffee seemed like the only way to get any sort of reaction out of him, and even then, it was only a grunt of acknowledgement.
But at one point, it got to be too extreme. She had fainted afterwards, so she didn’t remember much. All she knew was that an experiment hadn’t gone right, and some results didn’t match up. She walked in on him throwing beakers at the wall, destroying lab equipment in a rage. After that, his behavior changed completely. He wasn’t exactly normal, but she could tell he’d come off the drugs. Something about his brother, she’d heard him muttering. Not the most pleasant bloke to be around, but it was quite nice having the company. She even had to admit, he was easy on the eyes, but he never returned her feelings. Quite the opposite really, but she grew used to his cold demeanor after a while.
There was one thing she did notice about him; he never smiled. He never played around, or laughed. She even looked up a few choice knock-knock jokes and didn’t get a chuckle. It was sad, really, but as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t make him happy. It was like being on the drugs had completely stripped away every bit of human he’d had. But then one day, Mike Stamford came to visit, and he brought a man with him. No one knew who he was, or where he’d come from, but Sherlock did. Back then, it was like the whole world had tilted on its axis. He grew a heart that day, but now it was like it was disintegrating in front of her eyes.
“Sherlock..”
“It needs to be genuine or it won’t be believable.”
“But he’s going to think you’re-”
“Exactly.”
She’d been mad at him before, but never had Molly wanted to punch him in the face more than at that moment. How could he do this to John? In just a short time, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had become a single unit. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but living together and solving crimes had created a bond between them. One could not exist without the other, the head and the heart. And then it dawned on her. This wasn’t about winning the game, or besting Moriarty. She looked at him, and emotion flashed across his face. It was a deep sort of sadness. He knew exactly what was coming, and John wouldn’t be the only one hurting. For once, she knew how he was feeling.
Molly got up from the chair, grabbing her bag and making her way to the exit. The rest was up to him. Before passing him by, she placed her other hand on top of Sherlock’s messy curls. She imagined he’d bat it away, or make some snide comment that it “wasn’t the time to recreate one of her bedtime fantasies.” Instead, he closed his eyes again, and released a long, steady breath.
“Don’t make him wait too long.”