Molly Hooper's Best Worst Day

Chapter 2 - Slightly better...

Molly forgot about the tea and everything else as she sat on the cold kitchen floor and hid her face, her forehead resting on her knees as she hugged her legs close to the body.

It was only when she started feeling uncomfortable that she realised it had been over an hour since the call ended. So, she washed away her tears with the warm water from the shower before go to bed. Molly was exhausted in every way.

However, the sound of knocking on the door in the early hours of the morning interrupted her necessary and deserved rest.

It was him, Molly knew. She felt her heart squeeze at the thought of ignoring him and leaving the conversation for another time. However, her almost morbid curiosity to know what had led Sherlock to be so cruel to her was stronger than the desire to go back to sleep.

She wore a yellow dressing gown over her shorts and t-shirt pyjamas decorated with tiny flowers, and put on a pair of slippers. Then, she walked to the main entrance, hesitating twice along the way.

Molly slowly unlocked the door and opened it. She was then confronted with the male silhouette in an overcoat she was used to. However, she didn't expect the expression she saw on her friend's face.

Sherlock gave a shy smile at seeing his petite pathologist safe and sound, despite everything he had put her through. Her swollen face made it clear how much she had cried, and he felt even worse as he noticed it.

However, there was something new in his thoughts as he looked at Molly wrapped in her dressing gown with her loose hair falling over her shoulders. Even though he was so observant, Sherlock was troubled that he had never given her beauty the attention it deserved.

"Molly," he choked. "May I come in?"

She once again hesitated and thought about sending him back another time. But Sherlock's eyes were red in a way she'd only seen during his drug overdose episodes — even though she could not identify any signs that he had been using. It looked more like he had been crying.

"Come in, Sherlock," she replied, freeing the passage before closing the door.

The two of them stood in the middle of the room, facing each other. Molly had to look up to stare at him because of the height difference between them.

"Sit down." She pointed at the two-seater sofa next to them. "I imagine you need to tell me something."

"Yes," his tone was a mixture of urgency and relief, because Molly was willing to listen to him.

Sherlock took her friend's left hand and guided her to sit beside him and started talking.

No detail left out of the narrative that began at the small, explosive meeting in Baker Street where he learned about the existence of his younger sister, imprisoned for years in Sherrinford. The same place where he, Mycroft and John had gone through the experiments conducted by her, including the one that required calling Molly.

She listened to everything without interrupting and felt a tightness in her chest when tears appeared a few times in Sherlock's eyes. He, however, did not surrender to crying and wiped them away before they fell, continuing to pass on the information as if his life depended on it.

When he finished, he left a very shocked Molly on the couch and went off in search of the surveillance cameras. There were three in all and they were in the palm of his hand when he sat down next to her again.

"Since when are they here?" she asked, touching the small devices with her fingertips.

"I honestly don't know," he lamented, tucking the cameras into his overcoat pocket. "And we can search the rest of the house, but I don't think we'll find anything else."