It Is What It Is

- I’m not taking no for an answer – She said showing no signs of wanting to back down.

- Fine, come by if you want – John Watson replied too tired to argue after a few sleepless nights because the nightmares had come back and he knew fairly well he needed to do something about it but he didn’t feel like going to therapy, not any more, not now. PTSD is a bitch because like any other intrusive and paralyzing emotion, you are not able to control it at all times, to predict it, to see its ugly head rearing to head butt you and leave you confused.

Rosie was playing on the ground the wonderful game of building towers around herself with blocks and knocking them all over again so she can build them up again and again. John wonders if that’s not exactly what he has been doing all his life, building walls and making them collapse by external force. And yet life does not feel any easier inside the house, it doesn’t feel any less dangerous. The nightmares now have to do with his last containment in a well a few metres deep but enough to drown in if luck and caring hadn’t been on his side. Caring by others, people who cared, Mycroft, Sherlock, Lestrade... His makeshift family. John’s eyes trail to the pictures on the mantelpiece. He considered removing them for his sake, more than Rosie’s, but it wouldn’t make any difference, not really. What mattered is that he missed Mary immensely right now, after being so close to join her and leave Rosie with Molly and Sherlock as her godparents. Harry would not have been happy. After all, she has been coming more often up to London to help a bit.

- You need to get an au pair or something. - she had pressed – you have the space in the house.

- I’ve been managing – he had responded willing his sister to drop the conversation. She had. They knew their cues perfectly well at this stage. They used to fight fiercely on a regular basis, when they had something to fight about: her drinking problem, their mother, but now all was gone or so it seemed.

- How? With Molly? - she just asked. There wasn’t the usual tone of sisterly criticism in her words. She had briefly met the pathologist friend of Sherlock and John, but she did not need to discern that she was also tired. - You are all running yourselves to the ground.

- Maybe she was right. How many more years was he going to depend on Mrs Hudson’s babysitting, and Molly’s covering his ass? Even Sherlock had helped in all his awkwardness with small people. Harry had taken a few days to look after him after the nightmare of Eurus’s escape room had ended, but now she was back in Exeter in her own life, with her own people. She had offered to take Rosie for a weekend or two to give him a bit more time, not just to recover but also to go gallivanting with Sherlock and get over whatever it was he could get over with and move on. Harry was one of those people that after a car crash tell you to get behind the wheel immediately and that was her general approach to life. You fail, you get up and try again even if you fail again, which you will most likely do anyway.

- Momo. - Rosie’s voice distracted him from this train of thought as she pointed towards the big window looking out to the joke of a front garden their house had. Molly was waving. He jumped off the couch and went to open the door.

- I rang the bell – Molly said rubbing her feet on the matt to dry the rain off her green shoes.

- I was lost in thought...

- Don’t tell me you have a mind palace now...

- Maybe I do – he joked – you should get one.

- I’m afraid I’m too poor to get onto that kind of property ladder – she joked. He smiled weakly. - I brought bread and some vegetables to make us all a nice soup...

- Molly, you don’t

- Need to, I know. What else would I do on a Saturday?

- I don’t know, sleep? Chill? Watch a movie? Have a date even?

Molly laughed in a way that sounded too forced or too weird or both.

- I’m happy to spend the day with you guys, and you know it. - She said bringing the bags she was carrying towards his kitchen and opening the staff. Rosie at this stage had Bum shuffled her way to the kitchen and grabbed onto Molly’s leg who bent down to pick her up. - How are you, my lady? - Rosie’s response was a mixture of excited babbles and cuddles. She wouldn’t change this for the world.

John went over to the kettle.

- Let me at least make you some tea.

Molly took some wooden jigsaw out of a bag and sat Rosie on the high chair to make it while cooking. That way they slid into the silence that used to be comfortable between them. Molly had been babysitting Rosie for years and had become a constant presence in John’s life as one of the many people that helped him so this situation was not at all strange, or shouldn’t have been but their visit to Sherringford had definitely made everything strange, with the power that trauma has to spill over every day routines far away from the epicentre of the shock. The only sound in the kitchen was the expert thumps of Molly’s knife as she was chopping and peeling vegetables, slicing, moving from the countertop to the cooker.

- What have you been up to? - John finally asked with the simple purpose of making conversation to fill the air, and his mind of thoughts that had nothing to do with the last time he had seen Molly through a screen from the inside of that damned high security prison.

- Nothing much, really. Work has been quiet.

- I guess that’s a good thing.

- Only when you don’t need a distraction...

The last syllable in the word distraction dropped like the gong of a gong, like the ringing in the ears after a gunshot.

- Right – said John. - He hasn’t been around so.

- No.

- Silence.

- There might have been no cases.

- Sure.

- And Mycroft?

- No. He sent a team to my houses, to check if there were actually no explosives. They found all the cameras.

- That’s good.

She didn’t respond to that. Knowing for sure that someone had managed to get into her apartment without her noticing and install cameras to play a sick escape room game in which she was the main antagonist did not seem like something good for her. She had felt weird for the first few days and now she had started to manage to forget the cameras were ever there.

- it’s weird how quickly our minds rush to forget certain things...

- What do you mean? - John asks

- Well, the first few days I realized that my eyes kept darting towards the places where the cameras had been installed as if to check that they were actually gone... but now, only a few days later it’s like they were never there?

- Really?

She shrugs. She doesn’t know if she actually believes that or if she wants to believe she does to make everything easier. If she has managed to come back to normal about this, she may be capable of going back to normal with everything else. She puts the last vegetables on the put and grabs her cup of tea looking at John.

- How are you feeling? - she asks before he does.

- I’m okay.

- I don’t mean physically.

- I am not sleeping well.

- Do you want me to get you something from the hospital?

John shakes his head.

- It will pass. It always does.

- Until it comes back.

- I’m not going to get rid of it ever.

- What is your fear?

Trust Molly to cut through the crap brandishing a scalpel of a question.

- Rosie. I kept on thinking about her when I was down there. If something happened to me.

- We would take care of her. She would be okay.

- I know but... I feel selfish.

- Because you are actually itching to be back out on the streets with Sherlock?

- Yeah... I guess so.

- Mary didn’t think about that one when she jumped in front of that bullet.

That was uncharacteristically harsh for Molly, so John watched her with a half frown.

- I’m not blaming her – he said.

- I don’t blame her either. I’m just stating the facts. We are what we are.

- It is what it is. - he smiles, knowing that she’s resorting to his statement of facts, his back up, what he always offers when he doesn’t know what else to say.

- You have to trust that if you meet an untimely end, your daughter’s resilience and this makeshift family that we have sculpted together through thick and thin will hold her for you and see that she gets wherever those fast little strong legs will want to take her...

John softens at this.

-Thank you, Molly.

- Go to sleep, you look like shit. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.

He nods and obeys knowing that he has not strength to fight what he would rather do now, chat and get the oyster-shut seal that she has managed around her hard-core shell to crack open. He walks out of the kitchen but stops at the doorframe.

- Would you rather Sherlock was dead? - John asks. She must have moved on from her blunt question earlier because she looks at him like a deer in headlights. - Instead of Mary, I mean.

- I’d rather both were alive. - she says finally recovering.

Silence. John looks at her and Molly looks away afraid he’d continue this line of questioning that she has been trying to avoid since that phone call.

- But life goes on without either of them. - she adds just as he’s about to go upstairs again.

- We are all replaceable.

- If only...

- Molly...

- Don’t.

John nods. Molly sits down beside Rosie to help her build the jigsaw and the conversation is over. For now.

(sorry, it was a bit boring, but I'm building up the next parts. And I'm exhausted)