Disclaimer: This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta-read so all mistakes are mine. Happy Halloween!
~ ECHOES ~
The signs are all there- If you know what to look for.
Mysterious drafts. Things moving unexpectedly. Molly puts a bone-saw down on one table, only to turn around and find it moved to another, in a completely different position and (more than once) so cold to the touch that it burns. She sets out her tools for an autopsy and nips out to the loo, only to come back and find everything put away and nobody in the Morgue willing to own up to doing it.
It starts the week before October 31st every year, though there's little evidence the pathologist has noticed the pattern- Yet.
And there is a pattern: There are scratchings in the walls, late at night. Flickering lights and unexpected noises. St. Bart's is an ancient place and old buildings have their quirks, which is why people tend to disregard the odd things that happen in them. The cold. The damp. The ever-increasing sense of… discomfort which envelopes the place in the run up to Hallowe'en. Even Molly shrugs it off, laughingly pointing out that she works so many hours that she's not surprised she's hearing things-
But Mary knows.
Mary recognises the signs.
It's impossible for her to have grown up when and as she did, and not recognise the signs- Just as it's impossible for her to have grown up when and as she did and not feel like she has to do something about them.
She left that life behind, true, but she's not willing to endanger her friends by staying silent about this. Not if she can help them.
A Night Witch never truly retires, everyone knows that.
So she makes excuses to visit the Morgue, chats with everyone she can find about the building's history. She treats it as a lark, funny, scary things to tell John and put the wind up him when he's home from a case with Sherlock. And because everyone knows she's charming, harmless Mary Watson they tell her their stories. Whisper conspiratorially over coffee about the suicides in the fifties, the bomb fatalities in World War II. The nurse murdered by an intern all the way back in 1963. Stamford shares a joking recollection of the bodies from one of the Kray Twins' gangland feuds being brought to Bart's by the Met, how one of them had had his face cut clean off. How another was missing its hands.
What a mess that was, he tells her.
But while there are tales of anger and painful death aplenty, of hurt done and horror realised, Mary can find no root cause for what's going on. She can find no spirit strong enough to be causing these latest disturbances- At least, none which wouldn't have made its presence patently obvious in the intervening years since its death, and these disturbances are new, she's certain of it.
Though she looks and looks, the Patient Zero in her endeavour remains irritatingly aloof.
And then, one evening, Sherlock comes into the morgue while she's there and everything changes.
She feels it the moment he walks through the door. The shift in atmosphere. The drop in temperature. It feels as if the room itself were holding its breath. Holmes nods to Molly, earning a cheery "Hello!" from her place over Mr. Kwame Undiwe's open chest cavity before she goes back to work. He walks over to his usual microscope and starts setting up his slides, continuing an experiment, from what Mary can see, which he started several days ago.
But though he and Molly look away from one another, there's a charge in the room now. An energy. An expectancy. Mary leans forward, tries to analyse it, but there's a reason the call magic an art rather than a science: It's more about instinct than anything else. Even an operative of Mary's high calibre can't explain precisely what she's feeling, she only knows she's feeling it-
And then she sees it.
And by it, of course she means him.
For something as run-of-the-mill as a ghost, he seems rather… extraordinary, to her eyes.
As she watches, a dark shape begins to form beside Sherlock. It seems to be sucked from every minor and major shadow in the room, an inky blot of darkness in the shape of a man. Pale skin and scalding, angry brown eyes burn in a bone-white face; threads of black, dripping gore twist and twine away from a gaping wound at the back of his half-there skull, drops of blood running down his hands and spattering against the white of the floor-tiles, only to disappear back into the ether from whence they came The thing is wearing an expensive suit and a white shirt, shoes of impeccably high quality. He's looking carefully over Sherlock's shoulder, watching him work and as he gets nearer Mary sees the detective's eyes slide, quite unwillingly, over to where Molly is bopping cheerfully away, closing up her patient's Y incision-
He smiles and the thing's hand slashes out, darting through Sherlock's chest to slap at his samples before pulling back, its clawed hand exiting his body a moment later.
The detective hisses in pain, even as five of the samples bounce out of their holders and tumble to the floor; The noise is enough to attract Molly's attention and she looks up. Rises and comes towards Sherlock as she sees him double over in pain.
The ghost is grinning gleefully now.
"Sherlock..?" she asks, her voice uncertain, and as she does Mary stands. Makes her way to her friends' side.
She keeps her eyes trained on the ghost the entire time but he doesn't seem to have noticed her yet.
"Sherlock..?" Molly repeats. "Are you- Can I?"
And she reaches out, makes to touch the detective.
As her hand makes contact with his flesh the ghost hisses in annoyance and moves away, stalking over to glare petulantly at them from the corner of the room.
As he does so the temperature rises slightly, the atmosphere in the room easing somewhat.
The fallen slides however rattle slightly against the floor and one of them cracks.
If Sherlock notices though, he gives no indication. He's rubbing his chest, shoulders hunched. Head bent. His face has gone paler than usual. She's been around him long enough to know when he's genuinely hurt and to Mary, that's exactly what this looks like. He's hurt.
He's just trying not to let it show in front of Molly.
"Why don't you bring Sherlock to get a coffee, Mols?" Mary suggests quietly. "I'll stay here and wait for you- And I promise I won't touch anything-" She nods to the samples. "Well, aside from cleaning up the mess."
And she gives the young pathologist her best smile, the one which neither her husband nor Sherlock has trusted for yonks now.
It has the desired effect, however, of making both Sherlock and Molly grin.
"What do you say, Sherlock?" Molly asks quietly. "Do you want to take a break?" She ducks her head shyly. "I know I'd like to-"
"Well, if you want to." Holmes answers her so fast he almost speaks over her. At the realisation they both give a nervous little laugh and Sherlock gets to his feet, one palm still rubbing his chest absentmindedly.
When Molly smiles at him, he returns it, however.
The two wind their way out of the room, Sherlock making a show of opening the morgue door to Molly and as soon as they're out of sight Mary squares her shoulders. Reaches into her pocket for her tools of her trade and walks straight over to the ghost.
Best to start as one means to go on.
"Right, short-arse," she announces, glowering right at him. "You and me are going to have ourselves a little chat- And then you're going to bugger back off to wherever you came from."
The creature looks at her and the little git actually has the temerity to smile.