Disclaimer: Still own nothing.
Summary: Molly Hooper is the harbinger of everyone's death but her own.
Warnings: Mentions of sex (nothing explicit though), mentions of attempted suicide, cursing and angst. Like a whole lot of angst.
Author's note: So….it's been a while and I'm so sorry! This is my humble. A little while ago, I posted a call for prompts on my tumblr and I'm slowly but surely making my way through them (like really really slowly) and Mollymatters gave the prompt, "Molly is an immortal, always running. But she's been alive for longer than she can remember, and can't figure out why she's running. She just knows she's running and, if she doesn't stop, something terrible is going to happen. Sherlock is the first person who makes her stop, and that brings all sorts of dilemmas and ramifications into Molly's life." And well…this is the answer to it. It's probably not what you asked for and I took some creative liberties with like, a hell of a lot buuuut…I'm hoping it still turned out okay! Title is taken from T.S. Eliot's Portrait of a Lady. Reviews are greatly appreciated and any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Anything in bulk italics is a flashback. Hopefully it's easy to follow! Needless to say, Mollymatters, this one is for you.
Oh…and I'm sorry to all of you in advance.
Our beginnings never know our ends
One-shot
"How old are you?" He asks her once, years after they first meet.
He's studying her, eyes a color she's never seen before, a mix of blue and green and all intensity, it almost makes her stagger back, a ball of something caught in the back of her throat and a tight fist clenched around her chest.
(He's younger, this version of him, and already so jaded. She can see it. She can see his loneliness and she can see his despair that he never lets himself feel in his mixed blue and green eyes. He's younger and Molly is the same as she always is.)
She turns her head to face him, just a little bit, just enough so she can study his profile and she gives him a small smile, barely an upturn of her lips. She thinks it's a little bit haunted and a lot of exhausted. "You're asking the wrong question, Sherlock."
Mike Stamford walks into the morgue then, waving hello at them and Molly flits away, stripping off her gloves and lab coat, listening to the soles of her shoes clack against the floor.
(This is her running away.)
She drinks water from a small well at the base of a large, old tree in the middle of the forest with the sun beating on her head and shoulders, drenching her body in sweat and burning her nostrils as she tries to breathe in.
She stumbles across it, this small well at the base of a large, old tree. She doesn't see it at first, it being shrouded and hidden by rocks and branches and it's not until she all but collapses to the ground, ear pressed to the grass that she hears it, the swoosh and woosh of water. She crawls on the ground, ear still pressed to it and follows the sound until she reaches the base of the large, old tree and she tears apart the branches and lifts the rocks that are too big for her but she can't help it, she's thirsty and she's going to die and she doesn't want to die.
I don't want to die, she thinks desperately as the clear liquid comes into view and she cups it in her hands and drinks and drinks and drinks until she is sated. I don't want to die, not alone, not here, she thinks again, as she leans against the trunk of the large, old tree, allowing its larger than life branches to give her the shade she so desires and she closes her eyes in this place, drifting off into a peaceful rest.
(She thinks back to this particular moment often and wishes she could take it all back.)
He's looking at her again. She can feel his stare on her back as she cuts through the body on her table. She used to be able to ignore him, this man who would come in and stare at her, dissecting her like she dissects her corpses. She concentrates on her task, speaking into the recorder with clarity. She's done this a thousand and one times before him and she'll continue to do this a thousand and one times after him. Molly has been around long enough to know how not to get distracted.
But there's something about him, something about the man who stares at her so intensely. She catches his gaze sometimes when she looks up and sees him in the reflection of the glass cabinets. He does nothing but give her a slight nod, almost unnoticeable to anyone but her.
She asks Mike Stamford about him one day.
Mike frowns and then recognition dawns on his face. "I didn't warn you? That's just Sherlock. You'll get used to him." He puts a hand on her shoulder and it's almost fatherly and it makes her chest ache something fierce. "Don't let him scare you off. He's harmless."
(Molly Hooper comes to figure out that Sherlock Holmes is anything but harmless.)
She's closing up the corpse on her table, lifting the linen to cover his face when she feels his presence in the morgue. "Can I help you with something, Mr. Holmes?" She asks him without turning around.
He doesn't say anything and instead she can feel him shuffle closer to her and the body that lies covered in front of her.
His eyes are on her (his eyes are always on her) and he's examining her like she examines the bodies that make their way onto her table, dissecting her life, her story, the hole she made out of her heart and called it humanity (but he'll never know the truth will he? And this, this she knows frustrates him to no end.) "Who are you?" He's pressed against her, closer than she would normally allow and closer than she thinks he's ever been to another human being out of choice.
"You're asking the wrong question, Sherlock."
He snaps out of whatever trance he was in and orders spare body parts.
And just like that, a routine is born.
(She gives him the body parts because Mike told her to with a roll of his eyes and then she leaves.
It's running away. She knows it is.)
He looks at her like she's a sort of enigma. Like she's some sort of miracle, or kindred spirit. He assesses her, walking around her in circles until she gets dizzy. "You have no idea do you?" His voice is soft, almost gleeful, a grin spreading across his face that makes her heart plummet to her stomach in dread.
"I don't understand." Her voice is just as low, treading soft ground with this strange man with the manic grin.
"You're starting to notice it, aren't you?" He leans in closer, nose stroking the side of her face, one of his hands coming to cradle the back of her head, hand bunching her hair and burying his face in her neck.
Her lips tremble and her body shakes but she's frozen in place, unable to push this man away. She doesn't say anything but she doesn't have to, not really, she already knows what he's talking about. She already knows from the whispers in the village and the way off-handed comments have started to turn into accusations.
"Everyone gets older, everyone succumbs to illness and fever and you…you don't. You've stayed the same since you drank the water." His voice is low against her ear and she shivers against the huffs and puffs of his breath. "Isn't it grand, Molly?" She starts at her name, wildly wondering how he knows it, how he knows her. She goes to move but he holds on to her tighter. "Come with me." There is a nip to her ear and her eyes flit upwards, watching as clouds move idly, unaware of the turmoil going on below. "Be with me. Walk this world a thousand times over with me."
He's lonely, she thinks and there is something that slams into her chest, something that almost cripples her with the thought that this, this could be her. This loneliness that overwhelms her so much that she resorts to circling someone like a vulture could be her and she knows, without a shadow of a doubt that if she went with him, if she joined him in whatever supposed superior immortality reign he thinks they have, she'll become just like him and nothing (nothing) scares her more than the erratic look in his eyes.
Molly didn't ask for this. Molly never asked for this. She never knew what she was getting herself into until it's too late and she's caught between being alone for the rest of eternity and joining a crazed power-hungry man for the rest of it. His sadism comes off of him in waves and she wonders, if she asks how drenched and steeped in blood his hands are, if he'll grant her the truth.
"No." She says hoarsely, ashamed at how her voice breaks. She twists away from him, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she stares at this man with dark hair and even darker eyes. Her breath catches and her chest shudders when she sees him narrow his eyes at her, roving her as if she's nothing more than a disappointment (and maybe she is.)
"And here I thought you would be the one to save me." He says this laughingly, almost teasingly but there is an undercurrent of something darker that makes her stop short.
"You don't want to be saved." She tells him, studying him the way he studied her.
His eyes light up and he laughs, though it's more of a cackle, like thunder slapping against the sky. She can feel it echoing in air between them and the hairs on her body stand on end. "You're right." He says and the remnants of his laugh slithers off his face. "I don't want to be saved."
(This time, when Molly turns and run, she doesn't look back.
Evil has its own personification and it takes her years to stop looking over her shoulders.)
It's the loud thumping against her door that wakes her up. She frowns as she glances at her clock and then at the darkened sky, the moon hidden from view. She can hear the pitter-patter of rain against her window and she stays still trying to shake off the grogginess of sleep. It's only when the thumping starts again, this time louder, more insistent, echoing through her flat that she gets out of bed, flinching as her bare feet hit the hardwood floor.
She makes her way to the door and peeks into the peephole, almost rearing backwards when a blown-wide pupil rimmed with blue-green color is pressed against the other side. She unlatches the locks quickly and no sooner does she open the door, his body tumbles into hers. Her arms wrap around him, the wool of his coat soaked with rain and she can feel the wetness seep into her pajamas. "Sherlock?" Her voice breaks, fear lining her veins immediately as she tilts his head and sees how large his pupils have become and the thought of drugs fly across her mind and she bites her bottom lip hard. "What happened to you?"
He mumbles something, burrowing his head into her shoulder but she can't hear him over the thundering sound of her heart in her ears. She hoists him closer to her, an arm around his waist and the other gripping tightly to him, ensuring he doesn't fall (he can't fall, she won't let him, doesn't think she could let him fall) and shuts the door with her foot, dragging him over to the couch and depositing him on it as gently as possible.
She shrugs off his wet coat and unbuttons his shirt, snipping away his undershirt and she promises to buy him a hundred more shirts and undershirts if she never has to see him like this again. She lets out a shaky breath, hands trembling when she sees his body and face in the dim light of the sitting room. His face and body is a Picasso paining of blue, yellow and green bruises and between the kaleidoscope of colors molting his skin, there is red, dried and fresh blood from his wounds.
She leaves him to get her first aid kit, water and cloths and she makes her way back to him. His eyes are closed and she stays in her spot, riveted, a certain fear washing over her, watching his body and relief floods her when his chest moves up and down in tune with his heartbeat.
She works as efficiently as possible, cleaning and bandaging his wounds, watching warily for his comedown that she knows is coming and coming soon.
She feels him take in a shuddering breath. "Molly." He murmurs, his eyes half-lidded as he looks at her. "Molly."
She moves to sit on her knees. "Hi." She says, her voice barely above a whisper.
He gives her a dazed smile and she feels her heart clench in her chest. "Seven years."
She frowns. "What?"
"You leave every seven years. You move and create a new life for yourself."
She feels her blood grow cold and remembers the times she's talked to him (at him) and when she's talked to her other colleagues, talking carefully about the places she's been and she's mapped her years before them, never believing that she would be questioned on it and she's right, no one ever does.
Except for Sherlock. Of course, it would be Sherlock.
"Seven years to the day." He mumbles, shifting against her couch. "I met you and you're going to leave soon."
He's right in that she does leave every seven years, packing up and leaving those she's come to love behind to pick up the pieces of her abandonment. It occurs to her that she hasn't given it as much thought since Sherlock came into her life and she doesn't want to think too much into what that actually means.
"Sherlock, what happened?" She tries to change the subject.
He groans. "Drugs. It makes everything go away and people don't like the truth."
She gives a small huff of a laugh, imagining Sherlock swaying in his place, insulting someone twice his size and tearing apart their insecurities until he gets punched in the face and then she frowns because she doesn't have to imagine it. He's here and bruised and broken and her heart hurts. "You don't like people." She reminds him.
"I like you." He admits, peeking at her through his one good eye.
She can feel her cheeks heat up and she shakes her head. "Your comedown is going to be awful." She tells him.
"It always is." He replies.
And in that moment, she can see him alone and high, taking care of himself and never letting anyone close. She bites her lip because for as long as she's been alive, as long as she's been cursed with this immortality that she can't shake, she thinks that this man is lonelier than she's ever been.
"I'm here now." She says, her voice thick.
(Later on, when he's in her bathroom, his body shivering violently and bile in his throat, she's still there with him. Even as he leans against the porcelain of her bathtub, sweat gleaning across his body. His head lolls to the side as he studies her. "Are you an angel?"
She lets out a bark of laughter and then quiets down because it's still early, even though she knows the sun is starting to rise. It's a game between them, his asking and her never telling, waiting for the question that no one seems to ask her but she always asks them. "Wrong question, Sherlock."
He mumbles something incoherently and he drifts off, body coming down slowly but surely. She grabs his hand and grips it tightly, almost afraid to let him go.)
There are three succinct knocks on her door almost an hour later and she leaves Sherlock to answer it.
A man with an umbrella stands before her and a young woman with black hair stands next to him. The man looks at her, studying her with distant eyes. "Doctor Hooper." He says, walking into her flat without an invitation, not that he needs one. She knows who he is. Of course she knows who he is. "Thank you for seeing to my brother. He always seems to find himself into some sort of trouble." He snaps his fingers and two more men come into her flat and straight for her bathroom, returning a few short moments later, with Sherlock propped between them.
"Molly." He mumbles. "Molly."
"He's fine." She tries to tell them. "He's coming down, it's not…he's not bothering me."
"I'll be admitting my brother into rehabilitation." He informs her.
"Can I see him?" It's a moment of weakness, maybe a moment of strength but there is an eruption in her chest, fear at the thought of losing him, even for a little bit, grasping at her fraying ends (and how many people has she left behind? How many people has she watched die? How many times has she run only to never look back? And now here she is, desperate to hold on to someone who made a home in her veins.) She can't leave him, doesn't want to leave him but she doesn't think she can stay without seeing him.
Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, Molly remembers, his name is Mycroft, is looking at her again and Molly realizes that he never stopped looking at her, never stopped studying her and he's just like his brother this way, studiously tearing everyone and everything apart until they're broken and heaving and desperate for them (all this desperation makes her dizzy.)
"I'm afraid," he says, his voice slow and steady, eyes never leaving hers, "that wouldn't be wise. It would be counterproductive to his recovery, you see."
She watches as the two men carry him out and she wants to call out to him, wants to tell him to come back, don't leave, please don't leave and she wants to laugh at the poetic injustice of it all because it's always her that does the leaving and this time all she wants is to rewind the clock, rewind the hours that work against her (never for her, never in favor of her) and just be with him. By the time she opens her mouth, he's gone and she's left in the middle of her flat with Mycroft Holmes and the unnamed young woman.
She's unnerved with the way Mycroft stares at her and she supposes it's a Holmes trait. "Do you need anything else?" She snaps at him, unable to hide her fury and unable to reel her rapidly beating heart.
He's quiet for a moment, looking at the young woman and nodding, watching as she walks out of Molly's flat before he turns back to her. "Wrong question, Doctor Hooper." Then he leaves, politely shutting the door behind him.
Her breath is uneven and everything turns into a hollow hum until she turns around and lets her feet guide her to her bedroom and into the closet where she takes out her traveling bags and begins to shovel clothes and toiletries in it. She leaves a message for Mike, telling him that she's seeing to a sick relative and then she books a ticket to the first place that will take her away from here and away from the mess she's made of her life.
(She's running away but it's only for a short little while.
This she inevitably knows.)
She sometimes makes her way back to the places she left in the dead of the night to visit the people she left behind. She walks along familiar roads and by familiar landmarks where she made her home over and over again until all homes have blended together.
But she never forgets the people. She'll visit them on their deathbeds and they look at her with light in their eyes and disbelief coating their voices. "Molly? Is that you? Why, you haven't aged a day!"
She'll always make her way around their bed, holding their hands and asking forgiveness for leaving so suddenly. "Are you happy?" They'll sometimes ask her and she doesn't know if they believe her to be some sort of heavenly apparition, coming to take them away or if they take the facts at face value and recognize that she indeed, hasn't aged a day since she last saw them.
She'll lie and tell them that she is happy, as happy as she can possibly be and they'll smile so hard that it's blinding and Molly's there with trembling lips as they breathe in their last breaths.
(She is the harbinger of everyone's death except her own.)
He looks healthier the next time she sees him and he takes in her tanned skin.
All she can remember is the last day she saw him, body bruised and eyes dilated from drugs, being carried out of her flat by two unknown men and her name, a whisper across his lips. She remembers the way he made her feel and she thinks that with time and space, those feelings would have gone away. They haven't.
He remarks on obscene things, mostly about the corpse in front of them and sometimes about her but she lets it wash over her because he's here and he's healthy and her heart is beating so bloody fast that it makes her head spin.
She thinks he's forgotten about that night, the night she let him into her home and into her heart and she's getting ready for the shift change and he's just getting comfortable on the stool that she will always designate as his when she reaches the door, just as his voice reaches her. "Why did you come back?" He's generally confused and it would be amusingly cute if it didn't feel like a stab in the chest.
She gives him a soft smile (the kind she finds is reserved only for him) and replies, "wrong question, Sherlock."
(And then she turns and walks away.
Walks, doesn't run.)
The first time she falls in love, it's with a sheep farmer. His name is Frank and he makes her heart skip a beat with his brown eyes and twinkling smile.
There is nothing extraordinary in their courtship, they both adhere to the rules of society and when he finally proposes, she accepts with a bright smile because she's been alone for so long and if, for one moment she can not be alone, than she thinks this will all be worth it.
They marry in a small ceremony, his family and friends in attendance on his side and a few friends on her side.
Their marriage is a happy one, full of laughter and farms and the smell of hay. There is something so familiar and something so tender in the way she lies next to him every night and wakes up with him every morning.
But then life seems to catch up to her and Frank falls ill and she's left tending to their sheep as he slowly withers away and she's desperate to keep him alive so she scours the woods outside of their home and outside of their town and towns farther and farther away for the tree with the well at the base because she can't, she won't lose him.
(Because she's happy damn-it, why can't she just be happy?)
She doesn't find it, the tree with the well at the base and so she makes her way back to their house with a heavy heart and when it starts to rain, thunder cracking against the sky and lightening illuminating it with ominous colors, Molly picks up her skirts and runs and runs and runs towards their house. (This time she's running towards something and she's begging and pleading for just a little while longer with him, that's all, just more time and isn't it funny? That she's begging for more time for her husband when she has all the time in the world?)
She bursts into the house, the air stale with the stench of death and she collapses against his bedside, clothes dripping water and uncaring at the scathing looks his family gives her.
He's pale-faced and limp. Dead.
Molly doesn't wail and she doesn't curse, instead she accepts the inevitable because it was always meant to happen, that he dies while she lives, but she does cry because she did love him and her heart is breaking.
They attempt to move him but she lashes out at them, clawing everyone who tries to get to him.
"Just give me this one night." She says, "please. I beg of you. Just this one night." Just some more time. That's all.
They leave and she is left alone with his corpse.
"I'm sorry." She whispers brokenly, her voice hoarse from crying. "I'm sorry. I tried…I thought…if I could get to that thrice damned fucking tree, you could be with me, forever. We could have been together forever. Wouldn't you have liked that?"
But then she thinks about Frank. God-fearing Frank and knows that he wouldn't have liked that. Wouldn't have liked it at all. He would have called it a sin and would have called her an abomination. And it would have torn her apart. "Oh." She sobs. "Oh."
And this is what she is left with. This is what she will always be left with, a trail of dead bodies who don't know and likely will never understand the curse she carries.
She packs the important things of hers in a small makeshift bag and hefts it over her shoulder, taking one last look at her dead husband, working her wedding ring off her finger and putting into the palm of his left hand, closing his fingers around it. She presses a kiss to his forehead. "I'm sorry." She tells him softly. "I'm so sorry."
(And like a thief, she runs away in the night.)
There is a shift in the air. Something is coming.
Molly has been around long enough to know when change is coming and this makes the hairs on her body stand on edge. She watches Sherlock who in turn pretends that he doesn't watch her.
"What?" He asks and that's it. Just what, so unlike all of his other questions.
She shakes her head, "nothing." She responds and it takes both of them off guard.
(This is not their routine, this is not what they do and something wants to claw its way out of Molly's skin.)
She rips off her gloves and scurries out of the morgue and into the hallway, the bright fluorescent lights almost blinding her but she walks along linoleum flooring until she reaches the back of the hospital, gasping for air she didn't know she needed.
(She thinks it's time she started thinking of running away again.)
She sees him in the shadows when she escapes from town to town, from city to city, from country to country. He's there, watching her, with his dark hair and even darker eyes.
He doesn't say anything to her, doesn't approach her and she's thankful for it, unsure of what her reaction would be if he approached with the same ultimatum falling from his lips.
She is adamant in not becoming like him because whenever she feels her resolve weakening, whenever she leaves only to never come back and start all over again in a place where no one knows her, the loneliness is all consuming and she thinks how it would be so nice to have a companion to commiserate with.
(But he wouldn't commiserate, he would bring the misery and Molly has enough of that to go around and that's enough to make her start running all over again.)
"Do you forgive me?"
She jumps at his voice, head whipping around as she sees him leaning against the back of the hospital, cigarette dangling from his mouth. His fingers are trembling but his wool coat is keeping him warm, she assumes. She's out here in her white lab coat; (the stark comparison of their colors is not lost on her.)
She should have grabbed her coat (and her hat and her mittens and maybe even her scarf while she's listing off everything she didn't bring, just knowing that she needed to escape) but her heart is shattering inside her chest, shards of it piercing her soul, making her weak in the knees, tears stinging her eyes. She hasn't felt like this in centuries and she doesn't even think she felt like this with Frank because there's something about the man with blue-green eyes recognizing the woman-by-not-her-face that makes her break.
(She has lived for years and years and years but never really lived at all.)
When they were in the morgue, she resolutely didn't look at his brother who couldn't take his eyes off the train wreck that has become their lives. Instead, she watches them leave and pretends not to feel the sting of Sherlock's lips pressing on her cheek, his apology fumbling from his mouth as if it pained him to say it.
(But she lives with the memory like she lives with her never-ending life, in misery.)
She studies him, taking apart the way he looks and the way he's standing, as if all the energy has been sucked out of him. He looks miserable, she thinks. He looks alone. And he's also still waiting for her answer. She shrugs, feeling the December chill in her bones. "Wrong question, Sherlock."
There is a tug of his lips in what resembles a small smile and she turns away, running back to the safety of her morgue and the dead woman she'll never know.
"There is something strange about you." The woman talks with a heavy accent and Molly has to strain to hear and understand.
She continues walking, trying to ignore the older woman with wrinkled skin and dark kohl lining her eyes. She's a stunningly beautiful woman and Molly is envious of her exoticness and the strength she personifies. "I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean."
The woman steps in front of her easily and Molly almost tumbles over her in her haste to leave. The older woman is taller than her and looks down at Molly, her bracelets making jingling sounds when she moves. In the distance, Molly can hear the chiming of bells and it's funny that everything is ticking down to something and she's always so fucking constant.
(Molly finds that she's getting bitter in her old age, if she can even call it that anymore.)
"You have seen things." The woman says softly, voice lowering until Molly unconsciously takes a step closer to her just to feel the presence of another human being. The woman lifts her hand and cradles Molly's cheek. "You have been alone for so long. You hurt."
Molly sucks in a breath and doesn't say anything, eyes widening and wondering if it will get better. Will this get better? Will anything get better?
The woman gives her a sad smile and Molly's heart plummets to her stomach. "Some of us bear the weight of the world on our shoulders and no one knows. My child, your suffering has only begun."
"When will it end?" Molly asks, voice almost pleading.
The woman shakes her head and Molly knows the answer before she even says it. "It won't so you will keep on running."
(And so, Molly runs and runs and runs.)
He comes to see her in the morgue and she hates that he's infiltrated her place of sanctuary, hates that he's here tainting everything. "We could have been great, you know." He says as he waltzes in, like they're long lost friends who have just met up for tea over a corpse. "We still could be."
She looks up at him and her fists clench around the metal slab. He still looks manic, still looks unhinge and still has the stench of death, murder and mayhem following him around. "Get out."
He doesn't. Instead, he wanders around the morgue, around her morgue, as if he has a right to be here. With a smirk, he goes over to the stool that she and everyone else in the morgue know is Sherlock's stool and sits down. There is a feral noise that makes itself known in the back of her throat and his smirk widens. "My, my, my, you've gone and fallen in love." He shakes his head, clucking his tongue. "We don't get to fall in Doctor Hooper." He's making a mockery out of her, out of the life she's tried to live and build.
She won't stand for it. Not here. Not now. Not ever. "Get out." She says again.
He shrugs, "I'm just here to give you a fair warning."
Her eyes narrow. "What are you on about?"
"I'm going to kill your precious Sherlock Holmes, Molly and there's nothing you can do to stop me." Her blood freezes at his words and she finds herself as still as a statue even as he hops from the stool and makes his way over to her, pressing his body so close to hers that all she can smell is his cologne. He leans forward and places a kiss on her cheek and she flinches. "He thinks you're on the side of the angels. But he doesn't know that neither heaven nor hell will have either of us."
Molly is still frozen in her spot until she hears the doors shut and can hear the sound of his shoes grow more distant until the only thing she hears is the drumming song in her ears. Her breath is uneven, erratic and her eyes are wide, flashing with the death of hundreds that she borne witness to. She grabs a beaker and throws it against the wall; a yell finally tearing its way out of her throat with a violence that she's never exuded and she thinks this has been centuries in the making.
(Mike Stamford comes running in, his face falling into a neutral mask as he approaches her carefully and tells her in a soft and quiet voice that maybe, just maybe, you should take the weekend off.
She's stammering apologies, once she's come back from her rage and he waves her off and gives her a fatherly smile. Get some rest, he says, clear your head. It's okay Molly. It's all okay.
Mike Stamford is one of the good people, she knows this.)
She makes her way around the world a thousand times over, it seems. She watches as new cities rise and fall. She watches the world around her descend into chaos and watch as it makes its way out of chaos, only to resume the cycle all over again
She watches people come into this world and she watches people die.
It's a circle, she thinks, life is just a circle of giving and taking and taking and giving.
And somewhere, along the way, Molly Hooper found herself kicked out of that circle and watches from the sideline as the world crashes and burns and she helpless to do anything but watch.
She takes the weekend and travels back to where it all started.
She remembers the village, remembers the town that was once there and is now a city but on the outskirts of the city there are woods and she creeps into the woods, retracing her steps from centuries ago, trying to find the old tree with the well at the base of it. She walks and walks and walks and then she runs and runs and runs and it feels like she's running in circles, coming to the same spot over and over again and not seeing anything.
Night falls but she does not sleep. She does not rest because she has to find that tree, has to find that well at the base of it. She's crazy, she knows she is but she can't…she can't lose Sherlock. Not after losing everyone else.
(It would be the thing that kills her if she could die.)
On the third day, when the sun rises and she's lost herself deep into the woods, falling onto her knees and lying on her stomach, head on the ground, she feels tears burning in her eyes. She wants to cry. She wants to scream, she wants to rail against the injustice of everything because she never asked for this. She never wanted any of this but she is so alone and so scared because Sherlock is good. He can be an asshole the majority of the time but he is Sherlock Holmes and he's too good to die at the hands of James Moriarty and whatever nefarious plans he's planning.
It's then she hears it, the swoosh and woosh of water and a sound is caught in her throat as she follows it, ear pressed to the ground and following the noise until it leads her to the base of a tree, rocks and branches covering what she knows is a well. She lifts them up, uncaring that they're heavy and uncaring that they scratch her hands. She lets out a choked sob when she sees the water and she fumbles with her bag and takes out a small mason jar, dipping it in the well, screwing the top back on tightly and shoves it back in her bag without a second thought. She's throwing the rocks and branches back in their places, eyes roving right and left to make sure she hasn't been followed and she hasn't been seen.
(She doesn't let herself think about weight of the small mason jar in her bag as she journeys back home.)
She goes back to that village on the outskirts of town; where she knows they all live to look for the old woman with kohl lining her eyes. She tries her best to describe her to the group of women she meets and they look at each other and then look at her.
"Dead." One of them says and all Molly can hear is the jingling of their bracelets and the sound of bells in the distance, marking time with each passing chime.
"When?" Molly asks them.
"Seven years ago."
Right when Molly met her then.
(She's the harbinger of everyone's death but her own. This, she knows.)
She kisses him tentatively when he slides into her bed and he responds with an intensity that can only belong to Sherlock Holmes.
The night is filled with grunts and soft whispers and louder cries of pleasure and Molly thinks this is as close to heaven as she's going to get and she takes and takes and takes everything Sherlock has to offer and maybe even more because he's leaving and she's already made a silent promise to stay until he comes back, whenever that may be and she'll figure everything out later but he needs her and she's needed him for so long.
(He's not dead and there is still a full mason jar in the back of her cupboards collecting dust.)
When they're done and sated and Molly's body is pulsing with an energy she never knew she had, she turns on her side, tracing the curve of his cheekbones with barely there touches. (He's made of porcelain and she's made of stone and she's afraid to scratch and break him.)
"You'll live." She tells him and maybe she put too much conviction in her voice. Maybe there is something else there that he sees and she doesn't realize she let slip.
He turns his head to look at her, eyes boring into hers, his breathing evening out from their laborious activities. "And like all things, I'll die."
The thing with Sherlock Holmes is that he says a lot, even without meaning to. His mouth will say one thing and his eyes will tell a story onto their own. So, she searches his eyes until her own eyes burn and her throat feels tight. He's human. Mortal. Bound to this earth for a certain amount of time and he's accepted it, maybe even relishes it. She thinks back to the small mason jar in the back of her cupboards and guilt slams into her because she was going to curse this man to a life of immortality and unlike Jim Moriarty, whom she hopes is burning in hell somewhere (even though she knows he's not because they can't die), Sherlock Holmes is terrified of the unknown. And living forever? Being cursed to roam the earth, well, that's as big an unknown as any.
She makes an excuse that she needs water and she grabs a robe on her way out, shrugging it on and turning on the sink. She reaches into her cupboard and grabs the small mason jar. She doesn't want to throw it down the sink. She doesn't want to flush it down the toilet and if she drinks it, she'll likely vomit. Instead, she looks to her left and sees a wilting orchid that she bought one day and without hesitation, she pours it into its soil and the throws the mason jar out for good measure.
She shuts off the sink and makes her way back to her bedroom, slipping off her robe and sliding back into bed, next to an almost sleeping Sherlock.
"How long?" He asks.
How long what? She wants to question him. How long have I been alive? How long have I known what I am? How long will this last? How long have I had the mason jar? How long have I been planning on damning you to eternal life? How long have I loved you?
Forever, she thinks.
She presses her forehead against his shoulder and she breathes in the scent of her, the scent of him, the scent of them and commits it to memory. "Wrong question, Sherlock."
Molly tries to kill herself once. Back when this all started. She takes a pistol to her head and pulls the trigger.
The bullet goes through her head and then her body stitches itself back up again, repairing everything that should have rightly killed her.
(She does have a headache that lasts for a few days though.)
Nothing is ever simple with Sherlock. Not even his resurrection.
("You know," she says conversationally, "you deserved it."
He gives her a wounded look, as if she's betraying him by siding with John but she shakes her head and gives a little huff of laughter as she gently puts ice on his face.
There is a little upturn of his mouth, a little tug that could almost mistakenly be a smile, or at the very least a smirk.)
There is Tom and he's a nice distraction, a nice little piece of imagination that she carved out for herself because with Tom things are easy and then they get not-so easy when he proposes and Molly says yes because it's been so fucking long and she's alone and maybe, just maybe, Tom will understand.
(But Tom is awkwardly endearing at best and a bumbling idiot at the most and she knows she won't last. They won't last and it's awful stringing him along, isn't it? She's not too fond of strings, seeing as how she's not able to cut hers.)
John and Mary's wedding is nice and Molly could kill Sherlock but probably not as much as she liked stabbing Tom in the hand. She rolls her eyes, meat dagger.
At the reception when everyone is dancing and she sees Sherlock sneak away, she's overwhelmed for him because his best friend has just gotten married, he's back from the dead and he's surrounded by people who admire him, love him and hate him. She wonders what it's like, having the sudden crushing realization that you're alone wash over you instead of knowing it all along.
There is a hollow aching in her chest as she follows him quietly and watches as he flips his collar up to shield his neck from the chill and he walks away from the reception, from Mary and John, from her and all she wants to do is call him back. Come back, she wants to call out, don't leave, please don't leave. By the time she opens her mouth, he's disappeared into the shadows, leaving Molly alone.
Molly turns her back to the street and walks back into the party, her yellow dress a spot of brightness in the dark of the night, reflecting off the windows.
(The further she walks into the party, the further she walks away from him.)
Paris is lovely in the Spring, Rome is lovely in the Summer, the Eastern States are lovely in the Autumn and Vienna is magical in the Winter.
So she walks and walks and walks across all the cities and all the towns and all the villages in circles until she believes she's made her mark on them, that these cobblestoned roads and the changing colors of leaves have Molly Hooper etched into them without even knowing.
It's the second time she sees him high on drugs and there is a fury raging in her body. She can't help but slap him, once, twice, thrice, because it's not enough. It's never enough. Can't he understand? Can't he look at her and fucking see?
She stayed. She stayed, going against every inch of her being telling her not to stay because of him. For him.
There is a shocked silence in the room, most of them taken aback but not Sherlock. Never Sherlock. He makes a quip about her broken engagement. "Don't." She says, her voice suddenly tired and she feels as old as she likely is. "You don't get to…" She trails off and Sherlock bows his head in a silent apology.
(Molly forgives. Molly always forgives.
Because there is something in the air, something shifting. Change is coming and this time, Molly doesn't think she can stick around for it.)
She likes 21st century London. She likes the hustle and bustle. She likes the technology that's rising. She likes the lights and noise. She likes getting lost in the crowd. She likes going to university, she likes traveling between cities and towns easier than before.
It's a new world, a new generation but with the same problems, she knows.
It doesn't matter because for the first time, Molly opens her arms wide as she feels drops of rain start to fall from the sky and thinks she's ready to embrace whatever this is for her.
Before Magnussen happens, she gets another visit from Sherlock but this time, instead of the shadow of the lab, it's in the shadow of her flat. She's had her bags packed for a few weeks, the pressing of static energy in the air weighing on her and she's waiting for the right moment to leave.
"You're leaving." He calls out, flicking on the light.
Molly gasps and jumps, a hand going to her heart. "Sherlock, what the bloody hell are you doing here? What's wrong? Has something happened?"
"You're leaving." He cocks his head to her bedroom, where she knows her suitcases are collecting dust.
She nods slowly, unsure of how to approach the suddenly charged electricity in the room. "Yes."
He looks away from her and she takes this time to study his profile. He's prominent in every single way, from his cheekbones, to his voice, to his eyes, the length of his body, the strength she knows is underneath his clothing. "I'm going to do something soon, Molly and I'm quite sure I can't come back from it."
She blinks, aware of something coming but unsure of what it is. "I don't…" she trails off and curses herself because she's reduced to a stammering fool in the wake of this man. "Sherlock."
He leans forward, his head snapping to face her. He leans forward, fingers steepeled underneath his chin. "Do you," he starts slowly, voice deep and eyes never breaking from hers. She's frozen to her spot, her heart suddenly picking up rapid speed, "have any idea who you are to me?"
Her heart clenches tightly in her chest and she feels as if she's been suckered punch with the way her breath leaves her body and she has to remind herself to breathe in case she dies and then she wants to laugh until she cries because she can't die. She can't. She can't die and he can and she should have kept that fucking mason jar. She should have kept it and she should have rammed the water down his throat, damning him to her for the rest of eternity. But looking at him with an earnestness she has never seen in his eyes before makes her pause and she feels ashamed because she could never do that to him. Not to Sherlock.
Instead, she's the one who breaks his gaze, unable to witness the sight of his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat and she remembers kissing a line down that throat and down his stomach until his hands were lost in her hair and he flew apart at the seams from her mouth and hands. Her eyes catch sight of orchid, caught forever between its half-wilting form and she lets out a shuddered breath. She clears her throat. "Wrong question, Sherlock." Her voice is a hoarse croak and she can't bear to look at him.
"I know." He states simply and she can feel him shift from the chair, she can feel him walk closer to her until his shoulder is nearly pressing against hers, the heady smell of his cologne invading her senses. "It always is, I'm afraid." He bends down and presses a small, soft kiss to her cheek and she clenches her fists until her fingernails dig into the palm of her hands.
He leaves, shutting the door behind him and Molly finds solace in the wall keeping her upright as she leans her head against it and cries for the first time in forever.
("Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?"
Molly grabs her suitcases and all but throws them into the cab, telling the driver to take her to the airport where she books a one-way ticket to the furthest place she can find at last minute.
She runs and runs and runs because in the end, that's all Molly knows.)
"Does my brother know?" Mycroft asks her.
It's late and Sherlock has left for his quest to take down Moriarty's network when three succinct knocks occur on her door and she opens it, unsurprised to see Mycroft and Anthea on the other side.
She lets them in.
"Do you?" She counters. She doesn't know if Sherlock knows. She thinks he does. She thinks that for all his intelligence, he likely figured it out the first day he met her, or maybe the second if his disbelief in this sort of thing was stronger.
Mycroft stares at her and Anthea continues typing on her phone, the sound of her nails against the glass screen echoing in Molly's flat. "I know everything, Doctor Hooper."
Molly gives him a small jaded smile and she thinks for just a second, she can see a bit of pity in his gaze. "Then you'll know that I don't know if Sherlock knows or doesn't."
Mycroft nods and gets up, Anthea following him. Molly is too tired to be polite, so she stays seated. He's at the door before he looks back at her. "I'll tell you what my brother has said on more than one occasion, sentiment, is a chemical defect found in the losing side, and Doctor Hooper, how long have you been losing?"
She looks up at him, eyes burning with unshed tears that she refuses to let spill in front of the eldest Holmes brother. "Forever."
He shut the door behind them and Molly bends her head down and curses herself, not for the first time, for not wanting to die in the woods all those centuries ago.
Decades fly by and she's still unchanged. She's off again, to places she's been before and walking the same cobblestone roads and watches the leaves change to familiar colors and she traces the places she's been with fingertips that have traced the same shapes time and time again.
It's night, the sky is dark and the hospital is quiet. Visiting hours have been over for a long time but Molly knows this hospital, so she sneaks in anyways and walks the familiar halls, making a pit-stop at the morgue to watch where she made her home and her sanctuary before making her way back up to a room that she has memorized.
He's older, is the first thing that comes to her mind when she sees him lying on the bed. There are flowers around his bedside. Flowers, she knows are from John and Mary's children and their children, even though John and Mary have long since passed and she wonders if he ever found himself lonely still? His black hair has grayed with age and then whitened. His skin has wrinkled but he's still tall, still lean, as she takes the seat next to his bed.
With soft touches, she traces her fingertips across the back of his hand. His skin feels different but familiar at the same time. It feels like coming home. He feels like home.
Her eyes snap to his when she feels his fingers intertwine with hers and his eyes are still the same brilliant blue-green they always were. "You came." His voice is hoarse with disuse.
She nods, not trusting herself to talk.
He blinks at her. "You haven't aged a day."
She lets out a broken laugh.
"Molly, tell me everything. Don't leave anything out."
She takes a deep breath and tells him everything she remembers, from the beginning with the thrice-damned three to now. She tells him about everything she's seen and the places she's been, she tells him about the wars she was caught in and the peace she found afterwards. She tells him about Frank and she tells him about the woman with the kohl-rimmed eyes. She tells him about James Moriarty and she tells him about how much she's always hated this because she's been alone for so long and she tells him about running and running and running until her feet bled and she tells him about how she met him and how things changed and she stuck around longer than she should have but it was good, it was so good and she fumbles over her words when she confesses that she went back to the tree and she was desperate to keep him alive but couldn't.
And when she's done, she's almost heaving, trying to keep quiet so nurses don't come in and kick her out. His hand is still squeezing hers and her vision is blurry with tears. "Do you forgive me?" She asks, desperate to hear the affirmative.
He gives her a small and tired smile. "Wrong question, Molly."
She lets out a breath of laughter and they both fall into silence.
"Molly," he takes a deep breath and fear grips her heart and ice runs through her veins, panic settling in because Molly knows what's going to happen. "Molly, what do you need?"
She wants to cry and she can feel the quivering of her chest and the burn in her body because this is what she needs. This is what she's always wanted. In all her years of being alive, this is it. This is what she needs and it's only taken what feels like forever for her (for them) to come to this point (and she remembers asking him the same question, thinking that if he asked her back she would tell him everything because it's so lonely living forever and not being able to share it with someone. And then she thinks it was always unfair asking more from him than he was ready to give, asking more than he knew what to give.) Her body is trembling, tears leaking from her eyes and down her cheeks, "You." She tells him, her voice breaking at the one syllable. Three little letters and so much meaning. "You." I love you. I love you. I love you.
He nods and gives her a smile and his hand grows limp in hers and the machines start beeping and she's left taking huge gasps of air, trying to keep herself afloat with the sudden grief that overwhelms her. "No." She says, "No. No. No. Sherlock?" She shakes him, aware of the footsteps that are stomping down the hallway. "Sherlock? Please. Please." The last is a plea. "Come back. Come back. Don't leave me. Please don't leave me." She looks at the door wildly, aware that any second nurses will be barging through. She presses a kiss to his lips, sobbing in a broken whisper, a secret for her to say and for him to never hear, "I love you."
And then, like a thief in the night, she runs and runs and runs until she ends up on the roof of Bart's and God, everything comes back to this place, doesn't it?
She gasps for breath, greedily sucking in the chilly air and relishing in the burn it has on her throat.
She sinks to the ground, unable to support herself and she wails and cries until whatever birds are left flock away from the scene she's making and until her chest feels like it's going to explode, heaving until she's grasping at the ends of her mind. She curls into herself, shifting until she's propped against the door and everything is cold around her. Everyone dies and everyone leaves and Molly is left running and always left alone.
"Come back." She says brokenly, "Come back."
There is no answer and she cries harder, mourning a life she never lived and a future that was never hers to begin with.
She stays on the roof, tears drying in the cold chill of the air and then she gets up, legs trembling and numb from sitting down and walks down the stairs and down elevators, retracing her steps of the hospital she once called hers and it's only befitting that he died here, in the place that was his sanctuary as much as it was hers, until she's out the front doors.
There is nothing left for her here, she realizes as she walks for a little while, taking in the hustle and bustle of the city that she used to love. She sits on a bench that she comes across and takes in a deep breath. There is nothing left but the shadows of what once was and of who she once was.
She curls her hands into the lapels of her jackets and pulls it tighter across her body as she stares at the people who walk in front of her. "I'll never forget you." She whispers into the wind. She gets up and walks into the crowd, blending in until suddenly, she's not there anymore.
(Molly Hooper runs and runs and runs because she's the harbinger of everyone's death but her own.)
"What do you need?"
"You."
Welp….I'm sorry? I supposed now is as good a time as any to tell you guys that originally, this wasn't supposed to end like this. I had a happy ending but then I didn't save it and my computer shut down and I had to start all over again and this monster came out. So…I'mma just be in the corner, dodging objects. Hehehe. I really hope you enjoyed it!
MAD LOVE AND RESPECT,
BB