Or, Seven Things You Weren't Aware Of Regarding Molly Hooper.
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First.
She speaks Latin, fluently. She's always been smart, if a little naive and easily manipulated. We've all got bad points, right? Anyway, she doesn't show off very often (unlike certain consulting detectives one might name) but it was a parlor trick she did at parties in Uni where she'd narrate the night in Latin. She learned to speak it for it's usefulness, because she can read medical terms and understand the roots of a handful of languages. But also, it's pretty. If you've never heard Tennyson recited in Old Latin, you're missing out.
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Second.
She loves people. Not just some people, not just the people she knows and loves: all people. On Mondays she takes her sandwich to the park near Bart's and sits on a bench, watches the people go by, with all their pomp and circumstance and stories drifting behind them like a slipstream. Molly likes Mondays.
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Third.
Like any child whose not a bully themselves, she was bullied growing up. However, she escaped the worst of it because Molly Hooper is kind and people liked her well enough. There were the mean children, though-those girls in middle school who teased her mercilessly for her plain looks and odd ways, the boy and his backups in secondary school who made fun of her aspirations and kind ways. Henry, his name was. Henry dumped his tray of lunch down her front once. Later that day he found a few of the frogs they were supposed to be dissecting in his locker. He was more careful with his lunch.
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Fourth.
She's got stains on the front and the cuffs of most of her clothes. The problem is she wears the clothes she likes, only to be called in by someone, be it her co-workers or the Scotland Yard or even a direct text from a certain number declaring the importance of her presence at Bart's for a impromptu autopsy. As it stands there are only two items in her that aren't stained, both dresses: one is for parties, celebrations, joyful times-sparkles and straps. She wears that one a couple of times a year, including to a Christmas party at Baker Street. The other is long, sweeping, black, and she's lucky she's never had too many occasions to wear it. It's a funeral dress, and the last time she wore it was to the grave of a man she knew wasn't dead.
She's lying when she says it doesn't have stains. There's a few, small drops where the salt stripped out the color a bit, where she let Mrs. Hudson cry on her shoulder and maybe she spilled a few tears herself because Sherlock was being cruel while being kind.
That takes us into number five.
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Fifth.
It's one of the first things she learned in life, and medical school. To heal you must sometimes hurt. And there is a difference, between hurting and harming.
If you were to take a CPR class, they would tell you a couple things, things they leave out when they show resuscitation on the television. One of the biggest things is that you will nearly always break ribs in the attempt to force air into the lungs. In the act of keeping someone alive, you will hurt them, break their bones, crack the structure supporting them.
She went through medical school to become a medical examiner. She knows the rules, the oaths, the promises to not harm those you are trying to help.
But the fact remains that she will hurt you in order to help you. And she will let herself be hurt, repeatedly, for something she feels is doing good.
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Sixth.
Yes, she sees the resemblance between Tom and Sherlock. Yes, she's aware she has a bit of a type. But the fact of the matter is that Tom is not Sherlock, and that's good. Maybe she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with him, and maybe she won't even make it to the new year in his arms, but it's a process. Baby steps. She likes Tom, a lot, and he's kinder to her, and she's very aware that he is not as clever or sharp as Sherlock. That's a good thing, because she knows Sherlock would never be healthy for her in a romantic sense, and neither would Tom, but Tom is 'healthier' than Sherlock is and it's a process. Tom is a step away from Sherlock she dearly needed. So they have a lot of sex and he tells her when she's being too soft and she stabs him in the hand with a fork. Healthy is a relative term.
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Seven.
She loves her job. There was a saying she heard once, that may have been a line from a book or a slice of poetry.
"It is the burden of the living to carry the memory of the dead."
It is. Who would want to be a medical examiner?, they asked her. It was something to be avoided, surely, because there is so much respect held for the memory of the dead and so little for the physical shell left empty. Molly Hooper checked the physical shell and took care of the dead. She told their last stories to those who know to do these people justice and she retained that soft core that got her made fun of in class
Molly Hooper carried the burden, and the secrets left behind, written on their bodies and their X-rays and the blood alcohol level left in them.
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