The winter air is cold and bitter as Molly steps outside the doors of Bart's for the first time in almost fourteen hours. The sky is dark, but the shops and buildings outside are brighter than ever, because Christmas is only a few days away and there are lights and decorations everywhere.
Molly holds her hand out, ready to call for a taxi, but then her mind flashes back to the first case that John and Sherlock had together. She was in charge of the autopsies for that case. She pulls her hand back. Anyways, she thinks firmly to herself as she begins to walk in the direction of her flat, she's eaten far too many Christmas cookies. It will be good to work them off.
As she's walking, she reads the signs hanging on the windows of the shops, advertising sales and encouraging shoppers to buy their last minute Christmas presents there. One shop has a television in the window, advertising a family home for the holidays, enjoying their time spent under the Christmas tree, and Molly realizes this is the first Christmas in a long time that she will be spending alone.
There's no family to go home to. She's an only child, one who had few friends or extended relatives. Her mother and she had a falling out years ago, during her first year of Medical school, just after her father's death. Her mother didn't understand why Molly couldn't be a regular doctor, one that worked with the living. She couldn't imagine not being a pathologist, so her mom stopped talking to her. Molly sends her a gift every year, but there's never one in return.
When she first moved to London, she spent Christmases in the morgue, doing the least popular shift of the year. Later, when she was more experienced, and the shift when to the lower members of the staff, she'd spend it with Samford's family, a nice group who was always eager to take in a loner during the holiday season. They were going to Scotland this year. She had thought about spending Christmas with the Lestrades, but Greg is trying to patch things up with his wife again and they've taken a trip to Barbados, so she can't spend Christmas with them. Mrs. Hudson is visiting a friend in Dover. Sherlock, Mary, Mycroft, and John are all at the Holmes house. Even if they were still in London, Molly probably wouldn't have spent it with them anyways. John had managed to forgive Sherlock for hiding his…aliveness for two years, and he was close to reconciling with Mary, who had nearly killed Sherlock earlier in the year. However, for some reason, he hasn't forgiven her.
John had always been so friendly and warm to her- to everyone really- he had the special power to make someone feel like they were the only person on earth that mattered. Now when she's in the room all she can feel is his cold, distant, politeness towards. It isn't the passionate hot headed anger that he aims at Sherlock and Mary. No, this anger, it's something different, a calculated indifference aimed to cripple in the best way he know how to.
Molly can feels it as so deeply when he glances her way and knows that despite what everyone says, he's never going to forgive her. Never.
She wonders when her life turned into this loneliness, this gaping hole in her heart that tells her she is unimportant. When she was younger, she dreamed of being a superhero, with the power to save the day. She would be glorious and gorgeous, kind and important. All the girls who bullied her in school would be jealous, and all the boys that made fun of her would wish she would look at them, just once. But right now, in this moment? She isn't even a main character.
No, she's been given a supporting role in the epic of the great Sherlock Holmes and the good Dr. John Watson. Sure, those girls who bullied her do want to be her friends now but only so they can meet Sherlock. At part of wishes to introduce them, to see them be verbally shred to pieces, but she is Molly Hooper and she is kind. Not that it matters much to her friends.
She imagines herself cut out of the novel halfway in, meeting some kind of tragic ending. She might not be killed of course, but eventually, the man who is great but not good, the man with all the answers, the one who dared to say she mattered but forgot her in the face of those who really do matter- he will be the end of her.
But maybe she thinks, she'll get to choose her own exit someday.
She imagines walk away from Mycroft, who kidnaps her at least once a month, just to remind her that Sherlock isn't like other people, Molly. She wonders how long she could disappear for before he found her. She wonders if he'd bother to go looking. After all, she's just a goldfish, isn't she?
She pictures walking away from Mary who gives her pitying stares when she thinks Molly can't see. The woman who thinks she's Molly's friend. Except she's not. Not even close. Because if she loved John so much, why would she shoot Sherlock? Molly doesn't really care about the specifics, about the way Sherlock declares that Mary didn't aim to kill, that she'd known Shelock would survive. Molly cares that Mary is cruel, and unintentionally, and repentantly cruel, sometimes even more so than Sherlock himself. And she cares because Mary doesn't. Not about anything except for John at least.
Eventually she'll walk away from John Watson, the man who doesn't seem to care that other people knew, just that she knew. Molly will walk away because she knows John Watson cares so much about Sherlock Holmes that he's irrational. And she is Molly Hooper and she's been so many things, but irrational has never been one of them. She'll walk away because Sherlock knows how John feels about her, and why he feels that way, but he doesn't care. Why should he? She's Molly Hooper, only important when she's being overlooked.
John Watson hates Molly Hooper because she was never supposed to matter. Not at all. Not even a little bit. But she did, and now he hates her because he should have been the one to know that Sherlock was alive, not Molly Hooper. She's just the mousy little Pathologist with a ridiculous little crush on Sherlock Holmes. John Watson is Sherlock's best friend. John Watson has laid everything on the line for Sherlock Holmes. What has she done?
So she dreams of leaving this adventure, leaving because eventually there won't be anything left to stop her, anything left to stay for. She's always been Sherlock's friend, but he's never been hers. John Watson has all but officially denounced himself as her friend. He can barely stand to look at her, she's a reminder of Sherlock's two years of betrayal. Molly thinks she'd miss Greg, but he'll always be Sherlock's friend first.
The meaner part of her wonders if they'd notice, if she left. She wouldn't leave today, of course, but someday, when the present is more liberating, when the future is more about her than them. They'll find a new pathologist of course, she thinks. Sherlock's famous now, so it won't be as hard to find someone who'd be willing. She's sick of being called Sherlock's Pathologist, as if the fact that she's Sherlock's Pathologist matters more than being Molly Hooper.
And one day, she'll be the heroine of her own tale, because for everything she is, she's Molly Hooper, and, eventually, that will be enough.
A/N: I have nothing against Sherlock or John or Mary, honestly. I was just inspired by that interview where Moffat stated that Molly Hooper was only supposed to be a small character. I've totally rewritten this, new name and everything and I'm proud to say it's much improved (Although part of me still thinks it need more fixing). Special Thanks to Heather Snow, for the review that got me to take another look at the story. I like it much better this way and I hope you do to. Also, Reviews- I love them.