A/N: I felt really bad for Molly after Scandal. I wrote this and thought I should get around to posting it, although (now that I've seen The Empty Hearse) Molly is so, so wrong about what she means to Sherlock ;)
I must to learn to laugh at myself someday.
I have the feeling that unless I do, I will keep falling into this pose forever—hunched on the bench, neck cricked at an odd angle as I watch for the bus, anticipating it coming round the corner every time the light changes from red to green, hearing phantom bursts of exhaust in the rush of traffic. My hands are freezing as they rest on my knees, my change already out, as though there will be some mad rush to get on as quickly as possible. Baseless, random idea—there are never more than five other people with me at this stop. But I always settle into this same position, expecting there to be a sudden rush today, thinking for some reason that this will be the day it all changes, that the events will finally begin to match the script.
That today he will look at me differently. As though I matter, as though I count in his life. As though I am something more than an extra.
Perhaps I just take myself too seriously. Everyone else seems to have got the idea that the movies of their lives, the movies they play the central role in, are all more or less romantic comedies. Somewhere along the line I must have convinced myself that my own personal film was meant to be a wrenching, romantic drama with hard-hitting emotional impact. Some people might call it narcissism, but I'm not so sure—I always thought that implied self-adoration, and I can't imagine where that factors into my world. That personality disorder is based on the myth of Narcissus, who gazed for so long at his own reflection that he withered away where he stood. If I am Narcissus, it's not my own reflection I'm gazing at, which makes me feel that much more pathetic. It's that of Erebus.
At a certain point I gave up trying to make small talk with him because I realized I would never speak in a way that he wanted to hear. I don't get very many chances to, anyway; we are often in different rooms during the day, and my work with him requires efficiency and concentration, not meaningless prattling conversation.
And anyway it isn't my place to encourage anything or to try to elevate myself to a more significant place in his world—that would be difficult, as I doubt I have a place in his world to begin with. I am barely a supporting character in the movie of his life; my name will not show up until three minutes into the credits, when the theme song will have petered out into an instrumental and the TV gotten shut off. Unless, as likely as not, my name simply never gets listed at all.
But every so often I will (not would but will because I still do because his face still prompts that damnable ache in my chest no matter how hard I try not to feel it) completely lose my head and blog too much about him and get caught up in my own drama, forgetting that it's only mine and that no one else is really involved in or even aware of the chaos in my little world. They don't see some tragic, lovelorn heroine; they just see an extra who, for all anyone knows, might very well have never appeared on screen at all. They certainly can't place my face in the scenes of their movies when they rack their brains. All they see is a nervous, stammering woman who will go home, like as not, to a house full of cats. And they would be right about that.
All right, yes, I did see him today. We spoke for a few minutes, my heart feeling sick and sluggish in my chest—don't make me go through this again, it kept grumbling, I can't keep up this pace, there's a limit to the number of beats you get in a lifetime, you know—my stomach feeling like it had disappeared. He knew I was uncomfortable around him and I knew that he knew this, which only made me more uncomfortable around him. This feeling kept reflecting back and forth like two mirrors creating a passage out into infinity, and before it could really get going and generate some sort of black hole of awkwardness, I ended the conversation by announcing that I had somewhere to be. As I walked away I became aware of how fast I was moving, and seconds later I realized that the place I had said I was going wasn't actually open on Wednesdays. I was walking quickly to nowhere. Something I do often: my grand exit, perfected over the years to a razor-sharp signature move.
My imaginary director closed the scene with a crescendo of music and a kind of Gaussian-blur effect, her own eyes fluttering closed in sympathetic despair. (She often got very caught up in her work.)
His director, meanwhile, was snoozing on a coffee break, resting up for the big finale of the day, when he would interact with people I had never met and who had no impact on my life.
I know that sometime after dark today I will leave St. Bart's and walk quickly to the bus stop. Will take out my change and sit on the bench and wait and watch for the bus to come lumbering around the corner, a great unfailing pack animal with an engine where its brain should be.
But this time I won't get on the first bus that comes, and probably not the second one either—I will remain on the bench as the people gather and leave and gather and leave, until I won't even have to squint to make the faces all blur and start to look the same. I'll stay until the blue of the sky grows deeper every few minutes, the change moving from an imperceptible pace to an almost dizzying quickness as it darkens towards dusk. I'll stay until the initial grief wears off and I am simply left wondering what right I have to feel nostalgic for something I never even had in the first place.