"Everyone has a different pattern and look to them. No two galaxies are the same." Mr. Thompson, her 8th year science teacher explains, the swirling gold of his nebula visible on his arm under the black light. Everyone gasps and stares in awe, dreaming of what theirs will look like one day.
Molly is no different, gaping at the glittering gold that looks like it would be warm to the touch. She loves to watch the swirling lights shimmer and dance across her mother and father's skin, watching the way little comets and shooting stars shoot from her mother's arm to her fathers, their galaxies interacting and shaping, constellations aligned and yet still so many differences between the two systems.
As Molly becomes closer to age, the more time she spends flipping on the little black lights installed in the bathroom, inspecting the beds of her nails for a faint shimmer or a swirling blackness. Then when she sees nothing, she goes back to her studies and to her daydreams where she'd finally shine like the skies above her at night.
Her friend, Georgia, is the first in her class to reach her dusting. She squeals excitedly and they gather everyone they can into the bathroom, flicking on the black lights and covering as much white light as possible. Oh, and it is gorgeous, as Georgia shows the silky honey color lazily swirling on her arm, faint rose hues in the back ground.
Molly rushes home that very day and strips herself bare in the bathroom, searching every inch of her skin for a glimmer of her own dusting, but it's the same milky skin as always and she tries not to be more than a little bit disappointed as she tugs her clothes back on.
But as the year slowly passes, she checks less and less. She has bigger things to worry about, her father growing sicker and sicker each day. She hates the way the little black light above his bed flickers as they try to use his nebula and dusting to find the source of his illness. He tries not to show he's in pain, brushing her mother's cheek and laughing heartily as he kisses her fingers, comets still streaking across their joined hands.
Things aren't looking good as far as Andrew Hooper's health is concerned, but he tries to keep a cheery face for her and her mother, Molly knows. He just wants them to be happy, he doesn't want them to see him hurting. But Molly sees it, sees him, sitting in the lounge chair near the fireplace that New Years Eve, circling his arms with his fingertips and looking far older than he should. Little tears run down his face and into his just-greying beard, and he gives a great sniff before wiping his face off.
Molly never forgets that look, the overwhelming sadness that her father displayed for just that moment. Eventually, when he can't be at home any more, Molly and her mother stay by his side at the hospital, with it's flickering black light and sterile smell. When his final moments come, she cries endless tears as each light in his galaxy flickers out, and the last comet shoots from his hand and slowly fades across her mother's arm.
It's not until she's scrubbing her face in the back of the church at the wake when the little purple light above her flickers on and she sees the tips of her fingers stained black with sharp swirls of purple, blue, and silver. It's nothing like she's ever seen before, and she hates it. She doesn't want more stares and pity, because she's already so different.
Her mother thinks it a stage when she starts to cover herself, taking out the black light in her small bathroom, but she doesn't want to see her galaxy anymore. She feels a pang of envy as she rushes out of the loo when a gaggle of girls stand showing off their swirls to each other. Beautiful and golden, everything hers wasn't.
Lying bare on her bed, black light overhead, Molly strokes her stomach and the large silver galaxy that crept from her navel to her throat. Blooming purples and blues, hazy tones of pink and a rose gold color that appears as small veins on her arms. They twinkle and dance, even as she claws at her own skin, wondering why she couldn't have just be like the other girls in her class. The lights are switched from black light to white, and her skin is puckered and angry from the harsh treatment of her nails, and Molly promises herself to never try and tear away her own skin again.
And though Molly's nebula isn't what she had hoped for, she loves to learn about them anyway and they still hold her interest as she enters uni and starts her studies. How different life styles and choices affect the color and shape. Bursts of flares and lights where people have injected themselves and discolored areas just under the nose from a different kind of substance abuse.
"A person's dusting and galaxy can give a lot of information on a body and how they died." Molly glances up in the middle of the lecture, looking at the slide projector as it flips from body to body. "If causes are natural or are caused by the body, the system will flicker out. But from an external force, well, let's just say it causes a rather obvious disruption in their patterns and dusting."
For the next several years, Molly throws herself into her studies. Learning about poisoning, gun wounds, stabs, and various causes of death and their effects on the body's galaxy and dusting. Her mum is slightly concerned at her choice of work, but when the opportunity arises for her to work at St. Bartholomew's, Andrea Hooper goes straight into the heart of London and pays for the first six months of rent for the tiny flat. It's not much, but it's every crack in her mother's hands from scrubbing floors and the little bit left over from her father's time as electrician or handyman, and Molly loves it all the same.
She works endless hours in the chilly morgue of St. Bart's, with her shiny lab equipment and polished surfaces, making a name for herself among her peers. Every death has it's own fingerprint, every sabotage its own trace, and she relays that back to the Yard when their samples are done. It's not uncommon for Donovan or Anderson to page her, or simply show up, but that's not what happens as she stands over the most particular body she had ever witnessed. Even though the body had long gone cold, been drained, and cut open for her perusal, the nebulae continued to bubble to the surface like trapped air pockets.
She wasn't sure how long she has been standing there, scalpel in hand, staring at the corpse when the doors burst open and Molly nearly jumps out her skin whirling to face the soon-to-be tenants of her morgue.
But her tongue catches in her throat, watching storming blues and greens pour across the man in front of her, comets zipping as fast as the words were leaving his mouth. She watches mutely as Lestrade explains the situation at hand, and she nods along without even tearing her eyes away from, quite possibly, the oddest galaxy she had ever seen. The tall man leans forward, his smile just a fraction too tight, and eases her back towards the body. It's then when she feels it, her own comets colliding with his and her breath catches, and her eyes dart to his. Either he doesn't feel it or doesn't care, as he continues to prattle on to Lestrade as he circles to body and looks at her notes. She watches him in silent awe as he works, catching things on the body that she had never seen before. Comets shoot faster and hotter under her skin, and she can't help but feel a little bit of pride as she stands there, scalpel in hand. He feels them, she knows he does by the way he can't seem to stop scratching his arms.
"Sherlock, are you doin' alright? You're not having withdrawals… are you?" Greg says as quietly as possible, taking in Sherlock's behavior.
"No, no. Wrong symptoms. The heat is all wrong for that; moving, shooting. Doesn't matter, I can focus. I am focused." Sherlock rambles forward, coming to the eventual conclusion that the drug was pheremonally based and injected directly into the bloodstream before bolting out of the morgue like he'd been starved of air.
"G-Greg," The DI's head turns to her direction as she flicks the overhead black lights back off. "What was that? Who was that?"
"I have no bloody clue what that was, but that is Sherlock Holmes."