The problem with autopsies really, is that they tend to occur one at a time. Without a specific reason to seek a connection, Molly did not assume as a rule that one body in her mortuary was connected to another. She generally focused on cause of death, with forensic cases having an additional layer of gathering evidence and helping to determine the reason that the cause occurred: homicide, suicide, accidental death.
Naturally, she was not the only qualified pathologist in London. Cases assigned to her were usually sourced from a certain catchment area (unless Sherlock Holmes was consulting in which case he tended to insist on her services), and she was also responsible for answering questions about deaths that occurred within Bart's walls for the dual purposes of M&M and education.
However, Molly had noticed a rather disturbing pattern of late. The bodies of some very unpleasant people, featuring some very strange injuries, had been rolling through lately, and it was some time before she noticed that they had come some distance to die in this particular area of the city. Judging from their career choices it seemed equally unlikely that they were working in the neighborhood either. Still, that hardly meant anything; London was a large city and one never could tell what might attract the criminal element to a certain sector. To her frustration, while her autopsies easily determined the cause of death, in several of the cases the manner of death was left undetermined, be it homicide, suicide, or accident.
The final factor that stood out in all of these cases was that just before she began to perform the autopsy, Sherlock Holmes would appear seemingly out of nowhere, and before she had even removed a single organ he would regale her with a tale of exactly how dreadful the person on her table had been in life. This one sold young Russian girls, that one manufactured a very nasty drug that resulted in a spate of overdoses, and while the last man had a seemingly prestigious job he apparently mistreated his husband quite a lot. Each time, Sherlock would finish his story and then sort of rock back on his heels, waiting for...Molly wasn't sure what, exactly. An air of expectation seemed to swirl around him, but she couldn't imagine what to say except that it all sounded quite dreadful.
When he appeared for the man on her table today, Molly braced herself for another monologue on why she should be relieved that the deceased was no longer on the streets. However, this time Sherlock seemed somewhat less enthusiastic.
"I thought you'd have more to say," Molly said, as she set up her tools. "The last few that Lestrade sent over made it sound as though a horrible criminal element was taking over the neighborhood."
"Yes, well. Every criminal can't be an overachiever, I suppose," Sherlock replied with a sigh. Molly narrowed her eyes. He seemed dismissive, yet something was off – his posture was stiff, he wasn't willing to look directly at her.
"Not so impressive, then." Molly frowned.
"Yes. Perhaps he was mistaken for someone else more important. Lying down with dogs and all that."
Molly hummed, then frowned. "I suppose what you're really interested in is the bruising."
"I might be?" Sherlock's eyebrows raised, and Molly thought there was something ever so slightly unusual in his expression. Something akin to...hope.
"Yes. we've had six victims in the past month involved in illicit activities. They've all had different causes of death, but they all had a line of these strange bruises somewhere on their bodies – and oddly enough the bruises were formed post-mortem. Usually on a limb, so the killer isn't undressing them before or after death. The marks are obviously made with a whip or a crop or some other type of small tool." She pointed at the odd purpled spot, shaped like a bird's foot. "And I think they're made intentionally – this shape has come up a few times."
"Oh, certainly." Sherlock looked oddly pleased at this observation. "That connection is the reason I've attended each autopsy. Which was a bit tricky to work that out while I was technically banned from the lab – "
"You're still banned from the lab. Technically." She glared briefly at him. "It took maintenance three days to clean the ceiling, Sherlock. Three. Days."
"Yes, yes. So Molly, back to the bruising."
Molly brightened. "You've figured out a local source for riding crops and it will lead you to the killer!"
"Not exactly. Take another look, Molly." He whipped out his mobile phone, pulling up the autopsy pictures she recognized and handed it to her. Molly flicked through the photos, frowning as she attempted to discern what Sherlock meant.
"I don't get it," she finally said. "Are they supposed to mean something?"
Sherlock looked exceedingly pleased with himself. "The bruises are in the shape of Nordic runes, spelling out a message in Latin."
"Gosh, a message written in bruises that are ostensibly shaped like runes translating to a saying in Latin. Don't know how I could possibly have overlooked that," Molly said dryly. "Perhaps you should warn Greg that there's a murderous medievalist on the loose?"
"In retrospect, I suppose that was a bit esoteric." Sherlock cleared his throat, looked at the ceiling, frowned at something up there (she really didn't want to know) and looked back at her. "Would you like to know what it says?"
Molly nodded, expecting his clever explanation to spill immediately from his lips. To her surprise, Sherlock stepped around the table, vulnerability and hope playing across his features. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears (because oh no that look was never good), and she couldn't tear her eyes away from his. What on earth was he doing?
"Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori. Love conquers all; let us too yield to love. Virgil, lest my parents think my education was entirely wasted."
Molly froze, her breath caught in her throat. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said in her presence. And it was written in bruises on a corpse.
Post-mortem bruises. The number of people who actually knew how much time they had to make a certain mark on a corpse before bruises would not be visible was probably fairly small. The number shrank considerably when factoring in the number of people who had studied intensely the force required to leave a certain depth of bruising with a riding crop in particular.
Oh God. She knew where she'd seen a bruise like that before. I liked him. He was nice. She gasped and recoiled, the final puzzle piece falling into place.
"A riding crop," she blurted.
"A loaded hunting crop, to be precise – heavier shaft for a bit of heft. Also a bamboo cane. Admittedly I may have sacrificed legibility for the symmetry of the moment."
"You – you did this. You did – all of them."
Sherlock frowned, a line forming between his eyebrows. "In all fairness, I didn't kill number 3 and number 4. They shot each other, and number 6 was an accident, nothing to do with me. At any rate, they were mostly nasty sorts – human trafficking, child abusers, and I thought you'd particularly appreciate the one manufacturing and selling illegal drugs, he was the source of that whole fentanyl mess last year. Although the current specimen was a bit of a reach, I admit."
"You – you – you killed these people. You." Molly stared down at the body on the table, noting his words from earlier. "Oh my God, and I've figured it out!"
"Yes!" Sherlock said delightedly. He started moving towards her again, looking perplexed when Molly skittered backwards away from him, brandishing her scalpel.
"Stay back," she said fiercely, although she had to admit this wasn't looking terribly good.
"Molly, why are you threatening me with surgical implements? You can't genuinely believe you can defend yourself with that." He smiled. "Don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to work on your technique. Your size is a disadvantage of course, but with the right strategy – "
"You killed those people, Sherlock! I'm not an idiot, I know what happens to witnesses when murderers figure out there are witnesses! I read novels!"
Sherlock's jaw dropped and he had the audacity to look rather hurt. "Molly, I would never harm you. That would defeat the purpose of this entire scenario."
She eyed him warily, hesitant to put down the scalpel or even get an inch closer to him. Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes. "I obviously wanted you to figure this out, Molly, if I was going to engage in vigilante behavior without the goal of entreating you I would have done it far away from Barts."
Frowning, Molly let the scalpel drop. "I'm not sure that actually makes me feel all that much better." She looked down at Mr. Claymont on her table, who naturally, had not responded to the conversation around him. "Wait – you said mostly nasty. Why mostly?"
Sherlock cleared his throat and suddenly appeared to have great difficulty with eye contact. "Well, accidents can happen. One does get bad information now and then." He glanced down at the corpse on the table, and Molly felt her jaw clench.
"Bad information? Sherlock, did this man even do anything wrong?"
"Tax fraud?"
"That's hardly a capital offense! Even in countries that have capital offenses!"
"It was really rather a lot of tax fraud. And all to hide money from his ex-wife."
"Even so –"
"She deserved adequate spousal support for the care of their children. And one of the depositions in the divorce said he kicked their dog when he was upset."
"Oh, Sherlock..." Molly sank down against the wall, head in her hands. "What on earth were you thinking?!" She heard an awkward shuffling next to her, the slide of his coat against the metal drawers behind them.
"I was thinking he was a man who imported ivory from endangered elephants but as it turns out he was merely his accountant. And you banned me from the lab."
"So you thought you'd up the ante from destruction of property to murder? Yes, completely logical."
"In retrospect perhaps I should have discussed this plan with John and Mary. Or at least with John. Not sure Mary would offer the best perspective."
Molly snapped, "Because she'd tell you you're an idiot?"
Sherlock paused, glancing off to the side, then smiling very innocently. "Yes. That. Exactly that." Molly wasn't sure what to make of that unsettling response, but her mind was already racing to other questions.
"What happened to number 6?"
"Freak accident. Working on his boat, tripped and fell, dragged his nail gun by the cord off a pylon and it discharged, hitting his brain stem. I merely...relocated him from the pier to the alley." He glanced at her. "Don't give me that look, it wasn't actually a crime scene."
"No, no it wasn't, so you manufactured one." Molly paused. "Wait. You – you murdered these awful people so you could get into the morgue?"
She stared as Sherlock unaccountably and quite plainly...blushed, to the very tips of his now very pink ears.
"Oh my God, Sherlock." Molly shook her head. "This is not the way to get back to your experiments, or anything I was loaning you before. You could very easily have earned that back."
"I wasn't – that wasn't why I did it." Sherlock squared his shoulders, his chin tipping up slightly as if he needed to show some pride, which in Molly's mind, meant that whatever he was about to say was extraordinarily difficult.
"I like...seeing you work. And just – seeing you." He sighed, pride melting away as he slumped against the wall of the morgue. "Needing you wasn't some kind of metaphor, Molly. I consider you a valuable and important part of my life."
"You wanted to see me. So you killed people so that you could consult on the cases." Molly felt a spiraling sense of horror creep up her spine, her voice taking on a shrill edge.
"Bloody hell, Sherlock, I have a phone! A flat! I do not stop existing at the door of the morgue!"
"I know that – quite well. I merely thought it would be helpful to cultivate a sense of nostalgia to encourage the rekindling of warmer sentiments."
"Sentiments?" Molly looked over at him. The strutting confidence and affected insouciance she knew well had faded and if anything he looked a little...nervous.
Slowly it dawned on Molly that she hadn't fully assimilated all of the information that had been dropped in her lap in the past ten minutes. Sentiments. Bruises. Very dead people who hurt innocent victims, animals, and took advantage of others.
Love conquers all.
Yielding.
"Oh," Molly breathed. She shouldn't have been thrilled by this, the revelation that Sherlock wanted something more...wanted her. Not when he had frankly just committed a string of mostly murders with the same casual pride that Toby demonstrated in bringing her a dead mouse. She tried to be a good person, really she did, and there was nothing good about this situation. But Molly knew that she was also striving and ambitious, and while she was always happy to give someone a hand up, she didn't shy away from pursuing her own wants and needs.
Only a terrible person would let Sherlock get away with what he had done. Molly supposed this meant she was very possibly a terrible person. She decided she could live with that.
Molly took a breath, and got to her feet, Sherlock rushing to rise first and help her up. She turned and looked at him sternly.
"Flowers," Molly said calmly. "I know, it's terribly boring and cliché. But that is the only previously alive gift that I ever wish to receive from you in the future, Sherlock."
"Agreed," he said, hands clasped behind him as he nodded.
"And I am going to be very tetchy with you about this."
"Oh, I hope so," he said, with an air of promised naughtiness that made the back of her neck prickle with heat. She licked her lips, painfully aware that Sherlock would notice her every movement down to a microscopic level. He drew closer, pulling the gloves from his hands and placing them in his coat pocket.
"They do seem to have been very bad people," Molly said, noting that her voice had turned rather hoarse.
"Terrible people. Awful people," Sherlock added helpfully, although his mouth quirked slightly in uncertainty. "All right, this last one was a stretch, but I'm sure I'll find out he harassed a secretary or something if I keep digging."
Molly laughed even as she realized that she shouldn't. This entire situation was beyond the pale. And apparently deep down, so was she. Sherlock reached out to tip her chin up towards him as he bent towards her lips, and Molly gasped softly at the realization that yes, this was actually happening.
The sudden inhalation reminded her of exactly where they were, which was standing in her morgue, beside a gentleman who had been deceased for several days. It was rather hard to forget, despite advances in ventilation technology.
"You can stop right there," Molly said, placing a hand against Sherlock's (firm, nicely but not overly muscled, dear God) chest. He looked at her with a slight pout. "I am not about to kiss you while Number 7 here continues to decompose."
"Ah," Sherlock said, taking a step back. "But – later?"
"Oh yes, later," Molly said, with a sardonic smile. "But first, I will very carefully make sure that this tax cheating moron's death gets written up as some sort of accident, although explaining how he stabbed himself in the eye with a fucking javelin will be quite a challenge. And then – " She stepped closer to him again, until she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, reminding her that he was very much a real, live man. "And then, we are going back to my flat, I am going to drink an immense amount of red wine, and I will probably very drunkenly snog you. Then I will hate myself, because really, for fuck's sake, Sherlock - and then I will probably do it again."
Sherlock brightened considerably. "Excellent. When you've sobered up we can further discuss the parameters of our relationship, which I will of course absolutely loathe doing but I imagine you'll require that for an increased sense of security. I do expect that I'll want you to move in by oh, the new year? I'll start working on the benefits of cats with Mrs. Hudson."
Molly smiled wickedly. "That may depend on how the snogging goes. Janine told Mary that you kiss like a dead fish. Get on your phone and study up while I finish Mr. Claymont's autopsy." She ignored Sherlock's look of shocked offense and snapped on her gloves.
"I do not –" He attempted to make another looming move to swoop in again (and oh, she couldn't wait to let him actually do that), but Molly pointed at the body on the table.
"Absolutely not," Molly said. "No kissing, no snogging, no sex in the morgue. That is a classical conditioning nightmare waiting to happen. This relationship already has enough of a body count. And the only body I want to count is yours," she added, for the sheer delight of seeing him wince at the joke.
"Must you really?" He asked with a groan.
"Oh, you love it," Molly replied, and slipped on her surgical mask.
Sherlock started a bit, then smiled faintly. "Actually, I might," he said, and then whirled around, his coat twirling behind him. "Got to go, studying to do apparently. I'll text you."
Molly stood frozen to the spot, a smile slowly forming on her lips. She pulled on her goggles and started her recording. She had so much to do before she and Sherlock Holmes would finally get down to the business of yielding.