Another prompt from Hihiyas over on tumblr. This time around a TTSS/Sherlock crossover where before Molly ever met the Holmes Brothers, she was recruited to the Circus. So here she is, being a bit of a spy for them. It also contains how Sherlock and Molly met.

Enjoy!

The older man had once had blonde hair, Molly could tell under the ashy gray which now covered most of his curly head. He wore a ring on his left hand, though it was newer she could tell because of the style—this man was about the same age as her dad and her dad's ring was very different—and how it sat on his finger. She just smiled hesitantly and didn't say anything though, because people always found it strange that she noticed and assumed so many things based on what she saw from their appearance. It got worse—not better—when she mentioned she picked up the habit from her training as a pathologist because the dead sometimes came with no context.

"My name is Peter Litton," that wasn't his name, she could tell from the way he said it too seriously. People never said their own names very seriously, there was always either a sense of whimsy to how they said them or a tinge of sarcasm. It was a ridiculously easy tell. His handshake was also sure, and the only people who had sure handshakes were liars. No one in this day and age wanted to go touching other people's hands—and no one wanted to shake the hand of a pathologist, at any rate—and so it was only the liars who shook hands like they meant it.

"Molly Hooper, can I help you?"

"Well, Molly, I have a proposition for you."

Within a few months, Molly was far better acquainted with this man and knew far more about the workings of the world than she'd ever—ever—wanted to know. Peter called it the Circus, and it definitely felt like one sometimes. He liked to repeat that "Good spies are all about the context," and he and his coworkers deftly played the country and world they lived in. His job was all about creating the context for his spies, because Peter "Litton" was a spy. Oh, Molly knew his real name was Guillam but that whenever he met with her he went by Litton. The ring was just a recent addition, she found out when she met the real Mr. Litton—a sweet man perhaps a decade older than Peter by the name of Richard—but it was itself real. Real like her new on-the-side job.

She'd never in a million years thought she would be in a position of working for a man like Peter, though.

The Circus kept a lot of pathologists and many coroners on staff, and in fact kept all of them in London on staff because Bonds sometimes screwed up. And sometimes bodies needed to have died of natural causes, when they didn't. The Circus found it useful to know who died of what—in reality—before any reports could be made of official causes of death. That pathologists and coroners acted as the pan at the bottom of the intelligence sieve—they were the first, last, and only. They saw the John Does, the random murders, the Good Guys, and the Bad Guys and everyone in between who died—they were the ones who determined cause of death, and who brought up suspicious causes of death if need be.

Peter of course had her trained on how to defend herself, how to secure her home before she left it. He was like an uncle that she'd never had—her parents had both been only children so she had no aunts, uncles, or cousins—and he treated her like a daughter. He saw, he said as he taught her how to shoot, the sweetness and goodness that he'd always wanted his own sons to have. Molly hadn't asked how a gay man his age had children, she assumed these children were phantoms from his distant past—instead she tried not to stammer at the compliment. Her weary working class parents had always tried to guide her away from being 'naïve' or 'silly' or 'being a hopeless romantic.'

Special strings were pulled to put her at St. Bart's, though Peter had said it was worth the effort—she was the best candidate for the job as she had little in the way of family and other responsibilities. It was the nicest way she'd ever heard "your family is dead and you have no friends," that Molly almost wanted to laugh. A good, happy laugh. She worked there for about a year before it became apparent why she was there, when two tall men—one with auburn hair and the other with fluffy black curls and eyes she almost recognized—walked into her morgue in the middle of an autopsy.

The auburn haired one introduced them.

"Molly Hooper—I've heard a lot of things about you. Mr. Litton sent us to meet you. My name is Mycroft Holmes and this is my brother, Sherlock."

She hadn't made to shake his hand—not that he'd offered a hand—because she was wrist deep in some poor sod's ribcage. Her two guests were obviously from the Circus—you learned to see the kind of suits the men from there wore—because of Mr. Litton being mentioned. Richard, bless his heart, wouldn't ever send Circus goons to meet her. Peter might though.

The one with the curly hair, Sherlock, took a step closer to look at the open body cavity she was working on. His bright blue eyes flicked around at the remaining places the organs were attached inside—she was going to remove them soon and separate them out—and then settled on her face. He wasn't a handsome man, more than a bit odd looking, but those eyes arrested her in place.

"Cause of death?"

"Poison."

"Looks like a drowning," he was testing her—and he was also smart. Discoloration and swelling of the body and face would point to drowning to most casual observers, even to most closer than casual observers.

"Didn't aspirate water, didn't drown. Simple, unless he's a special snowflake and he 'dry drowned'…and hadn't been poisoned."

"You haven't even opened the lungs to look." One thick eyebrow was quirked in question.

"Don't need to. See here," she poked a little at the bronchial tube of one lung, "this shows no evidence of hemolysis—blood cells bursting. That means that he didn't breathe in water, which means he was dead before he was submerged. Really stone dead too, not just 'unconscious but already experiencing a fatal wound.'"

"Why do you say poison then?"

"Color of his kidneys, but that's for another day. Why are you two here? Mr. Litton hasn't mentioned either of you."

"Just to introduce ourselves. Sherlock is going to be working on a more…freelance basis now. Investigating screw-ups for Mr. Litton and the top floor, you know the drill," Mycroft's smirk was bitter in the same way that Peter's was sometimes and it clicked in Molly's head finally. These were Peter's children. She was a little surprised they were her age, she was expecting to see men several years older than these two. It explained Mycroft's manner and Sherlock's looks.

"Well, I have to get back to the office and tell Mr. Litton we've met and been pleasant to one another—Sherlock, shall I leave you to get to know Molly better?"

Sherlock had been staring, engrossed, at the dead man's kidneys since Molly had pointed them out and he twitched visibly to look up at his brother.

"Oh—yes. I'll text you later then."

"I'd prefer it if you called."

"And you know I won't so why don't you get on back to Mr. Litton?" Molly felt very out of place, watching them argue—even though Peter always said she counted as a spy she knew she just wasn't one like the ones who walked around the Circus or lounged in recuperation or incarceration at Sarratt. It was funny to her though, and she bit her lips to keep from giggling about her bloody gloves and trays of organs while these two spies argued and sniped at each other.

Once Mycroft saw himself out, Sherlock pulled a chair from another room and settled himself across the body from Molly.

"You can't—you can't really be here. Earlier was for Mr. Litton, but now I've got to do my job. And besides-It's only authorized personnel in here I'm sorry, I know it's stupid but—"

"I can be anywhere I want," he said with a smile, palming an ID from his pocket and slipping it around his neck. There on the card was his face—obviously pasted on top of someone else's, over the laminate—but Molly knew well enough that people never looked too closely at IDs outside of the Circus. The Circus made its business on the fact that people never looked.

Molly sighed and picked up her scalpel again. Sherlock put his feet up on the seat of his chair, hugging his arms around his shins as he stared at her and her hands as she worked.

"Can I take you out to dinner when you're done with your shift here?" Molly glanced over at the clock at his words, feeling a dark blush sweep up her neck and cheeks as she did so.

"That's not for another six hours."

"That's fine, I've got nowhere to be. And you can explain how you know it was poison because of the kidneys, I'd like to know how you can tell that."

Her infatuation with Sherlock was a cover, eventually. It covered up Sherlock's affection towards her—and he ought to be affectionate, Molly told herself, he was nearly married to her—and allowed him to do his work easier as he brought more of a spotlight on himself. He had so many covers, too, that Molly was happy to let him have one that was at least easy to maintain. The cover of past drug problems was particularly difficult for him to maintain, as he had to put himself on a constant balance of 'okay/not okay' to those around him.

Peter and Mycroft joked—but not really, as those two men rarely joked even as much as using puns—that they had Molly to blame that Sherlock left the Circus to become a Consulting Detective. He'd been passingly interested in pathology and forensics before he'd met her, but now it was a full-on obsession.

Molly defended herself that it wasn't her fault she and Sherlock had been introduced.

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