Title: First Ten Minutes of UP

Author: porpoise-song
Characters: Mainly just Molly, with appearances by Moriarty and Sherlock and mentions of Lestrade and John.
Rating: G, really.
Disclaimer: Unless I want Weeping Angels and the Crack to follow me (Steven Moffat), umbrella shaped bruises on me (Mark Gatiss), red coats storming my place (BBC), and a Victorian Age dressed zombie chasing me (Sir Author Conan Doyle), I need to say that I own absolutely nothing.
Summary: (from anonymous): I want to see someone have a really really good cry. you know what i'm talking about, when you just start crying and you don't want to stop cause it's just fantastic, and you keep thinking of sad things so you keep crying and it releases all your stress. that kinda cry. any character,any other characters reaction, could be two characters. just make it a cryfest! lots and lots of pain releasing crying. please!

Warnings: None that I can think of.

A/N: Prompt from anonymous, at sherlockbbc_fic's Prompting XIV.


It has been a while since Molly has had a good cry. Lately, it seems, she has been bottling everything in. Every little thing in. That remark Sherlock coldly gave her about her boyfriend being gay. She brushed it off, although she did run out the door, but it was only so she could go to the ladies' room and stare at herself in the mirror to keep herself from showing any emotions. 'Ladies do not cry. Ladies do not show any self-pity. Ladies have self-control. You are a lady, Molly Hooper. It's the one thing that men look for in a wife',her mother's voice echoed through her head as she nodded, unhinged her top teeth from her bottom lip, and walked out the ladies' room. She did not show her restlessness when Jim had not been responding back to her messages, comments, texts, and phone calls. 'He's just embarrassed', Molly said to herself as she sat quietly in her sitting room, her mobile placed between her small hands. 'I can relate to that.'

Somehow, Molly had been able to refrain from showing any emotions when DI Lestrade gently told her that Jim was, in fact, Moriarty and that he, Sherlock, and John were involved in an explosion at a pool. Moriarty. She had heard Sherlock and John mention his name a few times around the morgue, saying it with such an offhand and casual manner as if Molly wasn't standing, working, or sitting less than ten feet away. Although, frankly, she saw the slight wince of Sherlock's lips every time his name was spoken, which only added to the embarrassment and humiliation of being an invisible third-wheel. Sherlock would never allow a stranger to see any emotions from him. He himself only showed John the bare minimum. She knew that they hadn't forgotten that she was in the same room as they were. She knew that they were fully aware of her presence, but didn't care enough to play dumb and feign forgetfulness. When moments like this happened, which, as of late, tended to happen more often, Molly Hooper would just silently sigh, quietly hum, put on a happy front, and continue cutting up her cadaver or run tests.

She didn't even show emotion when Moriarty showed up at her flat, his Westwood practically falling off him, blood dripping from everywhere and nowhere, and him so pulveratricious, but giving her a coy, playful smile. She simply gave him a blank, unreadable expression; her mouth set firmly in a straight line, her eyes hard and rigid, and her face as smooth and cold as marble. It was definitely a stark contrast to her flat, pink and fluffy to its brim.

Of course, she let him in. She couldn't exactly shut the door in a criminal mastermind's face. After she had tended to his wounds, after they had sex (inevitable, really), and after he told her that she would soon stop wanting to pretend and left, she sat on the edge of her bed, in her flimsy, yellow robe. She didn't hate him. Nor did she hate Sherlock or John. She didn't hate herself either. She didn't hate anyone, in fact, and that scared her.

'Good to know you still have emotions.'

It was the fact that Molly didn't have any emotions left to hate anyone, which she rightfully had a reason to. She had cut herself and let herself bleed bone dry. It left her scared, small, and pitiable. And fear leads to anger and rage, which, then, leads to sorrow, and so, finally, after many months of bottling it in, Pandora's Box was open and it racked her to her core.

These cries shook her. It shook her body and her bed. At first, these wails scared her even more, which made her cry even more. A yowl escaped her lips and, with that, she realized that these cries didn't make her scared, pathetic, angry, or any of that. They made her—they made her feel fantastic! Bloody fantastic, really!

She continued crying for the next five minutes on this matter, but her weeps started to slow down and lessen with each gulp of air, but she didn't want to stop. She wanted to cry some more. She had already aired one thing out...maybe it was time to air more things out so she started thinking of everything that she had bottled up or purposely forgotten.

Sherlock's rejections...Sherlock's blatant and phony compliments...that jerk that had taken her cab...all those dates that were ruined because they found out where she worked out.

After her personal life was aired out, Molly started thinking of other sad thoughts. 'Sad is happy for deep people.' She thought of the first ten minutes of "UP", the end of "Grave of the Fireflies", "The Green Mile", "Charlotte's Web", "Where the Red Ferns Grow"...


She returns to work the next week, not with a frown or with an overly chipper smile. She returns to work with a small, knowing smile. When people give her sad, pitiful looks and glances, she lightly reminds them that she is fine and, please, it isn't nice to judge people when their wife is cheating on them. When Sherlock returns to her morgue, like she knew he would, he gives her some half-hearted compliments about her hair and lipstick. She doesn't reject them or ignore them, like she was expected to do. She, instead, accepts them.

"Yes, Sherlock, I know that my hair is looking lovely today and I am fully aware that this shade of lipstick looks good on me, but I'll still need to see some clearance", she slowly gives him a mischievous smirk and lets her eyes flicker to his. "Until then", she brushes past a flabbergasted Sherlock out the door, "No morgue access for you, dear."

She did not do this to spite him, or for revenge or payback. She did it because it amuses her. When she leaves, she goes to the ladies' room and has a good laugh about it. She's glad that she cried. She doesn't hate anybody, contrary to expectations. In fact, she's kind of happy that these events happened to her. She's not livid, or depressed, or vengeful; if anything, she's content.

When Moriarty returns to her flat, like she knew he would, he gives her some half-hearted speeches about phoniness and the tiredness of all that. She's vaguely listening the whole time, but, when she's sure he's finished (he's waiting for her acceptance, she thinks), she smiles at him, warmly, and tells him that, she'd like it if he "accept" her thanks for the "compliments" he paid her (especially the bit about her "potential" because it's nice hearing that from a genius once in a while) and although, she was "very sensible of the honour" of his "proposals", it is "impossible" for her to do "otherwise than decline them". Though that doesn't mean that they have to stop seeing each other.

He laughs at that and asks if she's the "Batgirl" to Sherlock's "Batman" now.

She shakes her head, a smile on her face, and tells him, "Nope. I'm just Molly Hooper. And, if I'm any Batman character, I would like to be Catwoman...Batgirl gets shot in the spine by the Joker, y'know."