The victim is a blond female, shot in the chest. Molly Hooper has dealt with the corpses of blondes and the corpses of shooting victims since Mary Watson's death, but the combination of the two sends her home from the morgue early.
She misses Mary. Not that anybody else seems to remember that she would. Forensic pathology is still rather a male-dominated field, and Molly isn't good at making friends in casual places. She hates pubs, can't really dance, doesn't like striking up conversations in parks. Most of the women she has met who aren't put off by her job want to expand her social horizons, and Molly finds a lot of convenient reasons to keep them closed in.
The last time she expanded her social horizons, she wound up engaged. She can still remember the look on Tom's face when she called it off. She has no interest in doing that again, and no confidence that it could end any other way.
Mary understood. About pathology, and about... Well. She was a good friend.
They'd had lovely evenings in, when the two Mary called "the boys" were out on cases. There were ridiculously bad movies for them to mock, and mugs of herbal tea to savor over long conversations running a range of topics. On the nights Mrs. Hudson didn't join them, the topic sometimes would turn to... Mary quite liked him, but always said you could like somebody and still see he could be a bit of an arse.
Now it was only Mrs. Hudson, and she couldn't talk about some things with the woman who was practically his second mum.
Molly sighs and reaches into the cupboard for a cutting board. A flash of brightly striped material crosses her field of vision. This morning, she put on her favorite jumper, the one she wore when Sherlock took her out on a case as a thank you gift for everything surrounding Reichenbach. He had kissed her after that case, a seemingly genuine moment of companionship that took second place in her heart to the moment he had told her that he didn't need her to be John. (She has long ago donated the dress she wore when he kissed her at the disastrous Christmas party. The jumper fits her better.)
It's a rubbish clothing choice when she is thinking about how to stop thinking about him.
But Molly hadn't been thinking of that at all. She'd started on Mary. She missed Mary, for her own sake. Why did all of the difficulties of her life have to circle back around to him? What was wrong with her?
She picks up her phone and checks Twitter. Nothing from him today. She thinks of updating hers, but nothing comes to mind that doesn't sound pathetic.
The screen goes dark as she hefts the phone contemplatively. Sometimes, she imagines calling Sherlock for something other than a case; or a message from somebody else; or even an update on her plans for the evening, you know, just because sometimes he wanted to use her flat for business and maybe he would need to be informed.
He didn't need to be informed. Didn't need her, really, in anything like the sort of way friends needed each other. And now that Mary was gone, there wasn't anybody who did.
Sobs surged up from the depths of her lungs, and Molly caught at the edge of the kitchen sink and let them come—for her lost friend, and her goddaughter never knowing her mother; for no more movie nights or talks about how stupid and brilliant a certain person was; for not being able to separate the ache of the loss of her friend from the ache over a friend who never was; for being 37 years old and foolishly entangled with somebody who could never return her feelings; for him never reaching out in her direction for her sake alone.
Her head starts to throb, and she swallows back the rest of the tears. Less crying, more tea.
Her phone rings.
And of course.
Sherlock was the last person she wanted to talk to on a bad day, and maybe also the only one. She wasn't going to do it this time, though, wasn't going to leap for the phone as if at last everything were changing, as if it weren't just a business call that she would later overanalyze for hints of—well, normal human friendship, at the very least.
Let him go to voicemail like a nuisance, for once.
But he calls again. And it's probably just him impatient about not getting his way immediately, and she's regretting breaking down even as she wipes her hands off, but she answers.
She listens.
And she speaks.
Afterwards, Molly stares at the phone on her counter for several seconds before pinching herself, hard. When she doesn't wake up, her adrenaline starts racing, because if this isn't one of her recurring nightmares, something is desperately wrong.
She doesn't know where Sherlock is or what's going on, but she has Greg Lestrade on speed dial. She is more than tired of the pomposity and the mind games that punctuate the negligence, but she waits for Greg to pick up. She is aware the great detective hasn't asked for help, but she asks on his behalf, asks for Scotland Yard to do what it can to track him down.
She knows he was saying "I love you" under duress, but for once in her life, she heard it from his lips. More than once. She doesn't believe he meant it, doesn't believe he is capable of human emotion, but...
Despite herself, despite years and years of trying not to, Molly Hooper does what she has always done best when it comes to Sherlock Holmes.
She hopes for more.
