Tomorrow Is Fading

All That You Can Fake

*BBC Sherlock

*Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, Tom, etc.

AN: Just an idea I had and it wouldn't go away. After the thought came it just became this huge headcannon. I have no idea where the show will go and I don't claim to, but however it goes, this is my own personal desire.

This is just before "His Last Vow" in the timeline.

Molly paced long circles in the parking lot, the light from the street lamps making her shadow dance as she coiled her fingers together. Her smooth, dark-honey hair was still pulled back into a ponytail, a usual style for her. It did not even dawn on her that she was quietly muttering to herself. Her coat was a little too thin for the cool of the night air but she did not even notice it. No one else was going to convince her this was going to end well so she clearly had to keep herself convinced which was not an easy task in this case.

She could do this! There was no problem doing it, people did it all the time, didn't they? Yes, they did! If others did it, she could! After all, she was bloody well a grown woman! At St. Bart's, wasn't she the best? Wasn't she the only one Sherlock would really work with more than once or twice?

No, no, best not think on that just now.

Focus! Yes, think positive! She could do this!

Head held high, she strolled confidently into the restaurant, taking the first open table as her conquest. She sat there, back strait, reminding herself of all her accomplishments, practically reciting her resume to herself. Of course she could handle something simple like this! She was Molly Hooper, a strong woman and great pathologist. She had written well respected journals in her field! She might not have been well known but she was good at what she did.

Her fingers had begun carding absently through her hair, big brown eyes darting around every corner of the little family owner eatery. Most of the time she was only this nervous when Sherlock walked into her lab. Well, this was to do with him so that could have been the issue. Or maybe she was just not used to being the one to do things like this.

Her body jolted in such a jump it hurt when the bell signaled the door opening too loudly. A dark curly head of hair, soft eyes, big scarf, and long coat walked in and she nearly lost all the blood from her head. Panic hit when his light eyes found her and he smiled with the sweet way he always had as he walked over to the booth.
No, no, she could bloody well not do this! What was she thinking? Dear God, she should have just sent a text! It was cold but it would have made this so easy!

He sat down opposite her, grinning wide, with teeth flashing at her in that boyish way. She dropped her hands under the table to keep him from seeing them shake and she smiled with much less enthusiasm. This was going to be a long night.

"Hey, Molly!" Tom just continued smiling, "Have you already ordered?"

It's off, say it, say it! Voices were yelling at her in her brain to just cut to the chase, not drag it out, end it.

"Not yet." Was what came out instead.

Coward, a bloody coward was what she was. Every time she opened her mouth she intended to say it, but every time, the words caught on her tongue and some chatty thing rolled out. They chatted and had dinner, not that she could remember from one bite to the next what she ordered. The food came and was gone and she still didn't say all the things she planned, stalled desperately and waited for the perfect time to drop her rehearsed speech onto him. Tell him it wasn't working, avoid telling him how Sherlock returning made her dread having to see him. Avoid saying that she finally admitted to herself that he was and always had been a replacement. Her missing that man drove her to latch onto a man that looked and dressed and even smelled like Sherlock.

Those were things she would not say. Not mention how terribly guilty she was for it all. Telling him any of that would be unkind. At least as unkind as telling him she found him inferior, thought his mind could never be as sharp as one beautiful man she admired. Actually, she did not think he even was on her plane, or John's, or Greg's plane because there were times he just did not track the simplest things!

She realized that quite keenly at the wedding when the two men were in the same room. The fact that Tom was not enthralled was irritating while Sherlock spoke, but the fact that he was rude too made her want to kill him. She had been embarrassed of Tom, terribly shamed to be with him that day. It wasn't fair to him, how she felt and she knew it, but it did not change the fact that that was how she felt.

He just lacked. Lacked things she wanted him not to. Maybe he was simply too normal. Her world revolved around things that could never be called normal and she liked it that way. Tom was normal and he simply did not fit into the puzzle that was her life. She tried to ignore it but she realized at last that she was hanging onto him just to keep from going back to her old ways with Sherlock. She was just ending up there anyway, Tom or not, but that just heaped guilt on her head.

It really was useless. No one would live up to Sherlock. He ruined every man alive for her but she stopped caring, just glad he was back alive.

The plates were gone and suddenly she realized that she had no more time to stall. The shaking returned hard and it was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering from nerves. She was not good at this! Never broke an engagement before and didn't know how to begin. There was nothing in her that was one of the girls she saw in University breaking engagements every few months.

She did the first thing she thought of, reaching into her coat pocket to pull out the ring. He had not noticed she wasn't wearing it even though she hoped he would. Sherlock would have noticed, her mind chided Tom derisively, but she did not voice it. Instead, she slid the ring over the table and let it sit in front of him, pulling her hand safely back to her lap, eyes fixed on his chest to avoid looking at his face.

He picked it up, working it with his fingers, "Why are you giving it to me?"

Such a Tom thing to say, the nit, missing the obvious, "Because it belongs to you."

He grinned and laughed, oblivious, the perk to his voice grating her nerves, "I gave it to you, remember?"

"Yes." Molly nearly gagged on the next words, taking a long pause, "And ... I'm giving it back."

Silence hung in the air like a declaration of war and she waited for him to yell at her.

"Why?" He sounded so confused, face twisting into a puzzled expression.

He did not yell. It would make it too easy on her if he yelled. It would not make her feel so queasy if he raged at her because then she could be angry right back. Of course he would never do that. Her life was not that easy.

"Because I'm not good at relationships. I'm already married to my work." Her words were all true, every word and the words between the lines all the more. "I've come to realize, as happy as being with you made me, it's not fair to you if I ask you to stay. I will never be anything but my job. I will never be a wife, not a good one, at least."

She was not out rightly lying. That had been true, and she would not make a good wife. Not when she only wanted to be at the morgue and be Sherlock's pathologist. While he was gone, Tom did make her happy, but not now. He filled a place when she needed it filled. In the dark moments when she was not sure Sherlock could possibly survive, she could pretend he was safely sitting with her at the pub. She could not stand the fear while Sherlock was gone and Tom made it easier to make believe.

Honestly, she never loved him. She liked him well enough as a person, but that was all. That would not be entering this conversation though. It was better to make it seem like she was doing this for Tom, make her the bad guy, because it was her fault. She could shoulder the blame and be quite fine with it.

Tom relaxed in his arm chair, lights dimmed low as he watched the fish in the tank across the room swim about. The tinted water reflected blue on the carpet below it in a flawed triangle that shifted and danced like real water. There were even numbers to each color and breed, even number of plants, one castle, one treasure chest with bubble lid, and one plecostomus.

He chewed his nail lightly, working the ring with his other hand. It had been unexpected to have her leaving him as well as inconvenient. Not that he could not work around it. Obviously he would still come around, playing a desperate man still in love and trying to win her back. That would be easy!

It would be as easy to linger in her life as it had been to enter it. All it had taken was mingling in the right circles until she appeared. She had been ready the minute he walked into her life. He had always been a great student of people and drama. Things all lead back to probable causes and equations if you knew how to map it. Chemicals drove people in their habits and that was predictable. He found the study interesting, found he had a skill for understanding the odd behaviors once he found a persons pattern.

Every play in high school and university cast him as one lead or another because he was painfully good in any roll they offered. He excelled in the at of drama. Walking into her life and offering her himself in curly hair-a style he hated, preferring it jelled and straight-with a long coat and scarf chosen just for their similarity to that man, easy.

Playing her Sherlock, but one in love and shy as well as non threatening, another simple task. It allowed him to stay very close and watch everything and everyone in her circle. All of it was simple and she talked about every little thing, told him about John and Mary, Greg, Anderson and his obsessive needs. Learning with Molly, it could have been an educational show.

"Sebastian, did you call for me?" A low and quiet voice called from the door.

"My name is Tom, remember? Don't get sloppy!" He chided snappily. "And yes, I called you." Standing up, he walked to the tank and started into the water a moment before holding the ring over the top and releasing it to sink down into the two inch thick sand bellow.

It had been fun playing a shy, confidence lacking, dense version of the detective. The girl had even been entertaining. Sherlock had something there. He never quite put his finger on why, but she was interesting. There was something about Ms. Hooper that pulled him, and must have pulled the others too. It was a puzzle he needed a bit more time to understand. To understand though, he needed to see her with other subjects like Sherlock. He had not gotten as much of that as he would have liked.

Of course, he needed more time to study Sherlock on his own as well. That was part of the game, the game they all seemed to be playing now without knowing it.

While he got few benefits most men offering a ring would get from their intended, it was still fun. Though many eyes tended to be on her, her eyes were only for one man. Everything she did revolved around that one focus. She might not agree, but he saw the pattern. Romancing her had been no different than a play, taking on a carefully studied roll. He did get closer than most to winning the prize, though he was not sure what he would have done with her if she had married him, he still got the farthest of the three of them. She never had really taken him fully to her bed, which disappointed him only because he liked the idea of having that one over on Holmes and probably Moriarty. No matter. He was not finished yet.

After dinner, Molly went to the lab to find a little comfort. Being at a morgue should not be the first place a normal person would run to relax but she already established that she was not normal. Her sigh, deep and long, echoed over the clean walls and floors. She felt like the lowest of the low. Maybe the flesh eating bacteria were better than she was at this point. She had never come so close to making a grown man cry. He was very composed, but she saw the stress in his face, the crinkling and watering in his eyes.

She never wanted to hurt him, didn't set out to, she just hadn't been thinking clearly after Sherlock. It was never that she tried to use him, because she hadn't. She went out of her way not to use him. It just had not worked out that way. It was not exactly fair, what she did.

Her eyes focused carefully down the leans of her scope, watching the pink tinted creature squiggle. If she was going to be a bit more honest with herself, she had really been hoping that Sherlock might be here tonight as he had often been in the past. It would have been better than nice to have seen him. They did not need to talk. Seeing his face was good enough even if that did put her on the level with a high school girl with a crush. Love and money were the great equalizers. That and death, of course.

Having not seen him in quite some time was getting to her. It had to be a case, of course, but that did not ease her mind. John was not around as much to keep him out of trouble, which tended to be a bad thing. John had really helped Sherlock. She remembered how he was before they met. Not that she had not loved him then, but she worried less when John entered the picture.

It was childish but she really wanted him to walk in, muddling around in his usual fuss. She could see him in her minds eye, shuffling pipettes around, but he would look up suddenly, frown and look down again. A little time would pass and then he would make some offhand comment that her ring was not on her hand or in her locker anymore, something he should not know, but did. He would say something else, comment on her ending the relationship and she could bask in the glow of being free of it. That ring was awfully heavy on her finger when Sherlock looked at her, even if she was not wearing it at the time.

A rather giddy laugh left her lips, her eyes sparkling even though Sherlock was not around. Her little fantasy helped it sink in. She was free! She rather liked that feeling! A few months ago she might not have expected to feel so light after breaking an engagement, but she really did! Maybe this was why other girls did it. It was almost a high, being rid of something that weighed her down so long.

Little did she know in that moment that the little giddy feeling should have been her first clue that things were about to go horribly, catastrophically wrong in her life. As long as anyone was around Sherlock bloody Holmes, happy moments tended to be the beginning of the world shattering into pieces.

AN:The bad guys always use Molly because she seemed the easy way in. She has horrid luck with men and I just identify with that so much! I love her for it!

When she said: "Maybe it's just my type." That just planted a worm in my brain, you know? I desperately wanted this trend to continue! I don't want Molly to have dated that ONE normal guy, I want it to get twisted, because Molly is like John! She attracts these men! Look at the people she spends her time with! She is one of those kinds of girls that just draws them in somehow without knowing it! I was desperate for Tom to be a bad guy since he first showed up.

Oh, and that lab scene in a Sign of Three. I honestly think she was teasing him. She was smirking the whole time. She was teasing him and intentionally making him as uncomfortable as he always made her. Little payback. I know there are a lot of schools of thought on this, but I have my own and it fits my story plot. I don't even think she liked Tom enough to let him go all the way. I could be wrong but I don't think there is room enough in Molly's heart for any but Sherlock. I have my theories on her and I'll explain more later.
The story will be mainly from Molly's perspective.