Disclaimer: I own nothing.

This one is for Jillypups.

WARNINGS: These triggers go for the entire story, not just for this chapter but encompass the story as a whole. Please heed the warnings. sociopath!Molly, murder, blood, sex, oral sex, vaginal sex, Molly is not who see seems, lots of dubious things, criminal masterminds…it runs in the family, suicide, there's a bunch of creepy udnertones, like kind of really creepy. This is a dark, angsty fic.

Also: here be smut…again.

Any mistakes are mine and mine alone and I apologize if they offend anyone!

(Just an FYI: Title of the story comes from Macklemore's song Otherside; each chapter title comes from the song Nothing but the Water by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals; and every chapter is based on a song, which will be listed below. In short, I still own nothing.)

On the cusp of death (it won't be us)

Part III: This old world has brought me pain

I want all that is not mine

I want him but we're not right

In the darkness I will meet my creators

And they will all agree, I'm a suffocator

Smother - Daughter

It's raining and Molly is looking over everything methodically. She's scouring through their plans that have been decades in the making and there is a feeling in the depth of her stomach, something that pulls and yanks and she doesn't know whether to be excited or terrified.

The air is alive with static and she can feel Jim's presence in the doorway.

She cocks an eyebrow at him, wordlessly asking him what he wants.

He leans against the doorframe, his shoulder supporting the wood, his arms crossed over his chest. "We're positive this is going to work?"

"Are you doubting me Jim?" She asks.

He snorts and gives her a small smirk, his hooded eyes looking at her and she's suddenly brought back to when they were younger and they spent their days and nights learning each other's bodies (and even though it's almost been a decade later, the only body she can think about, the only body she yearns for is Sherlock Holmes and everything-everything is for Sherlock.) "You?" He says, "never."

She hears what he doesn't say; I'd follow you into the deepest circle of hell (because the deepest circle of hell is reserved for people like Molly and Jim.)

(A crack of thunder is heard and she feels it shake the foundation of their flat, a zap of lightening illuminates the sky with a howl of wind and their flat is enveloped in darkness.)

This is where they belong. This is where they make their home.

In darkness.

"We're going to be here all night looking at these." Molly tells him, her fingers clenched tightly in the pockets of her lab coat.

"You don't have plans." Sherlock says matter-of-factly and almost smugly and she has the sudden urge to smack the smirk off his face. "Except for going home, feeding your cat and indulging in one too many glasses of wine. Am I keeping you from anything important, Doctor Hooper?"

"Molly." She says automatically, "My name is Molly." Her blood is boiling and she can feel her nails dig into her skin. She gives him a slight depreciating smile, her eyes twinkling, "I'm sure you remember calling me that."

They've never acknowledged knowing each other in the past. They've never acknowledged that she was his first and she's never acknowledged that he's taken over her fortress and consumed her whole. (It's at night though, in the cloak of darkness, that she remembers the phantom feeling of his hands on her skin and the way his cock fits so perfectly inside of her and she remembers his hot breath against her lips and she remembers his ragged groans and her pleas. She remembers everything at night.)

"I need coffee." She mutters, tearing her eyes from his as he scrutinizes her. What do you see? She wants to ask him. Do you see me? Have you ever seen me? "Do you want one?"

"Black-"

"Two sugars." She finishes. "Sherlock, I know."

(When the doors close behind her, she vaguely thinks she hears a soft, me too.)

"No." Molly is adamant. Her voice holding no room for argument.

"Molly." Her father says, his voice weary and his expression tired. He's grown older, her father. He looks years older than he actually is and she wants to weep when she looks at him. He's physically slower and weaker than he should be and she knows that he thinks this will make him feel useful but she can't. She can't.

"It's dangerous." She tells him.

"Our lives are dangerous." He reminds her. This life I brought you into.

"Things could go wrong."

"Yet you're willing to take this gamble with the other man."

"I could give two shit's about the other man." Molly hisses and she's distantly aware of the door opening and closing the smell of smoke and apples invades her senses and she knows it's her uncle. "I care about you. You're sick. You're dying." She feels her breath catch and the words die in her throat.

And there it is. The crux of the matter. Her father, the one person in her life that has always been there and has been the center of her world for so long, is dying. In retrospect, she knew he would die before her, but she always thought he would die in a blaze of glory rather than in a hospital bed with medicine pumped through his system and wires clinging to him. (Because without her father, who else does she have left? Jim? Her uncle? That's a scary thought. Sherlock, her mind whispers, you have Sherlock. And that, she thinks, is an even scarier one.)

Looking at him, at his eyes once full of life and now full of acceptance at what is likely to come, Molly knows she's going to cave. She sighs and closes her eyes, "you're not allowed to die." She says.

Her father laughs and Molly is transported back to a time when her father was healthy and their house smelled like gingerbread, cinnamon and peppermint and her mother would laugh and her parents would kiss and life was simple. (But their life was never simple. It was just an illusion.)

She looks over her shoulder at her uncle who says nothing and then turns back to her father who is already planning everything.

(There is a sinking feeling in her stomach and Molly doesn't know whether she should cry or vomit or laugh hysterically. In the end, she opts to just stand there and listen to her father talk, memorizing his every feature and every move, cataloguing him in her fortress, ensuring his immortality in their mortal life.)

"Someone died." Sherlock announces.

John rolls his eyes and Molly keeps her fury and rage and grief bottled up. "We're in a morgue, Sherlock. Of course, someone has died."

Sherlock shakes his head. "No." He says, his eyes tracking Molly. "Someone died."

Molly clears her throat and wills away the tears. "My dad." She says softly. "He died."

"God." John is aghast and sympathetic. Pity and empathy flowing through his eyes. "Molly, I am so sorry."

You should be, Molly snarls in her head. Her eyes burn and she shakes her head, collecting her breath, imagining the multiple ways she can kill John Watson and get away with it (and it's every way imaginable, because Molly is creative and pathology has aided her in hiding multitude of things.)

"How'd he die?" John asks and it's like he regrets asking it as soon as the words come out of his mouth. It's instinctive, she knows this. To follow sympathy with curiosity. It's human nature to want to know how and when and why.

You shot him, she wants to tell him (she wants to rage, she wants to hit him and scratch him, she wants to watch him bleed and when he's on his knees begging for mercy, she wants to kill him, to watch the life drain from his eyes and she wants to tell him; a life for a life), you shot and killed the only person in my life who was sane enough to keep me going. Except, she can't tell him that her father was the cabbie who threatened to kill Sherlock. She can't tell him about how she raged and broke every single fucking thing in their house. She can't tell him about how her grief fuels her plans, her cause, her fucking life.

(You're going to be the last one standing,)

"Cancer." Molly replies. "Cancer."

She doesn't listen to John's apologies. Instead she glances over his head and notices Sherlock staring at her, an indiscernible look on his face.

(And not for the first time, she wonders what he sees when he looks at her.)

"I want him to suffer." Molly says, her eyes rimmed red and her voice echoing in the graveyard with a restrained fury.

"I can torture him before we kill him." Jim offers and he says it so nonchalantly, as if it's nothing.

She shakes her head, thinking back to how all she wanted to do when she found out was wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze. But that's not how Molly works, she's diligent, she's perfected torture and she knows John Watson's weaknesses, she knows his pressure points and she plans to exploit them all. "No. No. I don't want to kill him. I want to make him suffer. I want to take everything good in his life and I want to destroy it."

Her eyes shift to the side to stare at her uncle who stands to her left and he looks at her, mouth set in a grim line and nods, pride shining through his eyes as if saying; welcome to the family, welcome to the fold, it's just you and I left, Apple.

"How'd you suppose we do that?"

"Easy." Molly replies, eyes staring ahead at the tombstone, mind memorizing every curve of the every letter. "We kill Sherlock Holmes."

(The words taste like ash coming out of her mouth but out of the ashes rises a phoenix. Or so they say.)

Her uncle is the one to introduce Irene Adler to Jim.

Jim is the one who introduces Irene Adler to Sherlock.

Sherlock introduces Irene Adler to Molly early Christmas morning, after he tore into her and ridiculed her.

(His words did hurt her, because all she can think about, all she can think about are his hands and his mouth and the way he fit perfectly in her and how he's all she craves. But words, his words, they hurt and sometimes, she wonders if he remembers her at all.)

Irene Adler is still alive.

(But not for long. Because Irene Adler, she's a liability and Molly has never liked liabilities.)

"Who're you?" Irene asks her, her lips painted a deep red, her dress a pristine white.

Molly leans forward, her back straight, legs crossed and hair pulled back tightly. "Molly." She tells her quietly, "My name is Molly."

A shadow of recognition flits across her eyes and she sighs deeply, sinking down into her couch. "You're here to kill me then, I suppose?"

She has to hand it to her; the woman takes her impending death rather gracefully.

(In another life, Molly thinks she and Irene would have been best friends.)

Molly nods, "is there anything you'd like to say before I kill you?" It's a courtesy that Molly doesn't offer just anyone and while all she'd like to do is get this over with, she concedes that Irene Adler is good at what she does.

But Molly is better. (Molly is always better.)

Irene is silent before she leans back on her couch and crosses her arms over her chest and crosses her legs, heels tapping on the hardwood floor. "They've always underestimated you, haven't they?" She murmurs.

"I'll be the last one standing." Molly vows.

"Of that, I have no doubt in my mind, Molly Magnussen."

"Hooper." Molly corrects. "Hooper."

Irene laughs.

(She dies mid-laugh, her smile permanently etched on her face, mouth wide, lipstick red.)

"You killed her." Her uncle says the next time he sees her. He's sitting across the table from her, studying her.

"Are you upset?" Molly asks, unable to keep the snark from her voice. "Did I kill a favorite pet? Next time, don't hire such an impressionable whore."

"Isn't that what you are?" He asks casually, cutting his steak into bite-sized pieces. "Impressionable? After all, isn't all of this," he waves his fork and knife around the room and at himself and then her, "all about your infatuation with some boy, Apple?"

She grits her teeth and pushes her chair back. "I really hate that fucking name." She tells him and then she leaves the room, grabbing her coat and slamming the front door behind her.

(Sherlock is more than some infatuation. He's more than an obsession. He's in her body. He's in her mind. He's in her soul.)

"This is it." Jim says.

"Everything we've worked for." She agrees.

"He's going to spend the next few years tearing down everything we've built."

"No." She corrects him, "he's going to spend the next few years tearing down everything he thinks we've built." She studies the man in front of her, "are you ready?"

"Baby," he says, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her body close to his, "I was born ready."

She laughs and he catches it, sealing it with a kiss.

(His kisses taste like ash now, but out of the ashes rises a phoenix. Or so they say.)

"Sherlock," she asks softly, knocking on the door quietly, "are you alright?" She winces as soon as the words come out of her mouth. "Sorry. Stupid question."

"Molly." He rumbles and she can hear the pain in his voice and for once, she wonders if this was all worth it. "Molly."

She toes off her shoes and tiptoes to the bed, lifting the covers and sinking in beside him. "What do you need, Sherlock?" She asks, running her fingers through his damp hair. "What do you need?"

"You."

She's breathing in deeply, struggling for words and a part of her is so angry that they fail her. She throws her head back, arches her back and lets out a feral moan, because the feel of Sherlock's mouth between her legs sets her body on fire and she's moaning and writhing beneath him and she can almost imagine the way his eyes light up with glee or the way he's cataloguing how she twists and turns and cries out.

She doesn't know how it happened; at first they're drinking, cheering to his health and his impending mission to bring down Moriarty's network (but it's not his Sherlock, don't you see that? It's never been his. None of this has been his, it's mine, all mine, everything belongs to me) and the next moment they're meeting somewhere in the middle, or maybe it's Molly who throws her arms around his neck, desperate to recreate that night almost a decade ago when she felt every single part of him in her body.

(Maybe, just maybe, its even Sherlock who pulls her by the hem of her sweater and pulls her to him, crushing his lips to hers, trying to feel something, anything.)

(Molly has long since stopped trying to feel anything because people like her, people like them, they feel nothing.)

Despite how it happened, how it begun (it began so long ago, so very long ago that Molly has forgotten a time when she hasn't thought about Sherlock or a time when Sherlock isn't the only thing consuming her every thought), all she can concentrate is the blinding explosion that is set off in her body. She's taking in a shuddering breath, looking at him with hooded eyes. "Fuck, Sherlock." She breathes out, "Where'd you learn that?" Then she claps a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter. She pushes him away and gets up on weak and shaky knees, ripping off her shirt, unclasping her bra, letting it fall away from her and watches as his eyes narrow to her breasts and nipples that peak under his intense stare.

She's grabbing a condom from her bedside drawer and climbing over him, her legs straddling him as she goes to roll the condom on his cock. She positions herself above him, hand grabbing him and placing him at her entrance and his hands wrap around her waist, engulfing her, squeezing tightly enough that she knows there will be bruises come the morning.

"Do you really want to know?" He asks. He keeps his voice unaffected, but Molly knows him better than that. She knows the little hitch in his voice, she knows that he aches just as much as she does and she knows that when he's staring at her, he's trying to discern who she is, because this Molly and his Molly are two different people (but they aren't, are they? They're one in the same. She's just good at pretending, Molly is always so good at pretending.)

Her mind flashes back to a woman with dark hair, wearing a pristine white dress and lips painted a deep breath, forever caught in a laugh and she feels an intense rage, an intense emotion of jealousy that rips through her and she has never hated Irene fucking Adler more in her life than at this moment and if she could, she would kill her one hundred times over. "No." Molly gasps out as she sinks onto him. "I don't want to know." And then she moves. She moves as if she's possessed. She moves as if this is the last night on earth she has with him and she moves as if heaven and hell are being torn asunder, fighting over which one to take (but she knows, she just knows that she's going to the deepest circle of hell, because that's reserved for people like her and all she wants is this moment, this night to pretend to be the Molly, Sherlock knows. To pretend to be the Molly that Sherlock could maybe, just maybe, feel something more for.)

It's not long before she's crying out again, her body set alight and she's moaning and gasping and pleading and maybe even sobbing because this is both everything and nothing like she imagined. Sherlock is both everything and nothing she remembers.

"Sherlock." She moans over and over again, as if it's her absolution, as if saying his name will save her from everything she's done and everything she's become and everything she will be.

She has never wanted to confess everything so badly as she does when she sees him orgasm. She wants to come clean and tell him everything and beg his forgiveness that she knows he will never give. Instead, she catches his groan with her lips and she swallows him whole. Her fingernails dig into his shoulders, giving him scars to match her bruises and she doesn't stop kissing him, doesn't stop memorizing the way he tastes and smells an.

His hands are splayed on her back, steadying her, his blue-green eyes boring into her and he lets out a breath, laying his forehead in between the valley of her breasts, his sweat-matted body sticking to hers. She runs her fingers through his damp curls, still situated on him and she can feel his lips moving across her skin. She pulls his hair when she finally understands his words.

"You. It's you. You. It's you."

You. It's you. You. It's you. It'syou. Youyouyou.

(It can mean anything. It can mean everything.

But a sinking feeling in Molly's stomach tells her it can only mean one thing.)

When she wakes up the next morning, her body is sore and the spot next to her is empty.

In fact, her flat is empty, evidence that he was even here, gone.

(She's not surprised. Because if there's one thing she and Sherlock have in common, it's knowing how to disappear.)

Janine is Jim's cousin and Tom is her boyfriend/fuck-buddy/soul-mate.

She'd laugh at the description, except she can actually see it. She can see it in the way Tom can ready Janine's body language and facial expressions. She can see it in the way he reaches out for her when she laughs too hard and too forcefully and causes Molly to stare at her harder and she vaguely wonders what Janine has done and been through in her life.

Then again, her cousin is Jim Moriarty and Molly thinks that's enough to make anyone go slightly crazy.

The more Molly studies Janine and Tom, the more she relates them to her own parents. (Janine, she thinks, is her father, brimming with ideas and plans and Tom is just along for the ride, a pitiful soul with the sorry excuse of falling in love with a woman who's ambition is more than he can handle. Not everyone is made for this life and for a moment, just a moment, Molly feels bad for the inevitable fate that the future will hold for Tom. Get out, Molly wants to tell him, get out while you can. But just like her mother, he stays unmoving and Molly looks away, unwilling to be another spectator.)

"Do you know what to do?"

Janine cocks an eyebrow at her and nods. "Of course we do." She leans in towards Molly, "while Jimmy may love you and talk as if the sun sets and rises out of your ass, if you lay one hand on Tom, I'll fucking rip your throat out. I don't care who you are or who your uncle is."

Molly laughs and it's a loud sound, without any humor. "He's not my type."

They exchange a look and Janine nods, satisfied with what she sees swimming in Molly's eyes.

(No. Molly only has eyes for Sherlock. She's only ever had eyes for Sherlock.)

"Congratulations," Jim tells her on the phone. "Your boyfriend has officially completed his task."

She looks at her uncle who is sitting across the table from her, smoking from his pipe and looking at her over the rim of his glasses. "Not quite. Enjoy retirement Jim."

"You'll need me again." He says confidently and with a laugh. "You'll always need me, Molly Hooper."

Magnussen, she wants to say. I'm Molly Magnussen. But she hasn't been Molly Magnussen for so long. "Maybe." She replies, not taking her eyes off her uncle. "Maybe."

The flat is dark when she creeps into his room and slips underneath the covers.

He's having a nightmare, calling out names in his sleep and her chest lurches and twists when she hears her name being called out in a flurry. "I'm right here, Sherlock." She whispers into his ear, kissing his pulse and feeling it thrum rapidly.

He stills and buries himself in her arms like a child would.

"I wonder," she says quietly, "throughout all these years, did you remember me?" She's almost terrified of his answer.

It feels like hours later when he presses a kiss to her collarbone, tongue sweeping out and tasting her. "I never forgot." He mutters just as quietly, and if Molly were anyone else, she would have missed it.

But Molly isn't anyone else and she heard it loud and clear.

(I never forgot you.

You. It's you.

You.)

HUGE HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE. LIKE OH MY GOD. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH.

HUGE SHOUTOUT TO: Deductions-of-Sherlolly, whenisayrun, KavAlwaysCastle, Rocking the Redhead, BenAddict Holmes, InMollysWildestDreams, Empress of Verace, EvenlynHunters, and purplepam. IF I MISSED ANYONE I AM SO SO SORRY. BUT KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH!

MAD LOVE AND RESPECT,

BB