Surprise
Author's Note: This has taken me a bit longer than it should have and for that I am sorry.I wanted to make sure that I had something substantial to put here though and that it was something worth the time to read it. This chapter is another long one, but I kind of let the chapters decide where they should end.
When Molly asked the Doctor what the date was and he drew up the sleeve of his jacket and checked the watch that faced the wrong way on his arm, she already knew. Even if they had traveled through time, she couldn't let tomorrow pass by without doing something.
By the time that they made the other stops that Molly requested of the Doctor, it was dusk and the drizzle had grown into a deluge. They climbed the darkened stairwell up to 221B and turned the corner to find Sherlock scrunched up on the couch wearing his night clothes and reading a newspaper. Molly looked his clothing over and recognized it as the set she'd brought him from England.
So our luggage is here?
The Doctor deposited the clothes they'd purchased out on a vacant couch across the room from Sherlock. Molly couldn't see his face and he didn't look toward her. She came and laid the remainder of the flowers down on the table beside him. "I bought these for you—to pretty the place up."
"Why did you go out?" His eyes never left the paper.
"Certainly couldn't let the poor girl go out like she was dressed," the Doctor said.
"I want Molly to answer," Sherlock said and Molly knew the tone. He suspected something and he wasn't making it a secret.
"Just—just getting clothes."
Sherlock folded the paper and bounded to his feet. "If there's one thing I can be sure about when it pertains to you, Doctor, it's that you lie. You're lying about the clothes and you're attempting to make Molly lie. And we all know she isn't capable of that." There was cruelty in his eyes that she was all too familiar with.
"The only reason she could know what happened to me is because no one's going to bother to ask her or care what she thinks or knows," Sherlock added.
He was doing it again. Being horrible and Molly felt the openness that she had experienced around him hours ago start to ebb away.
"Why do you always do this?" the words were barely audible.
Sherlock eyed her and turned toward the Doctor. "The excuse of going to buy clothes might have worked if I thought that you cared about adhering to this period's norms, Doctor. Your watch, worn on the wrist a style not popular until the 1920s, it also houses a digital numbering under the face. Your clothes, completely next century—though they'd probably be better suited for a mathematics teacher…"
It seemed he might have stopped here, but when Sherlock was on a roll it wasn't like he could just let something go.
"Socks—containing polyester, which is a material not invented until 1941 and the aglet on your shoelace is plastic. Then there's the fact that when we were in the TARDIS before Molly awakened I had time to look around. One of the rooms adjacent to the one we were in is a huge wardrobe with more than enough period clothing to suit Molly's needs." Sherlock finished.
John's grave? Would he somehow know about that too?
Molly knew that if anything would make Sherlock sour it was hearing that, so she told him the next best thing. It was the truth anyway.
"Why are you doing it—it was just innocent—if you have to know the Doctor was showing me my grave! There are you satisfied!" Molly was screaming at Sherlock, even he couldn't believe it judging by the look on his face.
The room was still for a moment and then Molly sighed. "I'm—I'm sorry."
"What do you mean you were looking at your grave?"
"The Molly Hooper from this time died in childbirth, it's the reason why she's safe to have here because there's literally no chance of her creating paradoxes by messing with her other self, not that she should be able to create them considering that she's not from this universe, similar Mollies, but different enough that there shouldn't be any issues. Still it's safer to only have one Molly in one time," the Doctor said rambling on.
"Would that mean there was a Sherlock in this world?"
Molly shook her head. "And no John Watson either—some people just don't exist in a certain universe. My guess is that the only Holmes and Watson this world knew were in stories…"
She knew it was a lie, but what else could she do? She didn't want him worried and it was just for his own good. Plus it made sense, the book them was the real them here.
"Speaking of which…" the Doctor reached into his jacket and fished out a book that was much too large to fit, "this is all about you," he said.
The book in his hand was thick and bound with green leather. The Essential Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. There was a smaller line of text below that: As told by his biographer, John Watson.
Sherlock snatched the book down and flipped through it and Molly had to admit she was curious too. She sidled up next to him as he stopped on a header in the middle of the book.
The Final Problem
"That's what Moriarty called it on the roof that day," Sherlock said.
"Do you think it could be about what happened?" Molly asked.
The Doctor grabbed the books from their palms and it vanished into the jacket. "Spoilers," the Doctor chided them. "I'm going to have to leave you here for a while, you'll be safe for the most part if you stick to the flat and don't attempt to alter history. Don't talk to anyone who looks important and don't get photographed…"
"Wait where are you going?"
"Time's still broken and there's something here that shouldn't be, if things get out of control I've got to put a little failsafe in place."
Sherlock was still upset about something, Molly just felt it. But she didn't know what it could be. He seemed mad when they came in and she wondered it had to do with something that happened before that. What had he been doing?
The newspaper…
"How can we be sure you'll return?"
"Because leaving us in this time would be more dangerous than taking us home, we could do irrefutable damage to the future. Imagine if my general knowledge of the past were applied to make us billionaires? Or what if you went down to Bart's and synthesized a bunch of medicines and created Hooper Pharmaceuticals…."
"What he said," The Doctor clapped his hands together as he headed back to the TARDIS. "Plus I always come back."
He paused, dipping his hand into that seemingly bottomless pocket and pulled out a white sack. "Before I go, have some more money," the Doctor stacked the money into Molly's hands. The Doctor slipped into the TARDIS and shut the door. He was in there for a few moments and then he returned with a suitcase in one hand and Toby clutched in the other.
The Doctor dropped the suitcase a Molly's feet and held Toby up as if he was going to hand him back to her. At the last moment he pulled the cat back and gazed into those alert feline eyes as if to communicate an emotion only known to cats. Then his face softened. "You look after them Toby," he said.
Meow
"Now Molly needs you, I know she thinks she's in charge. That's the problem with humans."
He handed Toby off to Molly and then kissed her on either cheek. Then he moved to grab Sherlock's hand and shook it vigorously. Something about the goodbye felt so final it scared Molly, but she trusted the Doctor. She didn't even know why. But she did.
As he stride back into the blue police box, his TARDIS, she waved and embarrassingly enough she felt her eyes begin to tear up. Seconds later the TARDIS begin to fade from sight as the engines filled the room with a dull whirring noise. When it had completely vanished there was no sign that it had ever been real. Molly could have been a crazy woman living in Victorian London, dreaming about fantastic Doctors and a future that never would be.
Molly almost forgot about how angry Sherlock had been over the course of the night because she still had so much work to do before tomorrow. She couldn't be bothered with the kitchen in their flat, she would have to go up to Mrs. Hudson's. Luckily she was more like their Mrs. Hudson than Molly would have first guessed. The matron of the property was all too happy to help Molly with the baking.
When the oven was finally shut and Mrs. Hudson had gone to clean the utensils, Molly pushed in next to her at the wash bins. "I've got it Mrs. Hudson."
"Nonsense, dear, I've got this. You've got to be well rested."
"You wouldn't believe it but I'm pretty used to the long nights—I worked long nights plenty of times next to Sher—" Molly caught herself.
Mrs. Hudson smiled and Molly knew she didn't suspect anything out of the ordinary. "That husband of yours is a lucky man. I guess a woman's got to take care of a good man like him though," she said. "He's going to be so pleased with all of this work you're doing."
Molly splashed water up out of the washtub to get the flower off of her arms. She smiled nervously and averted her eyes. "I hope he will—Sherlock's had it hard. Not to mention I'm not much of a wife." Molly was only saying what Sherlock would have thought. She wondered if an like him could ever really be married.
"Come now," Mrs. Hudson said grasping her at the shoulder. "Tell me what you got him for his special day?"
A red warmth crept up Molly's cheeks and she couldn't contain the sly smile that slipped over her face. "The Doc—my uncle found out that the great violinist Ole Bull is here in town tonight with some other musicians. I'm not that familiar with all of it but Sherlock plays and I just know he'll—he might enjoy it."
Mrs. Hudson stepped around to Molly's side and pressed one hand to Molly's stomach and the other to her upper back. She pulled Molly upright until her posture was straight. "A woman has to be confident; he wouldn't have married you if he didn't enjoy you, dear."
In a perfect world…
"I know, Mrs. Hudson. I just get nervous. Thank you for the help with the cake and everything," Molly yawned.
"Go and get some rest, dear. You've got to be wide awake for Sherlock's birthday. I'll tend to the cake."
"Thank you," Molly said before slipping back to their flat. Sherlock was on the couch still, reading over a book that he had found in the storage at the base of the stairs. Molly strolled half way past him before he acknowledged her.
"Molly, if we're to keep appearances up it might be necessary for us to share the bedroom. Our Mrs. Hudson would notice and we don't want this one to…"
"I understand," Molly said. She wondered sometimes if he really understood what he did to her. She wondered if he understood a lot of the reactions others had to him. He was so candid with his responses, it was like he was thinking so much all of the time and yet words came out of him without a filter, like he had never thought about them at all.
Then as if he had read her thoughts or been saving it for dramatic effect, Sherlock continued. "I'll take the floor of course, and you'll still have your privacy," he said.
Molly nodded. "Thank you—Sherlock," she rushed into the bedroom and shut the door behind herself.
There had been cake and they sang Happy Birthday. After that they headed out to the concert where they saw Ole Bull, Clara and Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt—it was simply beautiful and somehow the spirit of time just engulfed Molly and she thought for just a brief time that she belonged here in this world.
Had the Doctor planned this?
He had left them only hours before, during the night, yet it felt like she hadn't ever belonged more in a place than she did here. Sherlock didn't seem to be out of place either, though he refused to dress in an appropriate manner for the times. He wore his usual coat and scarf, though he had carried a cane.
It was the only way to attend such an event, he had chided her. Though this chiding sounded much more friendly and jovial.
When they sang to him he had been in good spirits. It was hard to find him being rude around Mrs. Hudson, he kept himself pleasant for her most of the time. But even after they left the house he was still treating Molly with more respect than she thought he ever had for this long a time. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him to say the wrong thing or ignore her.
They walked home in a light snow, it was all too romantic and Molly felt like if this had been a movie or TV show this would have been the time when the handsome, but cold seemingly lead kissed the plucky, yet shy heroine. But that wasn't how Sherlock operated.
Sherlock grasped her at the shoulder, his grip felt too strong through the coat. For a split second it was like he was touching her bare skin. She turned to face him and he was pointing up at something across the street. "Well look where we are," he said.
"Saint Bart's," Molly looked up at the building looming in the darkness, somewhat frightened by how similar it looked in another universe and a hundred and twenty seven years earlier. She smiled and turned to point, the snow caught in the tendrils of hair around her face. "One hundred and eleven years from now there's going to be a Starbucks right there," she pointed to a corner where a shoe repair workshop stood.
"I would kill for a coffee right now."
Molly laughed a little too nervously and couldn't help but look up at the building. The spot where Sherlock jumped didn't exist yet, well it was covered by a taller lip. When the hospital was renovated after The Blitz they left it out. She fought the urge to ask him about John but as they continued on she wondered something else.
"What did you see in the newspaper that made you upset yesterday?" Molly asked. Leave it to her to ruin a lovely time by asking something that was none of her business.
Sherlock looked at her, shock, surprise or perhaps both shining in his eyes. He turned to answer her and a scream reverberated through the streets. They were out of sight of Bart's now and the screams seemed to be coming from that direction. Before Molly had time to process what was happening Sherlock was running, pulling her along behind him. The cold stung her cheeks as they raced through the gas lamp lit streets toward the sound of the calamity.
"Christ," Molly stopped short of the scene and Sherlock pounced down onto all fours. Laying there in the snow, without a drop of blood spilled on the ground was a skeleton. Molly could tell by the shape and size it was more than likely female, younger than herself more than likely.
"What happened here?" Molly asked.
"I have no idea."
Sherlock looked up at her from the ground, he was already holding a magnifying glass, ready to scrutinize the body. Where had he gotten that from?
She'd given him the cake and the tickets to the lovely concert, but if she knew anything about Sherlock he would consider this her best gift of the night.
Molly sat on the steps of a baker that was right across from Bart's with Sherlock's jacket draped over her shoulders as she watched him fuss over the body. (Fuss was the only accurate way to describe the way with which he was excited by this corpse) It had been a short time and he hadn't stopped muttering to himself about the lack of evidence, the cleanliness of the scene, the masterful way that the body had been stripped of skin and fluids. None of what he said let on that even he had any clue about how it happened.
And he was positively ecstatic over it.
Mundane crimes were such a bother for Sherlock, he would turn down anything that felt ordinary and simple to him. Sherlock was always looking for the complicated and the difficult—and this was more than just that. This seemed impossible.
But Molly reminded herself that she'd traveled across the universe and to the past in a blue box no bigger than her shower at home—so the impossible was under review.
"Molly this is absolutely glorious. I can't see anything here to suggest who the killer was or what they used. How long would you say it was before we sprinted back here?"
"Less than a minute."
"One minute, what could do this to a person in less than a minute?"
"You think she's the one that screamed?"
"What do you think?"
"Sherlock, the more likely thing is that someone else screamed and ran away. This skeleton was arranged here but the killing and the skinning took place somewhere else," Molly said.
Sherlock looked at her as if he had never seen her before and then turned back to his work.
Molly happened to glance across the street and on either side of the entrance to Bart's she noticed something else that must have been left out after The Blitz. A hospital built in 1123 would have gone through a lot of renovations, so it's possible that they were taken out some other time. Guarding the entrance archway to the building there were two great statues of angels with their arms down at their sides and solemn, blank faces staring out across the street and right towards them.
Their posture, the architecture of their wings and the general sculpting work was familiar but Molly couldn't really place it.
A whistle rang out from up the block and the sound hooves galloping over cobblestone suddenly became apparent to Molly.
"This is a crime scene! What do you think you're doing here?"
Molly couldn't believe what she was hearing, she rose to her feet and turned to see Detective Inspector Lestrade mounted on horseback in uniform and with a tiny, little mustache just above his lip.
"Oh my God," she muttered.
Sherlock turned to look at him and couldn't help but do a double take before laughing. "I know what it is, I've done well not to disturb anything, though you may want to take my help in this matter," Sherlock said.
"How do I know you're not the one responsible for this?" asked Lestrade. By this time a few other men from the force had ridden up beside him.
Sherlock held his hands up. "There's no blood on my fingers and I'm not carrying any tools. To transport a body here and leave it I would have needed some form of transport, but these bones have barely grown cold. This woman was alive a few minutes ago—I heard her scream."
"I told you once, she had to have been dumped here," Molly said. She walked over to Lestrade and extended her hand. "Molly Holmes—my husband here and I are enthusiasts, detectives."
Molly had been waiting to call herself Holmes for a very long time.
Sherlock glared at her and Lestrade climbed down from his horse to walk over to Sherlock's side. "I'm sorry, Mister and Missus Holmes, but we don't allow amateurs onto crime scenes," Lestrade hoisted Sherlock up by the shoulder but lost his grip.
When Sherlock spilled over onto the ground he grasped the femur and knocked it out of place. Molly gasped and Sherlock dropped the bone back onto the ground. "Dust," he said.
"What was that?" Lestrade asked.
"There's a thin layer of dust coating the bones," Sherlock ran his hand over the other leg, over the ribs, over the arm and the skull. "Something was grinding, gnawing at these bones, it tore through the skin and did this too…"
Molly had never seen Sherlock stumped like this before, he didn't react as Lestrade had the two of them led away and escorted back to Baker's street. He kept repeating how it didn't make any sense why the bones would be ground up, even a little. They were taken back to the door of the flat, but it took Molly to open door and guide Sherlock inside. If she didn't know any better she would have sworn it was shock.
A week went by without the Doctor. Without television or radio or electricity or many of the other amenities of home. She wanted to heed the warning about not altering the future, but at the same time she wanted out of the house. All there was to do was watch Sherlock hypothesis over the origins of the skeleton. He had been convinced that it was a dangerous idea to mess with time in this manner.
Molly wasn't sure if he was right, but if a real Sherlock Holmes was found to be wandering the streets of London solving crimes and then someone wrote stories about him later it might be a little bit jarring to fiction and history. She would rather not see the universe explode or whatever would happen in this case.
On the seventh day it became obvious that Sherlock couldn't contain the curiosity and the questions and that he had to know what had happened outside of Saint Bart's that day. Toby stalked the room behind Sherlock's pacing; apparently he had grown attached already. In this time the room was devoid of lab equipment and the other knickknacks that Sherlock had acquired over the years.
Something about the textured wall paper and tight, square sitting room had always made her feel somewhat at home. Of course Molly had never lived in this flat, but her own flat felt much too foreign to her—even with Toby there.
"You've got to eat," Molly told him as she sat a plate out in front of him on the small coffee table. It was dark already and the glow from the street lamps was reaching up through the windows and into the room.
"I had some of the cake," Sherlock said.
"The cakes been gone for three days."
Molly was a little on edge, she'd gone out to make groceries a few times and that was pretty much it. As cozy as this place was, without the Doctor's input and in this time she felt as if she were in a prison.
The tea kettle went off and she didn't really have any mittens to grab it with. She'd been using newspapers, there were enough of them lying around. The nearest was on the corner of the table and when she went to take it Sherlock rose up and snatched it away. "I'm reading that."
"It's from before we got here," Molly's voice trembled, his sudden movement had frightened her a little. "What is it in that paper that's so important?"
She stepped in close half tackling him to get at the paper. A week couped up in a house with Sherlock, sleeping in a bed next to Sherlock while he slept on the floor, cooking for Sherlock and only having time alone when she went to use the loo had taken its toll. Much of the power he had over her before had fizzled out. Though there were moments during the day or night when there would be something to remind her of their old lives, times when she looked at him and felt that same fluttering, light feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Somehow all the dreams of romance had slipped her mind, despite the physical contact. Sherlock pushed her back onto the table, pinning her down with the paper between them. She gazed at the print and the story nearest her face caught her eye. She'd heard the name somewhere before.
Irene Adler.
Her efforts to struggle with Sherlock became half hearted and her eyes drooped. "You—it was that woman from morgue that night. The one who died," Molly said. "The one you knew from more than her face."
Sherlock stepped back, helping her up from the table, but said nothing.
"She's dead here too?"
"She wasn't dead there. It was a ruse, she faked her death," Sherlock said. "That's where I got the idea."
Molly pushed her hair back into place and concentrated on her feet, not wanting to look in his direction. "Who was she?"
"A case. A dominatrix who'd gotten hold of government secrets and was playing a dangerous game with Moriarty…"
"I mean to you. Who was she to you?"
"No one. Just a woman," Sherlock said.
Molly dropped into the seat in front of her plate. "Are there a lot of just women with you?"
"What does that mean?"
"It's a question."
"You're behaving like we're really married—if you must know there are no women. And no, no men either, before you say it."
"I wasn't thinking it. I know you're not gay—apparently I've dated enough of them to tell the difference," she paused. "But there has to have been someone."
Sherlock was glaring at her now, his face seeming colder than normal. "There's no one. Dating, sex, women—they're a distraction from my work."
"Everyone dates or has sex…you're not a priest. It's not required of you to remain celibate," Molly said. "How long have you felt like this? Something has to have happened to have made you feel this way."
Sherlock was eating now and talking about something other than those bones. "Logic dictates that I should feel this way. When you watch someone who's in love waste their time and efforts in a trivial pursuit of lofty, unattainable happiness or when you've seen the people who run the streets from pub to pub chasing sex every night of the week you realize how much some biological functions and emotional reactions truly are a waste of time."
The last part had barely registered to Molly, she felt like the love thing was him hinting at his feelings toward her. She swallowed, unsure of if she could hold back the tears. She didn't want to be the person who cried in front of Sherlock, but sometimes he was so blind to what he did to her.
Or he just didn't care what he did.
He stuffed another forkful of the food into his mouth. "What's the matter?" he asked.
Molly just shook her head. "There's no point in continuing the discussion," she said.
They ate in silence for the next several minutes and then Sherlock raised his head and looked directly at her and said. "I need a favor of you, Molly. You're the only person in this time I can trust," he said.
She smiled, though it was forced.
"You're going to know Saint Bart's as well as anyone and because of the state of women's rights and achievements in this time period your sneaking in could be seen as some innocent folly as opposed to a real crime. That lab where we met should still be there and there has to be a microscope, however weak, that you could steal for me."
"What are you planning?"
"We're going to solve that case," he said.
"But the Doctor said—"
Toby hopped up into Sherlock's lap. "To Hell with what he said. I went years in London doing this without amassing any recognition before I ever became famous. Word doesn't travel half as fast now—all that's required is that we keep a low profile."
Part of her wanted to believe he was right and that this was going to be an innocent little case they could solve without any of the usual complications but as she sat there and watched him stroke Toby she knew it wasn't going to be. And Molly felt little and pathetic all over again because she couldn't put her foot down, she knew this was trouble but she always knew she was going to help him.
