Warning:This chapter is dark and has some possible upsetting themes for some readers so please, if you feel uncomfortable, don't feel that you have to continue.
Part 4
No one seems to want to discuss the elephant in the room.
Molly doesn't blame them, after all it's not like she wants to talk about it either and she is pretty happy with the arrangement. She point blank refuses to discuss her time in captivity.
It would destroy whatever is left of her if they discover that she's can no longer be considered human.
When they rescued her, she was sure it was a hallucination. It wouldn't have been the first time, her captors had seemed to find joy in giving her false hope. It took far longer into her abduction than it should have for her to accept that hope was going to get her killed. She had sat there and waited for the illusion to shatter, attacking anyone who came near her.
It takes a long time for her to acknowledge the reality of her freedom.
The Doctors are optimistic of her recovery, to a degree at least. There is often the discussion that she will regain some parts of her former life. Her former career however will forever be shut to her but she had already known that. She would never be able to handle dealing with the dead after being with of them for so long. She knows she should be angry and enraged at what has been taken away from her, after all she was one of the bloody best at her job, but the emotions seem to clip through her fingers like sand.
The emptiness is all consuming and she wonders if she'll ever get back, even some, of the highly emotional person she was before. She had been forced to kill that Molly very quickly into her capture. Survival was her main priority.
She tries not to remember the first year. Getting used to the darkness had been the hardest adjustment. Eventually it became her best friend, hiding her from the others and embracing her like lover. It was her comfort for those years and now she much prefers the darkness to the light. The prison they had thrown her in had been some form of cave network with no natural light and a labyrinth of corridors.
Her kind and loving nature had been a hindrance, something she found out two weeks in her imprisonment when she helped the wrong person. She can still feel them over her when closes her eyes.
Her next lesson had been to map the complex and remember the safe spots. She had learnt that one the quickest, the few times her memory failed her, had catastrophic results. Though it has to be said, her education as a doctor has given her the advantage at incapacitating her attackers and leaving a lasting impression. By the time of her rescue, very few inmates bothered her.
She has scars though, from those encounters, the most obvious is the jagged puckered skin reaching from the back of her neck to the corner of her shoulder blade. She feels her face darken at the memory of the slight Russian's face as he pulled the steel along her body but smiles at the bastards expression when she severed his man parts and fed them to his dog. Some days she feels like the scar was worth it. She still has no idea what his name was though. The other scars aren't as big, but bright white lines coat her body like a dot-to-dot. She remembers with crystal clarity exactly where every single one came from. She had to, they were the lessons she needed to learn.
She knows they are trying, always trying, to help bring parts of her back.
John sits with her every Thursday, like clockwork (Mary has to work and their daughter is at nursery) and brings Tobey for her to play with. Its quiet, save for his rustling newspaper and her cats playful attempts to steal the bottom of it. Its not the most fun someone can have on a Thursday but at least she isn't being assessed by the psychotic therapist the Clinic have set her up with. She's fairly certain the good doctor should be in here with her.
She and John had never really been close, even before her little holiday abroad. He was always kind though and at one point she was sure if she hadn't been so hung up on Sherlock she would have jumped him for sure. It's laughable now, John is nowhere near her type. She's always had a thing for the psychos.
Especially now she's one too.
Mary visits her and somehow manages to sneak her out to the local pub down the road. They have an unusual friendship. The blond is the only one who doesn't shy away from who Molly is now, if anything she seems to encourage more of the darker bits of her new personality. She shows Molly how to hone her skills and use them in a non-lethal capacity. The other woman confessed that she wishes she had taught Molly before. The former Pathologist merely finished her drink in response and patted her hand in as a form of comfort. Mary had then perked up and asked her how she felt about guns. Molly had excitedly grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the pub.
After all she wasn't going to turn down shooting tips from a trained assassin.
She does see the others and occasionally it's in an official capacity. She's fairly certain Mycroft and Lestrade haven't quite forgiven her for her attempts to gut them with a scalpel, during those first days in the hospital. Lestrade does visit her a few times when she's moved to the Clinic. It's always under the guise of updating his records, but they never talk about case, only the merits of a decent football game.
Mrs Hudson doesn't visit though and when Molly moved into 221b, the landlady confessed that she didn't like the smell of hospitals and the Clinic reminded her of her future in a care home. Molly could begrudge her that and promptly informed the woman that Baker Street was her home and always would be. It wasn't a coincidence that the older woman was happier to have her around after that.
She never tells anyone about her and Mycroft's monthly chess game, not even his brother. It's a commitment that continues after she moves into Baker Street and she enjoys keeping it from the Detective. Her and Mycroft have a bet going over how long it will take him to work it out. She suspects that he might be cheating, when he starts threatening to swear her to secrecy.
It gives her unparalleled joy to know she's better at chess than he is.
They never ask her about what happened, but of course, Sherlock Holmes dances to his own tune.
The bastard has to know everything. He has no qualms in digging through her scars so hard that he hits bone. She's a puzzle that he needs to solve and everytime she tries something from him, he tries to get to it a different way. He strips her bare and leaves the nerves raw to the world. The process drags up all the emotions she had buried and she can't control her instinctive nature to lash out. Everytime she hits him she wants to take it back, but he revels in it and pushes her again. It's relentless, the cycle they become trapped in and she knows deep down that this is doing more damaging than good.
She hadn't meant to hit him the first time.
In truth it had been an accident. When she'd finally seen Sherlock for the first time, she had felt nothing. Panicking she'd lashed out and caught him with her flailing limbs. When it had registered what she had done, some small part of her had briefly hoped it would awaken something that had long been dead. When she'd felt nothing, she had done it again and again until arms held her down and something scratched at her neck. The last thing she had heard was Sherlock insulting the hospital staff before the sedative took her down. She had willing embraced the darkness, after all she'd lived in it for so long, it was an old friend. She remembers an acute aversion to the brightness of the ward. It was harsh and alien, and all she'd wanted to do was claw her eyes out and tear at the restraints holding her down.
She'd fucking hated that hospital.
She relents the light stuff, the events that have happened that don't bother her to tell him. Its not what he's asking for and he gets frustrated easily at the lack of progress. She can tell he's taken up smoking again, the itch in his fingers to spark up and draw the smoke into his lungs. She wants to hate herself for what she is clearly doing to him, to give up and tell her tale of woe. After all, he knows how bad it would have been, he sees it everyday and knows the brutality of humanity. She won't give in though.
She still loves him too much to do that.
It doesn't take her long to work out what Sherlock is doing. How he's using their therapy session to punish him for failing her in the first place. It does take 6 months for an old version of Molly to rise through the endless emptiness and bring it all to an end. She doesn't talk to him again and she doesn't lash out. She isn't surprised when he disappears.
She's more concerned as to how the old Molly can still be alive.
She misses him.
More than she thought she would and the months of his avoidance drag. John is itching to fix it, his knee jiggles when he stops reading the newspaper but she ignores and continues to play with Tobey.
She lasts 3 months until its Autumn and the British weather comes with it forcing John to visit without her beloved pet.
The weather is bad, even for England and the trees thrash in the wind. She was surprised John bothered to venture out to see her, she wouldn't have. The rain lashes against the window filing the room with some noise to break the awkward tension. John gave up reading his newspaper when the lightening started and joined her in staring out the window.
She can see him watching her in the windows reflection, he can't see her doing it and it allows her the opportunity to study him. Too long has she spent watching her back to stop doing it now. He's deep in thought, analysing her like a suspect and he suddenly looks at her the same way Sherlock has since her return, like there should be a way to fix her. The temptation to punch him in the throat is hard to subdue.
They should know by now that she's beyond repair.
When John suddenly starts talking about their lives during her disappearance, the urge disappears and all she can do is listen. She doesn't move from her position, but she watches every expression that crosses his face. The heartbreak when he realised she was missing, the regret when they failed to find her. She takes in the anger and hopelessness as they struggled to find her over the years. Molly wants to feel betrayed when he talks about his family and all the stories that have happened without her, but she doesn't. It nice to know there was good happening while she was away.
In a perverted way it feels like her suffering was worth it.
In the darkness he speaks of Sherlock, and Molly has to fight every muscle in her body not to turn round and absorb the words like water. It feels safer, she would admit, to hear of him in the dark and strangely fitting. John talks as if he's revealing a secret he wasn't meant to share. His words stroke something within her, an emotion she hasn't felt in a long time and for once she isn't so frightened.
John's expression throughout is one that she doesn't recognise and it bothers her more than it should do.
When he's finished and gone, the room feels like its been cleansed. She feels different and his words echo through her mind for the rest of the night. She doesn't sleep, she can't, so she sneaks out on to the roof and into the storm. By the time the storm has calmed and the morning comes Molly is already at Baker Street.
When John and his entourage enter the flat later in the day, his smile doesn't escape her notice.
End of Part 4
So this is probably the hardest chapter I have ever written and it still doesn't sit right with me but I had to get it out for all you amazing people who have been reading it. 3