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Meena shuffled in her coat. "It's already September," she said. "And Pudding Island is already freezing."
Molly didn't say anything.
"Molly? All okay?" asked Meena gently.
"I am… not looking forward to this," said Molly.
"It's alright, Molly. Parents are… weird."
"Yours seemed okay," said Molly miserably.
"That's because they sent me away for the most part," said Meena sharply. "That wasn't exactly a piece of cake, Molly."
"I know," said Molly. "I'm sorry."
"Happy birthday, Molly," said Meena, before knocking the door.
Her mother opened the door. She was wearing her glasses – glasses which didn't hide the bags under her eyes – whatever was bothering her mother, it was constant and never ceasing.
"Hey, Mrs. Hooper," said Meena pleasantly.
Molly's mum nodded. "Happy birthday, darling," she said – and just for a little bit, Molly could imagine she meant it. She kissed Molly on the cheek, before they stepped into the home. Molly and Meena put their coats away – Molly, purposely wearing a jumper patterned with ducks underneath it.
The corners of Molly's mum's eyes crinkled – whatever she wanted to say, she restrained it.
"You've been expanding your collection, Mrs Hooper?" asked Meena, trying to break the silence.
"Yes," said her Mum shortly. Meena went closer to the shelf, reading whatever her Mum's new titles were.
"Well, girls," said her mother, her voice catching. "Make yourselves comfortable. Would you like some ginger ale?"
"Yes, please," said Molly.
Molly's mum smiled – for the briefest of seconds.
"It's always surreal coming here," said Meena. "I always feel like I'm ten again."
"I wish you wouldn't," shuddered Molly. "Ages ten through eighteen were terrible."
"Your Grandma had better taste than your mum and dad," said Meena, admiring the furniture.
"She was also ridiculously racist and homophobic, which automatically makes you uninvited," Molly reminded her. "Not to mention the fact that she was horrible."
"How could I forget?" asked Meena sourly. "New ways to hate myself around her. Imperialism is the bane of my existence."
"Literally," said Molly.
Meena winked.
Molly's mum re-entered. "Here," she said, handing them glasses with ginger ale.
"Mum, can we go up to my room?" asked Molly.
"It's your house, Molly," said Mum.
"It's Grandma's," said Molly curtly. "Coming, Meena."
"Oh, boy," said Meena, partly sarcastic and partly genuine. "I actually never got to see your room!"
It was nothing amazing, of course. But it was hers. In everything that was this house – her Grandmother had put a stamp. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Molly as a burden, Molly's Mum was baggage – and Molly's living was irrelevant. Everything about living with her grandmother was a fight for identity, for space, for existence.
Meena had been fighting a very similar battle, of course – which was what connected them so deeply. They looked for spaces outside these structures – outside Meena's aunt, outside her parents in India, outside Molly's grandparents.
"Green," commented Meena, looking at the walls of the room. "Pleasant," she said, in a tone that suggested anything but.
"Grandma never let me get pink," said Molly quietly.
"Poor taste," said Meena immediately. "Look at those shelves? Green, really? What a clash. Your grandma wouldn't last a second on Extreme Makeover: House Edition."
Molly giggled.
"You hated this room, didn't you?" asked Meena.
Molly didn't say anything. "Did you love yours?"
Meena smiled. "Hey, I got to decorate mine."
Molly picked up her old microscope.
"Mum kept it the same," she muttered.
"Yeah, my aunt tore my stuff down the day I left for college. Yeesh. We are depressing. Fuck you, Molly."
"What did I do?" asked Molly defensively.
"I don't know, but it's your fault. You inflicted your tragic back story on me."
"Please," said Molly. "Your tragic back story is yours and yours alone." She picked up an old stuffed toy. "I'm going to go use the bathroom."
Molly went down the hall, to her mother's. She was unsure about the state of her own room's bathroom – especially considering the coating of dust on all her belongings. She'd taken all her books with her when she went to college – with the exception of few. A battered history book lay in the corner, with a pile of Nancy Drew books. She hadn't wanted to leave any of her books with her mother and her grandmother – especially not things like her Tolkien books. Of course, this meant that a lot of them remained in their boxes under her dorm bed.
Her mum's bathroom was completely flawless, of course. Molly looked at her face in the mirror.
She looked old.
It was funny – her own image of herself never shifted from her early twenties. The girl in the mirror, however – she was old. She looked tired.
Once she was done she opened the cabinet, just for the satisfaction. When she was a kid, she would be curious – and her father would pretend that there was Narnia or something behind the glass cabinet. So once she became twelve, it became satisfying to open it every time she entered the bathroom.
Molly's eye caught a small bottle in the corner.
"Molly?" Meena called after her.
"Yeah?" said Molly, tearing her eyes away.
"Where are you?"
"In here," Molly choked out.
Meena entered the bathroom shamelessly. Her eyes followed Molly's.
"Your mum's on anti-depressants," said Meena bluntly from somewhere-in-the-bathroom.
Molly frowned, looking far too intensely at a toothbrush.
"What?" she asked finally. "These aren't recent –" Molly checked the dates on the bottle. "Oh, fuck," she swore.
"Do me a favour," said Meena. "Don't lose your head."
"It's impossible not to," said Molly.
"No, it's not. It's your mother's business, and you need to not get angry," said Meena in a no-nonsense tone.
"She never tells me anything!" Molly said indignantly. "I'm allowed to be upset she didn't tell me!"
"Upset, yes. Confrontational? No," said Meena. "You can't go barrelling downstairs declaring war. She's not well."
"Well, she could have said something."
"Because you have been telling everyone everything?" asked Meena. "You and I both know what we are talking about."
Molly flinched. "No," she said.
Meena looked at her intently. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes, but even I can tell you have your names," said Meena darkly. "I didn't bring it up."
"It's not what you think, Meena," said Molly desperately.
"Unless one of the names is me, I don't see why you should fuss," said Meena. "And even then, I don't see why you should fuss."
Molly blinked. "You – don't – do you like me?" sputtered Molly.
Meena gave her a look of utter disdain. "Do not reduce the value of our friendship just because I don't want to sleep with you, Molly Hooper. Besides, I like Lizzie more."
Molly's mind was racing. "I'm sorry – um, I couldn't help asking – you know, force of habit, where names are concerned." Force of habit? What habit? Which habit? When had she ever had names to have a habit?
"You and every other person on the planet," said Meena. She lifted Molly's fully clothed hand, shaking it. "This does not mean anything, Molly!"
"Molly, where are you?" came her mother's voice from downstairs.
Molly snatched her arm away from Meena. "How would you know?"
"And how would you?" asked Meena.
"What are you girls doing here?" asked her Mum, frowning. "Molly, I've told you a thousand times –"
"I was using the bathroom," Molly gritted out.
"You're loitering," said her mother angrily. "Get out – for heaven's –"
"Why are you taking anti-depressants?" Molly blurted out.
For the first time in years, her mother was shocked. Molly stared at her mother – the glasses, the brown hair, the brown eyes which hadn't smiled for decades – the fashionable clothing. Meena was forgotten in her peripheral vision, a distant someone else that Molly didn't care for at the moment. She watched her mother take off her glasses – almost as if they wiped away bitterness, anger, regret.
She looked into her mother's eyes to see only emptiness.
"Why," asked her mother slowly. "Do you care?"
"Why shouldn't I?" asked Molly.
Meena gripped Molly's arm again. "Molly…" she said warningly.
Molly snatched it away for the second time. "Tell me why, mother. I know you've been miserable for years – years, and years, and years. Tell me why."
"Can't you guess?" Mum spat bitterly. "Can't you fucking guess?"
"No," said Molly. "What is wrong with you? What made you this way? Why the hell did you hate dad so much? What did he do to you? What did I?"
"You happened, Molly Elizabeth Hooper. You happened. You happened and I was trapped," Molly's mother burst out. "You were the only reason why I couldn't leave him – why I couldn't find the person I should have stayed with – If I – if I had been – more –" Molly's mother took a deep breath. Tears began to run down her cheeks – but they weren't quiet, pretty tears. They were sobs – broken, stuttering, almost unable to express themselves with how much they had been kept away.
"Brave," she finished. "If I had been more brave."
Meena was quiet.
"Who was it?" demanded Molly, her eyes burned. She couldn't control the tears. "On your arm. Who was he?"
Mum took a deep breath, wiping her tears.
"Sarah. Sarah Johnson."
Molly stared – her mind emptied of any retort she had.
Molly's mother was a someone else in that minute, a someone Molly had never known – someone who was furiously and rapidly unbuttoning the cuffs of her full sleeves. The anger, the one that she had possibly kept away and never opened, it surfaced as the button broke, and the sleeve was all but ripped away – her hand, a battleground of god knows which war.
It was scarred, the arm, cut, over, and over, and over. The name Sarah Johnson covered in slices of Jane Hooper's misery.
Meena's face must have expressed what Molly wanted to say, because her mother looked at Meena with a terrible sort of regret. Meena sat down belatedly on the bed, and Molly remembered dreamily how her mother had tacitly always supported Meena.
"She was my best friend," said Jane Hooper to her. "My best friend. We practiced kissing when we were young, because we wanted to know what it was like. And then – and then – we became sixteen."
She needn't have said more. Molly could fill the gaps in herself.
"It was the sixties, Molly. The movement for people like me and Sarah Johnson had just about picked up, but there was no way it would have survived in the town I grew up in," said Jane Hooper, tears pouring down. She was apologising to someone – whoever it was, Molly didn't know them. "Your grandmother – you know what she was like."
Meena snorted.
"Your Dad – we dated, for sometime. I said yes to shut everyone up. That was the time anyone with a name of someone from the same sex was looked at with so much suspicion – you don't – you don't – you don't know – you weren't there."
And then Meena reached her hand out. Her mother, instantly retreated, stepping away from Meena.
"What did Dad do to you?" asked Molly. She didn't want to know David Hooper – she wanted to remember her father. Her father who called her Bee, who told her she wasn't weird if she liked books.
Molly's mum laughed humourlessly.
"He never hurt me, if that's what you're asking," said Jane Hooper. "Not physically. There's other ways to make someone miserable, Molly. So many thousands of awful little ways, and your dad was a master at them. When I finally decided to leave, you happened. You happened after years of trying, you happened, and he made you his. And I could do nothing."
Molly sat down, holding her head in her hands.
"Molly, I –" began Jane Hooper. She stepped forward –
"No," said Molly quietly.
She wiped her tears, breathed in, out. She looked around the room desperately, feeling the suffocation of her Grandmother's presence. She pushed her hair again, feeling her heart ache.
"Molly?" asked Meena gently.
"I'm leaving," said Molly.
"Molly, you don't under –" her mother tried again.
"Understand?" asked Molly. "I don't understand. I don't. It's true. I – I have to go."
She stepped on her mother's side, eager to escape. To get really, really piss drunk.
"Boss?" said Sebby as he entered.
"Please, not now," said Jim, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hated dealing with mob bosses. They loved thinking that they're the best of the best, the fucking Don Corleones of the goddamn world. If he is threatened one more time by a fucking mob boss, he might have the entire network slaughtered by morning.
"Oh. Alright," shrugged Sebastian.
"Is it important?" asked Jim, resigning himself to something trivial. That was the only reason why Sebastian would leave the room. He was very naggy, as hitmen went.
"No, it's not much. Your pathologist is very drunk, though."
Jim lifted his hand off of his forehead, and looked at him with interest.
"Not a very proper establishment, either. I'll send in the car to pick her up, so that would be settled."
"No," said Jim, grinning. "I need a pick me up."
"You could have some in the office," said Sebastian.
"You're cute too, Sebby," said Jim cheerfully.
"Fine," said Sebastian.
"You've been complaining about her lesser," said Jim. "Should I be worried?"
"Hardly," snorted Sebastian. "She's the only one who can force you to stay in bed. I'd rather maintain pleasant relations with her."
Jim rolled his eyes. "Maybe I'll have you kill her," he said, putting his coat on.
"You'd want to do it yourself," said Sebastian.
Sebastian did have his rare moments of insight.
When she was in university, Molly had lamented her small frame and blamed her incapacity with alcohol on it. Today? She had never been gladder that it took so little to get her properly, fully, piss drunk.
Thankfully, Meena hadn't found her. Meena knew Molly would not frequent a place like this, of course. The number of times her phone had buzzed had been a bit worrying, but after her fourth drink – she'd forgotten all about her phone.
"Is this seat taken?" asked a pleasant voice, with an Irish lilt.
"Ab-abso-abso-fucking-lutely," declared Molly loudly. The room swayed dangerously, and she wondered who was dangling it about like that. "I am a perfectly happy – single woman. Happy. Perfectly. And I have nothing I need. I have a job. And a cat. And I have a criminal mastermind, who's my something. And I have a consulting detective. What do you fucking have?"
"A pathologist," said the Irish voice amusedly.
Molly blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the person in front of her.
"Jim!" she said happily. "Jim," she continued, her heart falling. "Jim," she said angrily.
Jim was looking at her. Molly didn't have the energy to tell what he was seeing.
"Yes, darling?" he asked.
"I am angry with you," she said, frowning. "I can't fathom why."
"I gathered," he said.
"Why are you here?" asked Molly, confused.
"I am your knight in shining armour," he said with a smile.
Molly snorted. "I'm sure," she said. "More like a – a – what are those people? The Not Good ones?"
"Villains?" asked Jim.
"Those are the ones," said Molly, slapping the table. "Those. Those specific ones, specifically those. The des-descendants! Of Lucifer."
He leaned in. "What does that make you?"
Molly frowned. "I don't know," she sighed. "I don't know, I really don't. I feel like Faustus."
Jim was frowning. She had never seen him look like that. She wished she could commit his face to memory, as if he might disappear one day without a single way for Molly to remember him.
"Come on, dearest," he said finally. His voice sounded odd. "Let's take you home."
Molly stared.
She might be mistaken, or it might be the alcohol – but it sounded for a second like he wasn't on the brink of murdering her. That's what made her obey.
She was curled up on his lap again. Jim was distinctly uncomfortable, but he could say nothing to her – she was perfectly out of her senses. Everything from her swaying walk to her incessant babble was irritating him, particularly because there was nothing for him to do about it. On some level – his plan was working. Molly Hooper was falling for him, in a synchronised, operatic way – the kind that would break her heart when it ended. When he smiled, just right, and said goodbye.
"No," she murmured in her sleep.
He wasn't sure why this was irritating him so much.
There was something wrong with her tonight, and Jim hated the fact that he wasn't able to guess. He knew she went to her mother's, that she had taken Meena along with her. He had dismissed it as irrelevant, since Meena grew up with Molly. It seemed fair that she would take her occasionally.
She looked strange – uncaring, unconcerned. It was disconcerting to see the lack of regard for her life on her. It had been very arousing initially, but as of now, it stopped being interesting and became an object of – an object of –
Concern.
Jim turned his neck from side to side, feeling the satisfaction of a small crack.
It was… irksome – to see Molly's eyes reflect nothing.
"Jim?"
"Honey?" asked Jim, unconcerned, his arm around her waist as he lugged her to her apartment.
"I am ready to be taken advantage of," sighed Molly.
"No, thank you," he said politely, opening her door.
Molly frowned.
"Why not?" she asked, crossly.
"Sex while drunk is very unstimulating," he said woodenly. He'd really rather not speak to her at the moment – her offer was tempting him, and his reason was a solid one.
"Oh," she said. "Okay."
She was quiet again, and that ridiculous sheen came over her eyes again.
"I shouldn't be with you," she said to the darkness.
"No, probably not," he said. "Lucky you aren't."
Molly Hooper was a silent creature. A creature of quiet troubles, unvoiced ones, silently spoken anger.
This was quiet pain.
Against his better judgement, he took off his jacket, sitting down on the sofa, near her feet.
"What do you need, Molly Hooper?" he asked in his most business-like tone.
Molly blinked at him.
"What?" she asked.
"You are clearly upset about something. What do you need? Whatever the fuck you need in times like these – apart from talking about it inanely. Summarise in a three sentences, if you wish."
"Why are you asking?" asked Molly.
"I don't know," said Jim, pinching the bridge of his nose again, frowning. "Maybe it's bothering me that I can't deduce it."
She looked away, her arm extended, hanging limply from the couch. "Three sentences?" she asked herself softly.
"My mother married the wrong name. I was the reason she stayed. Happy birthday to me."
Jim looked up to examine her.
Birthdays mattered to some people, he knew. His mother had tried to celebrate his for a good few years. It was a complete and utter manipulation, they had both always known, but that was possibly the birthday present.
"What do you need?" he repeated.
She looked at him intently.
"Um," she said. "Would you – erm. Would you mind a kiss?"
"Are you eleven, Molly? I hope not, with all the things I've done to you," said Jim.
"No, it's just –" she sighed in frustration, getting up on the sofa. She crossed her legs, looking at him cautiously. "Look – just – don't – kill me."
He didn't ask her what she was about to do, because before he could stop her, she had kissed him.
It was – strange.
Soft.
Molly's lips moved gently, instinctively – almost cautiously. Once, twice. The lack of manipulation almost made him suspicious, tear her off him and leave almost immediately.
If it wasn't for how… good it felt.
He didn't respond for a few seconds, before his hands – unsure of what to do in the event of not having clothes to discard of, reached for her jaw bone instead. Her own hands twined so carefully in his hair, without a single pull which was too strong. Every bit of his brain was screaming at him to stop, telling him this was terrible – he had never done this before.
But the silence of Molly's speech was part of her fucking kiss. He could feel that get under his skin, uncomfortably. So that when she stopped, when she looked at him gratefully and said, "I'm sorry. I know that must have been very disgusting for you," he wanted to wrench her and demand to know what she had done.
And, most terrifyingly, ask her to do it again.
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