Thank you to all who favorited and added this story to alerts since Monday's update, I love you guys. I also love my reviewers! AngelQueen01, Elliesmeow, ThefadingdaysofMay, Pip-2250, my recurring lone guest, katdemon1895, kawoosh, broadwayb, hiyas (HI!), Rocking the Redhead, LaurelynFaye, and CreamoCrop. Wow—I can't even. And JimWithAHeart shall remain the constant, don't fret, do trust. His problems back in Ireland shall be revealed, don't fret, do trust. Also katdemon1895 you get so many frickin' cookies it ain't even funny. Not all of your review is spot on but there are parts, parts indeed.
As I said earlier this week, this chapter introduces The Plot as we'll all know it. Again, I apologize for not individually replying to reviews. I'm on a bit of a downswing, emotionally, and don't exactly have the energy to reply to all of you in PMs. But I do love you, which is why I'm trying to answer all of you as best I can with the above acknowledgements and the like.
Love you all, enjoy!
The lab was normally kept quite cool. Sherlock, before his fate had started to turn his life into a living hell, enjoyed it because he didn't feel as stifled by the heat which often surrounded people in a haze. With blood and tissue just a bit colder than average meant that temperatures which others found comfortable might sometimes be irritatingly warm for him. Though sometimes it was just the opposite, that he was fine and the normal humans around him shivered and their flesh rose up in goose bumps.
All of this didn't mean that he enjoyed his newfound status of melancholy—he had admitted it to himself last week that what he had was melancholy and that he had effectively run out of time to find a companion for himself—and the associated frigid temperatures which ghosted over his skin. The only thing that this served was the fact that the warmth of regular humans shocked him like a blister—and his only solace in this was that when he did run across a Persephone he would know her immediately. There were very few people now who he could tolerate the closeness of, and all of them were seeds.
It was in this state of mind and being that he met Jim from IT, a meeting which completely ruined his entire day.
Molly Hooper had been having a little office romance. Easily understood from how often she was taking her lunch to Bart's but eating it away from Bart's—a boyfriend who liked the idea of lunch hour picnics. Sherlock had never expected her to decide to bring the lucky man to meet himself and John—he had long ago resigned himself to the fact that while he found Molly attractive and sweet, she was far too normal for him to take up with. It would be cruel to start anything with a nonseed only to fall into melancholy and find another companion—or even to fail the expectation that they grow old together. Back then Sherlock had known all too well from his brother's many failed experiences that it was murderously hard to watch a loved one age and pass away while gray still hadn't touched one's own head.
He'd often supposed that his brother was lucky in that he could love many at once and love them deeply while he had them—even if he only had them for a night. Sherlock would have no such boon.
Jim from IT was the rogue Thanatos—part of him was disappointed that Moriarty wasn't strictly human—who had been plaguing Mrs. Hudson's daily toils and had occupied a lot of Sherlock's mind recently. He was Irish, and he was incredibly powerful. Sherlock had always hesitated to call it magic or the like, but there was a feeling of power which accompanied more accomplished seeds. The stronger they were the less human they were able to seem—particularly seeds whose purpose would never be dispensed with. There might not always be a need for Hades, but Thanatos would always find occupation.
It was as he surveyed the man Molly had brought with her that he realized—stupidstupidstupid—that her presence hadn't shocked him. Despite being just feet from him, Molly didn't cause him pain. Jim from IT was staring at him over her shoulder, challenge in his eyes while he had a hand on her back. Sherlock felt his stomach clench in horror.
He had waited to find a Persephone for so long so that, when he was forced to take someone, he would at least know her. She would know him, too, not have some random stranger appear and abscond with her. Not only had he put that task off too long, but he had managed to miss someone right under his nose who was probably the strongest Persephone seed he'd ever, ever encountered. They were extremely hard to spot—it was easier to spot Demeters, and from there try to find the accompanying Persephone. That had been Sherlock's plan, up until this very moment as he stared at Jim Moriarty.
Jim would take her away, and she would never be gotten back. Sherlock had vaguely heard of trouble from the Irish court, but he'd never imagined a new Hades who'd fallen to melancholy of such a sort that they'd sent out their Thanatos on a mission to find them a Persephone. If Jim took Molly away to Ireland somehow—drawing out the office romance just a little farther perhaps?—then she would never be able to return to Britain fully.
Sometimes, just sometimes, Sherlock reviled the fates in the privacy of his mind. They were unknowable by save the occasional Thanatos, and they were often at their cruelest when attempting some sort of kindness. Molly Hooper was destined to be someone's Persephone and he was being given the last possible chance to at least minimize her trauma at the experience.
A Persephone had to be pried from the rough, but in that lay the risk of damaging what made them worth having—his own parents had argued relentlessly and fought often. His father had hated his fate and had never stopped hating it even once for the entire time he'd spent with Mummy. Mummy had been too rough in obtaining her Persephone, and that was that. Sherlock knew, as he verbally split Molly away from her boyfriend, that he was probably going to end up like them despite his best efforts.
John helped, unknowingly of course, when he urged Sherlock to go after Molly. Yes—go get her. Bring her back to Baker Street for the afternoon. Let Mrs. Hudson give her tea, let her shed a few tears there. I'll think of a better plan later.
Molly only ever went a few places to have a cry while at the hospital, and he found her within minutes in the women's lavatory on the second floor. It was often deserted, which is why she chose it. If Sherlock had been inclined to, it was secluded enough that he might have opened the window and escaped with Molly that way—bury himself so deeply in some foreign country for a few weeks that he might as well have taken them both to the land of the dead for all people in London would know.
But that would not stake enough of a claim on her, he would have no ground to stand on against any comers. And if there is no claim, there will be claims from others soon enough. She's absolutely perfect.
"Molly—Molly I'm…I'm sorry. That was cruel, and hateful and—" he started, barely managing to keep a coherent thought in his head when the absolute warmth of her flooded his senses. The melancholy was there to starve him of pleasant temperatures—of comfort. It would force him to retreat from everything initially and then even that would be unbearable and he would seek out a companion to share his quite long life with.
"You're so cruel—you always say such awful things," she'd interrupted him, and he struggled to keep up with her words through the haze of notinpain that surrounded him. "So what if he's gay, he's nice to me. Which is a sight better than how you are on a given day." She wasn't crying, though her eyes were red and just almost watery. How had he not seen her before this—the question baffled him and angered him at turns. Sherlock stuck out his hand, trying to make peace with her. It would, he knew, become a familiar gesture soon enough.
"I am sorry, Molly," he said when she just stared at his outstretched palm. A woman opened the door with all the confidence of going into a nearly private bathroom to steal a cigarette but on seeing the two of them—Sherlock with his hand outstretched, looking over the shoulder of his dark blazer, Molly curled around her elbows protectively, her eyes red from almost-tears—quickly retreated. Her nicotine fix could wait ten minutes. That broke the ice, though, and had Molly putting her hand against Sherlock's in acceptance of whatever truce she'd decided to take from him.
Sherlock smiled—on at her hand in his—off as he turned them both to go out the door. She couldn't have seen his face, but if she had he knew she would've been tipped off that something was the matter. He was sure that his expression was like thunder, and though he knew full well that that wasn't the way he ought to be seen escorting Molly Hooper out of the hospital with John Watson at their heels he couldn't stop himself. The audacity of Jim Moriarty—to plan on kidnapping a woman and then parading her right in front of the only people who could stop him.
And the Thanatos from Ireland had been planning on taking Sherlock's favorite pathologist away, too, which was the final straw. Not only was Molly perfect as a companion for him, he liked her for herself—her skills, her sweetness to him. Very few people were ever kind in their words or thoughts to the gods of death, and he knew that his own manifestation was just as or more unliked as the ancient man who'd given his name to the profession. Grudging respect was usually the most he could get from people—true friendship and caring weren't to be his.
Except from, if he played his cards right and wasn't too awful, whoever stayed with him as a companion. Whoever stayed with him as his Persephone.
John felt that Sherlock had had a major breakthrough with finding out that Molly's boyfriend was Moriarty. He of course only picked this up from how vicious Sherlock had been in breaking up Molly Hooper's little office romance—there really was no need, if he was only going to insist on personally escorting the pathologist back to Baker Street and stationing her to have tea and biscuits with Mrs. Hudson downstairs. The hunted look in his flatmate's eyes as he hurried them back home was also a major tip off—if John wasn't wrong, then Sherlock looked almost frightened. Wary at the very least.
He didn't breathe a word of his conclusions while Molly was around, though, because he knew that after an afternoon like the one Sherlock had put her through the last thing he would've wanted in her situation would be to hear was that someone he cared about was some sort of mass murderer. Even if the murders were only facilitated by the man, they were still deaths that wouldn't have happened without his aid. Molly was a tender soul despite her profession and that would devastate her. He installed her with Mrs. Hudson nearly as soon as they'd walked through the door.
Sherlock meanwhile seemed to have dropped the Moriarty problem from his mind entirely. He'd just been hanging up the phone with Greg Lestrade—sometimes John wondered if Sherlock merely resisted saying Greg or in fact did not actually know the man's first name—when John had managed to get up the stairs. He liked Mrs. Hudson and her baking, he really did, but he needed to supervise his flatmate more at the moment. Molly had also been looking like she needed a female shoulder to cry on, and he'd left them to it.
"I'm going on vacation next week, John. Too much work and no play makes—oh you know the rest. Moriarty isn't some demon man haunting the shadows. I realize now that I've made him up—boredom, the like. Tell Molly, if you see her before she goes, that she can spend as long as she likes here."
"But what about the—you were so awful to her back at—"
"Stress can bring out awful things in me to those who don't deserve it. I've overtired myself, it would seem—as frightening as that is."
John was quite lost for words at this turn of events—but his gut told him to roll with it. Sometimes he felt something like a premonition come up on him and he'd followed its lead long enough that he wasn't about to stop now. Sherlock must have his reasons, and John would have to accept that. Perhaps the road was too dangerous for two, even if two were safer than one, and Sherlock needed to hunt Moriarty abroad. They had had quite the staring match over Molly's head back at the lab.
Yes, that must be it—this crazy murderer, Moriarty, had been pointing out that he could get to Sherlock at Barts and so could get to him anywhere. Sherlock was taking the fight away from those he cared about so that when things went down there wouldn't be any weak spots in Sherlock's defenses. The soldier in John understood this reasoning and so he didn't press his flatmate for more details about his 'vacation.'
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