AN: this is a bit short, I know, but the next one will be longer. I promise! :)
cupio dissolve –I want to die
Sebastian was right, damn him. Jail was boring. Jim had nothing to do except think.
He should be thinking about Sherlock, about how he's going to lay the hero low, break him down, destroy everything he is. He should be thinking about his plans. And he was.
Whenever he wasn't thinking about Molly and Kath.
Jim knew instinctively each day when three o'clock would roll around. He was so used to riding along with Sebastian to pick her up from school. When he couldn't sleep in the middle of the night he'd imagine if Molly was working the late shift or not. If she was, she'd be cutting up cadavers and making reports. If she wasn't, she'd be home curled up on the couch with Kath and they'd be watching something inane on telly with that cat curled up between them.
He used to curl up on that couch too –once upon a time.
Once upon a time –for too short a time –he had been her black knight and she the white queen. He had tasted her lips. He could taste them still.
Too many fairytales on the brain, he thought. Too many plans.
He hated being bored.
Kath avoided the telly like the plague, once the trial started dominating the news stations. Molly couldn't get away from it as easily. Her coworkers at work would gossip about it, put forth theories.
She had never been so thankful that she spent the majority of her time with dead people.
The dead can't speak. They can't tell her what an idiot she was. They can't comment and dissect every bit of news footage with Jim in it. They can't damn her.
She was doing that very well all on her own, thank you.
Somehow she had given part of her heart to a criminal. Did you even think about the consequences, Molly? Someone suspiciously like Sherlock asked her.
She did.
She weighed the situation and found the pros to be better than the cons.
God help her. God help them all.
Kath retreated into her shell the day they found the note, and nothing Molly had done so far had been enough to draw her out of it. Her aunt wrestled between anger at Jim –how could he do this to them –and deep guilt at herself.
She had allowed Kath to attach herself to a criminal and use an unreliable man as an emotional support, and isn't that just as irresponsible as his actions?
She had trusted him.
She had loved him.
They had never gotten the security cameras fixed in the morgue, and she was glad now.
She could cry in peace.
"JAMES MORIARTY WALKS FREE" the papers screamed on Kath's way to school.
All through the day she ducked away from kids talking about the trial and how Sherlock Holmes botched the prosecution, speculating on what Moriarty is up to, what he's doing, how Holmes could have let him get away. Why the jury let him go free.
She hid in the bathroom at lunch and ate there to avoid the chatter.
He had always been Jim to her.
She hardened her heart, convinced herself she didn't care what he did. He had left and that was that and tough for him if he wanted back now. She wouldn't care.
But almost against her will, she looked for a black car before leaving for the tube station. And when she came home, she half-hoped there would be a male figure sprawled over the couch, dozing with his arm lazily wound around Molly and enough space under his other arm for someone, perhaps a thirteen year old, to fit.
She saw neither, and her heart hit the pavement again.