Petite. Sherlock's new girl was petite. And not too pretty.
Well, she wasn't entirely ugly. Irene thought that she maybe could apply a little more makeup, possibly work a bit with her blush or put foundation and shadows in the right parts. Basically, contouring. And she wasn't a girl either. According to the newspaper, she was 37. And that was pretty much everything she could find there, so she started an investigation on her own. Nothing too serious, it didn't require her to leave her hotel. God save the internet.
The tabloids didn't help either, the bloody reporters couldn't do a proper job even if their lives depended on it.
So, she started investigating. Detecting, of sorts.
She had brown eyes and clear skin, dark hair as well. She had tiny lips and a few wrinkles. No, not truly. Not wrinkles, more like... expression lines. And she unquestionably didn't know how to put her clothes together. Too much yarn, so many colours.
She was the youngest of two sisters and, in every photo she could reach of Molly Hooper -soon to be Holmes-, she seemed to be a little self-conscious. And smart, apparently. Not like Sherlock Holmes, although, who was like him anyway? But intelligent. Through medical school when she was still juvenile, finding her specialization pretty early. Top of the class; youngest at her work's position. And the first female.
Also, she was a writer. An academical writer. Discovers about the actual functioning of the liver, the brain capacity's real extension. Irene wondered if Sherlock has ever been her specific subject of study.
And, like it wasn't humorous enough, Molly Hooper examined corpses for a living. Totally accurate. She imagined their late night conversations at 221b, Baker Street: "so, dear, anything interesting at work?" - "Oh, no honey, not at all. Just natural causes. Quite boring, if you must ask. You? Any interesting murder today?".
And yet.. she couldn't stop looking for information about her. And couldn't help but wonder.
She looked satisfied. Probably their sex life was good enough. Or not. She couldn't know. She didn't have the whole Sherlock Holmes experience to tell.
She gasped. Then, she remembered. That night, just after she had already said her goodbyes. When she thought she would die there, alone, in her knees, too far from home and surrounded by her enemies. And suddenly, the moan. The message alert. The adrenaline. The excitement.
She had left him that night, afterwards, hard and coloured and sweaty, but they didn't do anything. At least, anything that genuinely mattered anyway. It was her way to let him know that she had won, that she was the only one who could beat the great Sherlock Holmes.
But now it felt like it had been her loss.
Irene wanted to believe she wasn't pathetic.
She didn't think about it all the time. About him, and her, and their growing family, and the ordinary bliss that seemed to be the common denominator in their lives. Now they had a little boy, a tiny replica of him. Eyes, hair, nose, cheekbones. Almost like Molly Hooper -Holmes- was simply an incubator of Sherlock Holmes' clones.
And yes, clones. Plural. Because she was pregnant again.
No, she didn't think about that all the time. But when she did, oh God, it was annoying.
Caring was annoying.
She hadn't stopped texting, but she feared that he had blocked her number at some point. In the past, he didn't text her back often either but sometimes, just sometimes, he typed a couple of words and then didn't send them. But now... nothing.
She had known about Sherrinford. Owing too many favours and having the much information she managed on a daily basis, she had heard. Not all the details, she suspected, but she knew that somehow it was the breaking point that got together the -now- Holmeses. And the part of the creepy psychopath hidden sister, too. Pretty drama queen enough, she thought. Couldn't be surprising. It suited Sherlock Holmes.
When she heard, she panicked. Of course. And she texted. And texted and texted and texted. Not like she normally did, just on special occasions, but everyday, sometimes twice a day. And then, he sent her his last reply.
I'm fine. Sort of. - SH.
And she replied. And replied and replied and replied. But he didn't respond. And then the silence, the absence. And months after, her Google Notifications showed he started to date that petite, pretty-but-not-stunning doctor. Or something like that. And one year after, they were marrying.
She often wondered briefly if his son name was actually Hamish. But it didn't matter, not at the end. He was happy. At least, he seemed. Or as happy as someone like him, with that big brain and chaotic mind, can be.
And, after all, she was nobody's second option. Not even Sherlock Holmes'.