Molly takes responsibility for every body that passes through her morgue. Finding out that one of her charges was misidentified is something she takes very personally.

AN: Set during Sherlock's time away, a few months after TRF. I posted two chapters tonight, so make sure you don't miss chapter 3.

Mycroft Holmes was a creature of schedules, routines and protocols. He did not like having those schedules, routines and protocols upset. Ever. Which is one of the many reasons he was so very proficient at his job. Messy little international incidents springing up to disrupt his day were dealt with harshly and swiftly. If he was diligent enough, he could have the world (or at least, his corner of it) running smoothly again by tea time.

You can imagine how put out he would be having his day disrupted by an hysterical female.

Hysterical might be a bit over dramatic, but she was certainly animated. It was the second time Miss Molly Hooper had breached the defenses of the Diogenes Club and Mycroft could feel the disapproval of the old guard sitting silently in the library, watching them through the doorway.

"Miss Hooper," Mycroft said with bland pleasantness. He might find her presence an annoyance at the moment, but he was a man of impeccable manners and would not show his irritation. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Who was that woman Sherlock identified last Christmas?" Molly asked without preamble. She hadn't spoken too loudly, but loudly enough for several men to glance their way with puzzled frowns.

"This way, Miss Hooper," Mycroft said with a sigh, leading the woman back to his public office. His private office was in the basement, behind bomb grade concrete three meters thick. Some days he wanted to stay down there and lock the blast doors.

Having hosted Miss Hooper several times now, Mycroft was able to give orders to the Diogenes butler as he passed and a full coffee service was waiting for them by the time they reached the office. The young woman was fidgeting, but too well brought up to interrupt as cups were handed out and plates of dainties passed around. She immediately set both aside in favour of clutching at her own hands. Mycroft allowed silence to fall and remain for quite a while before beginning the discussion.

"Now, Miss Hooper, you were asking about a body?"

"Yes," Molly jumped in, rushing through her statement as though she expected to be tossed out at any moment, "last Christmas. You had a body brought to Bart's for Sherlock to identify."

"Yes, I vaguely remember that," Mycroft hedged.

"Well, I know now it wasn't Irene Adler and I'm here to find out the truth."

Truth. Mycroft scoffed. Truth was all about perception. No, the woman buried under the name Irene Adler was not, in fact, Irene Adler. Nor was the headless body that had been dumped in a Pakistani wasteland. It had only taken Mycroft a few weeks to discover his brother's heroics in saving Miss Adler once again. He never let on that he knew. Adler was scheming her way through South America currently and was not currently his problem. Best let sleeping dogs lie, as it were.

"May I ask where you got the impression that it wasn't Miss Adler on your slab?"

"John Watson."

"Of course," Mycroft said with an irritated nod, "and why would he tell you such a thing?"

"We were discussing old cases. He's not doing well, you know. Or maybe you don't," Molly stopped and shook her head, "Anyway, we meet for coffee every so often and it helps him to recount some of their old cases. Yesterday, he told me about that woman... he called her THE Woman. He laughed when I told him how Sherlock identified the body," Molly laughed a little, but it sounded forced, "He explained about her faking her death..."

"Yes," Mycroft jumped in, "she did. She and my brother were-"

"Look," Molly interrupted, wringing her hands a little, "Whatever went on between Sherlock and this Miss Adler is none of my business, really," she paused and rubbed at her temple, "I know it's none of my business... but that other woman, the one we were supposed to think was Irene Adler, she is my business. She was my responsibility and I sent her off under a false name with people she never knew. I want to know who she was so that I can find her family, give them closure."

"You seem certain that she had family."

"No, not certain. She may have no family, just friends, or maybe not even those, but I'm certain there is someone, somewhere who will want to know that she's dead."

Miss Hooper stood up and began to pace. Mycroft took the opportunity to study her with more care. She was of a nervous temperament and often misspoke (sometimes with embarrassing results), but her dedication to her work trumped all of that. It was a good indicator of how serious she was that she didn't stumble over her words once. Mycroft realized now that this wasn't simply fastidiousness with regards to her job.

Finally, the young woman stopped pacing and said, "I know she's simply a detail to you and Sherlock, one not worth much note, but she was my responsibility and I owe it to her to have a truthful end to her story."

"You're identifying with her," Mycroft stated carefully.

"Yes, I am, Mr. Holmes. It's called empathy. You might want to look that one up because you've obviously deleted it." She stopped herself, closed her eyes and took a breath, "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

"But true," Mycroft conceded. "Empathy isn't helpful to someone like me."

"I've tried to understand that point of view," she said carefully, "the idea that the ends justify the means and the greater good. I know you have to think like that, I really do, even if I can't fully understand how you manage it, but the fact remains that I have a moral obligation to the people who end up in my morgue. I need to set this right."

Mycroft studied Molly Hooper for several moments. She began fidgeting about five minutes in, as he suspected she would considering how tightly wound she was at the moment. She didn't start pacing again, though, or turn away. She stood her ground. It was then that Mycroft truly saw the woman that Sherlock had insisted would help them fake a death. Miss Hooper wasn't insisting on finding this woman's identity because of hospital regulations. She was perfectly willing to forgo the rules, even break them, if necessary. It was about integrity and her belief that everyone deserved a proper end.

"The truth is, Miss Hooper, we didn't bother to find out her identity. We did, however, keep the dna samples from the body that were matched to the falsified reports. Those samples were taken directly from the body. I assume you kept a copy of the x-rays?"

Molly nodded.

"Well, that is much more than most cold case investigators have, so you should be able to find the woman's identity... eventually."

"I have some clues already, beyond the DNA samples and the x-rays," Miss Hooper said, looking Mycroft straight in the eye. "The body was fresh. Not dead more than a two hours. Sherlock was able to identify her from her body. That body would have had to match exactly to fool him. Finding a dead body to match that precisely, even taking in to account Sherlock possibly missing a clue because of his emotional state... it would be next to impossible..."

She trailed off and Mycroft smiled at her perceptiveness. "People in Miss Adler's profession often keep body doubles, for several obvious reasons," he confirmed. "I would assume this one proved useful in another way."

Molly Hooper's eyes flashed and she pursed her lips. There was genuine anger there. Whether it was directed at Mycroft for his cold recitation of the facts or on behalf of the woman murdered -or both- he didn't know. What he did know was that this was a mission Miss Hooper was not going to give up.

"She had a tumour," Miss Hooper said finally, her gaze veering to a painting to her right. It was a seaside landscape of muted blues and grays. He found it rather soothing himself on occasion. "inoperable. She would have been dead within six months."

"Ah," Mycroft said softly, but made no further comment.

"Do you think she... I don't know...volunteered?"

"You mean was she offered something such as, let's say, a luxurious lifestyle for the last few months of her life, in exchange for allowing herself to be killed? It's possible. It's equally possible that she begged for mercy while she was violently murdered."

Miss Hooper started and looked back at him sharply.

"Did you expect words of comfort from me, Miss Hooper? I deal with the amoral every day, and some of them are part of our own government. People who hold human life so cheaply that they can quantify a 'success' to mean only fifty lives were lost instead of two hundred. I learned that my job means disregarding the emotional element of what I do. Sometimes one must become a monster in order to defeat a monster."

Miss Hooper looked him straight in the eye. He saw some of what she was feeling pass over her features, she wasn't particularly good at hiding her emotions, but it was the flash of compassion in her eyes that took him off guard. She felt... pity? For him?

"I'll have a list of Miss Adler's known employees sent over along with the DNA samples," Mycroft said as he stood, suddenly ready to end this meeting. "Good enough?"

"How do I know the samples are actually hers?"

"You have my word Miss Hooper."

Miss Hooper nodded, "Good enough."

It took Molly Hooper seven and a half months to track down the cold case files of one Penelope Parkington (a.k.a. Pennie Lane) and another two to find her bereaved parents. Mycroft 'just happened' to have stopped by St. Bartholomew's morgue on the day that Molly Hooper met with the Parkingtons. He just happened to overhear their heartfelt thanks to the young pathologist for not giving up and for ending the nightmare of not knowing what had happened to their daughter.

It was a mere coincidence when the Parkingtons received word that the government would be paying for not only the exhumation of their daughter's remains, but also for a full re-burial and complete memorial service to the family's specifications. Mycroft had been duly surprised to find out this bit of information when Miss Hooper had dropped by to inform him. Miss Hooper, faced with his dismissal of the idea that he had instigated the whole thing, simply smiled and invited him for tea.