Title: Lullaby

Genre: Friendship/Romance

Word count: 477

Rating: T

Warnings: Creepy!Jim, some autopsy talk.

"Jim? Jim we don't have to watch the movie if you're too tired…"

She thought I slept badly at night due to regret and shame. She never told me that's what she thought, but I knew she did. She was painfully easy to read.

I slept badly because of the thoughts spinning in my head. Everything I'd seen that day — any day. All the knowledge, all the facts. Coming out at night to play.
I slept badly because I was planning how to extort money, cause panic, hurt people. I slept badly because I got too excited about my work to sleep.

I didn't correct her assumption.

"…Jim?"
"Tell me how you do a Post Mortem, Molly." I said, and crossed my ankles on top of the arm of the couch I was stretched out on.

"I, uh…what?"

I opened my eyes and gave her a playful smile.

"Pleeeaaase?"

She looked flustered, and fiddled with her hands in her lap a little.
I knew she would, eventually.
She cleared her throat, hesitated, and began.

"Well, um, after the evidence-gathering bits; cleaning under the nails and the like, and the body is undressed and washed and documented, we do an incision from each shoulder to the bottom of the sternum, and then down the abdomen to the pubic bone."

I closed my eyes. Strange, for such a sweet thing to be working with death, but she enjoyed it.
Like I did.

But for different reasons, of course.

She hated for someone to go unclaimed, no one to mourn them. To her, anonymity was the worst possible fate in death. Understandable, given her solitary life.

Often, I put those sorts of bodies in her morgue.

We didn't talk about that.
But, I had to admit I loved the idea that she was the one who tidied up things. Almost as though she was redeeming what I had done.
Not that I have any mistakings about the state of my soul, or that anything she could do would ever redeem me.
I liked that, too.

"— remove the organs in order, well, er, depending on what it seems like the cause of death might be."

Most times I fell asleep in the middle of business, as Moran drove me somewhere or I furiously wrote plans before they were lost from my mind as new information filled its place.

I know the aftermath a death causes, but this was one I didn't often see.
And to hear sweet Molly explaining the cleansing of a body, erasing and memorializing a life at once.
Preparing the gateway to oblivion.

She couldn't possibly know how soothing it was.

I usually fell asleep out of pure exhaustion.
But this time, I was lulled softly into it by tales of death coming from the mouth of a saint.
Breathtaking, that.

A/N: Thanks for all the favorites/reviews everybody! You all are lovely ^^

Today's depressing Molliarty song is World Spins Madly On by The Weepies. Extra-angst points if you watch the animated video by Ryan Woodward ("Thought of you" by Ryan Woodward)

I have no idea how long this whole thing is going to go on; I still have plenty of ideas!

Lucy you're the best beta reader.

As always, suggestions and comments are appreciated!

- ACG