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Trigger warnings for this chapter: drug use, non-explicit death
The day Sherlock died, he had been awake for nearly two days.
He'd been racing around London chasing down leads on a neat little puzzle. He wasn't being paid for the case, but the challenge of solving the murder of a coke supplier was marginally satisfying. The man had been locked in his own vault at the time of his gruesome death, with no apparent escape route. The client who brought him the case was Sherlock's dealer, the dead man a connection of his. If Sherlock brought him the murderer within three days, fifty percent of his debts would be wiped clean.
Thirty hours after being tossed the case by Ericson, Sherlock turned up on his doorstep with a battered photograph and a black eye.
"He was informing to the Met, you imbecile. Be glad Devaney removed him after discovering that fact. Your rival in recreational sales has done you a rather good turn on accident. His man at the security company got him in and out of the vault. Child's play. Boring. I expect the Met has enough to hand you over for the Queen's justice, since you were sloppy enough to trust an informant for months." Sherlock wiped the blood away from his mouth and stuffed the photo in Ericson's hands. "My deductions should be sufficient, but trust is so tricky. There's your proof."
The stout man studied the photo, a rough Polaroid of his dead cohort chatting with two NSY detectives in an alley. "Fair enough. Come inside for your payment."
Sherlock shook his head, anxious to be off. "Wipe the chit clean, we agreed."
"Half-clean," Ericson smirked. "But since you were so bloody fast, I've got a bonus for you. Something special from the States. Dina'll get a packet ready for ya." He clapped Sherlock's arm.
Ericson's girlfriend waved from inside, and Sherlock saw the promise of something white and pure in her unnaturally bright eyes. His mouth watered and he hesitated. "Only for a moment."
Ericson smiled crookedly. "Sure sure. I'll get it for ya."
Sherlock collected his bonus and left. Using at his dealer's place was addict behavior and he was still better than that. He had come to rely on the white powder more and more to keep deeper emotions and the soulmate dreams at bay. He wasn't using the drug for fun, like some piece of human trash, he told himself. He was trying to short-circuit the inherently flawed chemistry of his brain that dictated that need for her, the other half, the one he didn't- couldn't need.
I'm not a junkie, for christ's sake.
Some days he actually believed it.
Night had fallen. Sherlock took a taxi back to his flat, prepped a line and snorted it down with precision. It took ten seconds to realize that something was terribly wrong.
The slight burn didn't mellow into the usual high but intensified into a scorching pain in his head. He cursed his stupid greed in trusting Ericson's generosity. He managed to dial 999 before the overwhelming hammering of his heart drove him to his knees.
He crawled toward the wall and pulled himself up by the window- and collapsed again. He sprawled on his back, the mobile falling from his shaking fingers. He mumbled something that might've been his address by the fallen phone. His heart raced, sweat pouring from his brow and his breath came labored. He threw his head back, gasping for air and trying to cry out a word.
M-
He was only dimly aware of the spinning stars of the night sky as his heart stopped-
-and he died.
Returning from dinner with her mate Surya who worked in A&E, Molly heard a man's bellowing before she was halfway down the hall.
The A&E was bustling with activity already, victims from a fire filling the rooms. Not a bed was unoccupied, but the sounds of one angry young fellow drowned out them all with his insults.
Molly and her friend had popped over to the shop across the street to stock up on Quavers to tide them through the long night shift. Molly had woken up with a terrible headache that morning and needed snacks to stave off a worsening migraine, and for Surya, the full moon always brought out the worst at the A&E.
"I can find a good vein in the dark," the sneering voice shouted. "And you lot can't manage it with a team of supposed experts. Give me the goddamned needle, I'll do it myself."
Surya groaned as they nudged their way through the crowded waiting room. "I know I said this is the job I wanted, but every month at this time I wish I was down in the morgue with you, Mols."
Clattering sounds of metal hitting the floor filled the hallway. Molly laughed softly, and Surya groaned.
"Corpses don't slap you when you take blood, do they."
"Hardly ever," Molly said with a grin. "Once rigor mortis wears off, they're very pliable and easy to work with."
"Corpse humor. This is why the men I fix you up with don't call back." Surya wrinkled her nose, and fixed her ponytail, securing the dark strands tighter into her hair tie. "Sod it- check on him please? You owe me for the thing with the guy from Oncology that time. It's turned into a madhouse over dinner, and I've got a full chart of higher priority patients now with the fire."
"I don't know, Sur…"
"Oh come on, he just needs a talk-down. No real work. The nurse in there is hopeless. I hardly blame the patient. Help her calm him down?"
Molly hesitated and checked her watch. She wasn't due back in the morgue for twenty minutes, and she did owe her friend. Surya drew an extra pair of gloves from the box and stuffed it in her hands.
"Alright, why not. It's nice to mingle with the living once in a while," Molly said cheerfully. If anything, it would remind her of why it was so lovely to hide away down among the dead.
Molly plastered what she hoped was a pleasant smile on her face and stuck her head into the room. "Hi Paula!" She nodded to the night nurse. Turning to the patient, she asked, "Is there a particular problem here, or are you averse to have your blood taken in general?"
Molly took stock of the patient, noticing the painful thinness of his legs beneath the pale sheet, and the hollowness of his chest. His long body was cricket-like, bent in the uncomfortable hospital bed. His tousled hair was in need of a good trimming. When he brushed it back impatiently, she realized his eyes were tilted rather curiously like a cat's.
"I have an aversion to stupidity. Is there a medication one may take to avoid running into that? It seems to be rampant here." The voice that had been terrorizing the A&E belonged to a surprisingly young man, in his midtwenties like her.
His head was turned toward Molly, showing off a spectacular set of cheekbones. The dark brown curls drifted over his face, covering his eyes from her sight, but she had the sense that he was drinking her in, assessing her.
"Right, I see you're a…not a.. fan of people…" Molly grabbed at the chart while the tired and impatient nurse looked at her with arms crossed. She saw the challenge loud and clear in the other woman's eyes: If I can't handle this annoying arsehole, I doubt you can, kid.
"I'm sorry you've had a bad experience so far, mister um," Molly flipped through the chart hurriedly. "Holmes. Sher-." She blinked, certain she must be imagining it. Every noise in the room seemed magnified a hundredfold. "Sherl-"
"Sherlock. Old family name. Unusual but most people can pronounce it. Judging by your experience and education, it's shocking you can't grasp a simple seven-letter name." His voice was cool and amused. "You work in the morgue, I see. The scent is particular. Why are you- oh, a favor for a friend. That's nice. Well, you can leave. You're not needed."
Cocaine…laced with heroin…impure…overdose…malnutrition…self-administe red….flatlined…police report…neighbor….cardiac…stable condition.
Molly stared at the chart, the important words jumping out at her. She tried to comprehend but her dreams were bleeding around her. How many Sherlocks could there be? How many around her age, living in London? It had to be him. Abusing drugs and hateful to those around him. What sort of man had the fates chosen for her? What did it say about her?
She had to know. There was only one way to be sure.
"Paula." Her voice came out a soft squeak. She cleared her throat and spoke again. "Paula." Better, she told herself. "I think I can come to a reasonable compromise with Sherlock here but I'd like to speak with him alone for a few minutes. With you outside the room, for security's sake, of course," she added. "We don't need to restrain you, do we, Sherlock?"
"No," he replied. "Since they confiscated my cigarettes, I won't be going anywhere."
Paula's eyebrows rose, but she threw her hands in the air. "Fine. Right outside the door. This is going to be one of those nights, I can tell."
The door closed, and Molly felt her stomach tighten into a ball of knots.
She set the chart down on the tray and rolled up her sleeves. "This isn't how I meant to do this. How I planned if this ever happened. I had a speech- I had thought- But I think perhaps I should be honest-"
"Your name is Molly Hooper."
She jumped and looked up.
Sherlock rolled his blue-green eyes. His thin shoulders sunk into the bed and he shifted to look out the window. "It says so on your name badge. A stranger who suddenly exposes their forearm is typically a soul seeker wanting to know if someone's mark matches; it's standard. But your name is Molly. My soul mate is named Margaret. Not Molly."
Molly blushed and felt the knot in her belly tighten. "You knew just by my behavior like that- and you knew before that I worked in the morgue based on the smell? It doesn't say that on my badge. I don't smell like a morgue. Do I?" She tried not to sniff.
He shrugged. "Chemicals, not decomposition. I make deductions based on the data presented."
"That's fascinating." Molly smiled. It really was very intriguing. He was quite clever then, despite the drugs. Maybe there was a reason for it, maybe there was hope….
You're fooling yourself, she chided herself. Her heart ached. He needs serious rehabilitation. This is not a new drug habit.
"Do you ever make mistakes, Sherlock? With your deductions?" She fiddled with her sleeves, and slipped a finger under the fabric. She slid her thumb over the place where she knew his name branded her.
"No. Well, rarely." He abruptly jerked back toward her. His quicksilver eyes narrowed. He searched her face again. She felt him taking in her neat brown ponytail, her brown eyes and her small hands, strong from years of scalpel-handling. She watched his eyes follow her arm, her hand, her thumb moving under her sleeve….
And she watched him swallow hard.
He began to turn away.
No. I won't let you.
Molly yanked her sleeve up.
Sherlock's eyes wandered across the wall casually to the calendar as though it had just taken great interest for him.
"Sherlock? Look at me, please?"
Molly stepped close to the bed, and for the first time, touched her soulmate.
A warm thrill of electricity rode from her fingers into his arm and it was all he could do not to haul her onto the bed, into his lap, to kiss her senseless.
Instead he stared at her hand like it was a spider and said, "Yes, Miss Hooper?"
"What does it say on my arm?"
There it was, laid out unavoidably in darkest marks. She was irrevocably his, no one could mistake that, and in that primal corner of his mind, the one that had always understood and wanted it, he was glad for it. His name sprawled over her inner arm from elbow to wrist, and he bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling.
"It's a name. Could be some other bloke. Not my problem."
Her brown eyes burned with annoyance and he was glad to see the spark of temper. She had spirit then, despite the calm demeanor she presented. Good.
Not good, he thought. You can't keep her. Bad for brain work.
"Can I see your arm, please?"
It was a formality. The hospital gown exposed his skin. He only had to turn his arm slightly over and he'd be lost. Lost to her…
"Molly is rarely a nickname for Margaret."
"Mmhm," she said, smiling. Her eyes warmed. She smoothed her fingers over his arm. "Please?"
He didn't know if it was the weakness of the overdose or if that was just an excuse for giving into his base human instinct. He rolled his arm over, exposing the soft skin of his inner arm, with Margaret neatly spelled out over three inches of flesh.
Molly's eyes glittered. "Thank you, Sherlock. This is difficult. And strange. I never thought it would be like this. Um, in hospital. We can get help. I know people who can help."
"Oh for God's sake, I don't need another person trying to fix me," Sherlock sneered. He yanked his arm from her grasp.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's habit. I'm used to taking care of things. I don't know what to do." Molly reached out and stroked his arm, tracing the letters of her birth name in wonder.
Sherlock frowned.
"Sorry, am I hurting you?"
"No." On the contrary, her fingers on his arm were sending warm electrical pulses through his body. He shivered with the force of it. "I don't usually like people handling me." His eyes narrowed at Molly and her hand stopped. "No, you can…continue." Her fingers drew the sticks and arches of her name until his body buzzed with mellow energy and he felt almost light-headed with relief. "Huh."
"What?"
"A minor experiment. I've read that soulmatches had an effect on cortisol production in skin to skin contact in these types of situations."
Instead of being offended as he assumed she would be, Molly giggled. "Oh. Alright. What journal was that in?"
"Dunno. Binned it ages ago." Sherlock watched her hands travel over his inner arm. The warmth of her contact seemed to be spreading. "That would explain why I'm not as, you might say, agitated, as I was a moment ago."
"It's amazing." Molly beamed. "Sherlock, I'm not sure where to go from here, but can we- can I hug you? For a start."
His eyebrows rose in mock-horror. "Whatever would Nurse Paula say?"
She smiled mischievously. "Oh, no one likes her very much anyway."
Molly hopped on the edge of the bed and hugged Sherlock before he could change his mind. He was still weak, but her enthusiasm was oddly hard to resist.
He found himself wondering if he could get used to it. Panic rose in his gut. He couldn't. He didn't want to.
His arms came up gingerly behind her and clasped her tight. His face came to rest in the crook of her neck and he realized that she didn't smell much like chemicals that close up. Under the smells of hospital were scents of lemon soap and floral potpourri. She used an orange-scented cleaner at home, but preferred unscented hair products. The bouquet of citrus smelled of home, with an undernote of vanilla- he wondered if she'd been baking before her shift. He nuzzled at her neck for a deeper whiff, and Molly sighed, relaxing into his arms deeper, squeezing him tighter.
Lost in the newness of holding each other, neither realized that the door had opened until a dry voice cut through the heated silence.
"My, my, brother. If I'd realized you were prepared to accept Miss Hooper, I'd have introduced you sooner."
Yes, Mycroft is an interrupting ass but he'll be an informative one too.
This isn't quite a happily ever after yet as Sherlock has a ways to go in accepting that he can love and need someone, and Molly has to let Sherlock take care of himself. Stay tuned.