Molly rolled her eyes as her five year old son poured salt into his morning juice.
"Archie," she sighed. "Why on Earth are you pouring salt into your orange juice?"
Archibald Hooper lifted his dark curly head and gave his mother an imperious look. "Mummy," he intoned seriously. "I need to know how this makes my juice taste."
Molly attempted to stifle her smile, but she couldn't help but beam at her precocious son. He always just needed to know something. He was so smart and so curious. He reminded her of herself as a child. In the back of Molly's mind she wondered if his father William was the same way when he was a boy, but she quickly dismissed that thought.
"Well, young man." Molly she put her hands on her hips and managed a stern face even though she could see Archie wasn't fooled. "You mustn't keep adding salt to your foods like that as you grow older or it becomes a dangerous game of hypertension when you reach middle age."
Archie grinned widely at his mother, his big brown eyes alight with glee. "Yes, mummy!" And he continued to pour salt into his juice.
Molly watched with a smile on her lips as he took a sip of his completed experiment only to make a face and spit it back out into his cup. Molly laughed and soon Archie was rolling around the floor giggling at his own silly display. "It tastes yucky mummy!" He howled between fits of the giggles.
"Okay young man," Molly said as she scooped his cup up and deposited the failed experiment down the drain, "it's time for you to gather your school things for your first day back."
She heard the soft patter of tiny feet come into the kitchen behind her, and she turned to face her son. "But mummy, you will be soooo sad when I go away, and I don't want you to be sad." Archie stood before Molly in the kitchen and looked up at her with his bottom lip stuck out. Molly pursed her lips to stop herself from giggling.
Her son amused her to no end with his attempts at manipulation. She would say he got it from his father, but Molly wasn't sure if personality traits could be genetic, and she had no idea what his father was like.
"Baby, I told you last night before bedtime that it's my first official day of work. I can't stay here with you." She pulled him into her arms and held on tightly. "Mummy wants to be with you very much but I have to work. I still love you though. Okay?"
"Okay," Archie sighed, and Molly put him down so he could gather his school things.
As Molly washed up the breakfast dishes, she ran the lab and morgue procedures through her mind. She knew Dr. Stamford had mentioned something about clearance, but for the life of her Molly couldn't remember if it was a reference to her access or someone else's. Oh well, she was bound to figure it out when whoever it was showed up.
After dropping Archie off at school, Molly made her way to St. Bart's for her first official shift as a Registrar Specialist for pathology. It was the third of January and Molly felt very much like it was a new beginning for her. The previous week had been spent filling out paperwork, learning procedure, and getting a tour of the facilities from Dr. Stamford.
Molly's thoughts wandered as she changed into her scrubs in the locker room. It had been a struggle raising Archie on her own, but with the money left over from her father's life insurance and with the help of her friends, she had managed to finish her specialization in pathology. Archie had been the icing on the cake with his sweet baby smiles that transformed into toddler laughs. She never regretted for a moment the choice to keep him. She only wished that she could have tracked down William...
But she again shut down that thought as she made her way to the morgue. Any thoughts of William and what could have been was dangerous territory. She wasn't sad for herself about his absence, but for Archie. Archie, who was so clever and beautiful, deserved a father, or to at least know who his father was. He hadn't mentioned the lack of a dad yet, and Molly prayed he wouldn't ask about it until he was old enough to understand (or more like until Molly could explain the actions that led to his conception). Damn it! She was thinking about it all again and getting herself down. This new year and new job should have been her only focus at the moment, but Molly couldn't help but wonder what William would have thought of his son.
Dr. Stamford came into the morgue for Molly's first solo autopsy at St. Bart's, but left soon after she finished the last set of sutures. As Molly began cutting into the head of her second autopsy, she almost jumped at the sound of the morgue doors hitting the wall.
It was like déjà vu.
That was the only way to describe her immediate reaction to the man that made his way into her morgue. He was beautiful and Molly felt the sudden swooping sensation of attraction in her stomach. His dark curly hair and bright blue eyes seemed to distantly trigger something, but for the life of her Molly couldn't figure out what her mind was telling her. His long elegant coat certainly didn't remind her of anybody she knew. Molly continued to look closely at the man, unable to say a word since her mind seemed to have shuddered to a stop, but his eyes slid right over her as he examined the room. The door burst open again and this time Molly did jump a little. A familiar figure strode into the room and headed straight for the first man.
"Can you not do that, yeah?" The salt-and-pepper haired man said. "It'd be nice if you recognized my authority on this case at least once."
"Oh Lestrade, we both know I'm the authority on matters of murder." The curly-haired man said snidely to whom Molly now recognized from the newspapers was DI Lestrade.
"That's not what I meant Sherlock Holmes and you know it."
Molly felt that same sense of déjà vu again at the mention of the first man's name, but shook it away as she remembered Dr. Stamford mentioning a Mr. Holmes the day before and how he had open access to the morgue and lab. Something about being a detective, but not really, for the NSY and some sort of high clearance.
Sherlock just rolled his eyes and turned his assessing gaze onto Molly. "Dr. Hooper, pull out Mr. Thompson so that the Detective Inspector and I may take a look."
This startled Molly out of her stupor as she realized that the man, Sherlock, had referred to her by name and title even though her badge was on her lab coat, which she wasn't wearing as she performed the autopsy. "How-"
"You're clearly new, as I have worked with all the other pathologists in the past," Sherlock interrupted with a roll of his eyes as a haughty look crossed his face. "I know from a change in the schedule that a new pathologist was starting this week and as you are about to begin cutting into that man's head," here he waved casually at the corpse on the table, "I can correctly assume you are not an assistant."
Lestrade eyed Sherlock from his place beside the door. "But how did you know her name?"
"Well it's obvious of course," Sherlock said imperiously with another roll of his eyes. Molly was pretty sure his eyes would fall out with the way they kept rolling, and Lestrade would probably help them along as the older man frowned.
"No, it's not obvious Sherlock." Lestrade stepped further into the room and took a closer look at Molly.
Molly shrank back under the sudden scrutiny, but was soon distracted again by the man who had somehow moved even closer to her without her noticing. "For a DI of supposed excellent observational skills, you observe very little. Surely you did not miss the lab coat with the attached badge hanging by the door?"
Now Molly was quite sure that DI Lestrade would disregard all rules and regulations in order to strangle his counterpart, but she was surprised when the man only grumbled under his breath about "consulting detective consulting about a view of the inside of a cell."
"The body then Dr. Hooper?"
Molly was brought out of her musings by the 'consulting detective.' Molly nodded her head and carefully pulled a sheet over Mr. Wainwright, and proceeded to the drawer for Mr. Thompson.
Sherlock took one look at the body before promptly turning around with a snap of his long coat and striding back out the morgue doors. "It's clearly a heart attack Lestrade," he called over his shoulder. "Please refrain from calling me out on anything less than a seven."
"Sorry about that," Lestrade said with a slight grimace and nod in Molly's direction.
"It's alright," Molly replied as Lestrade took his leave as well, though in a much less dramatic fashion.
And that was basically how Molly's first few weeks in the new year went. Archie would perform one of his 'experiments' on his breakfast, or her breakfast. Then she would drop him off at his school before making her way to work, where at some point during the day Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective, would dramatically throw the doors open to the morgue or lab and demand access to bodies and microscopes before he would stride out again in similarly dramatic fashion. At some point Molly found herself supplying the man with body parts meant for study by the medical school students. She also found herself with an embarrassingly serious crush on a man that was clearly so very brilliant, but then again, Molly had always been attracted to highly intelligent men.
And then there was that niggling doubt at the back of her mind that there was something she was missing. There was just some piece of a puzzle she couldn't solve. Molly dismissed any thoughts of doubt as soon as they entered her mind. After all, she hadn't had a crush of any sort since she became pregnant with Archie.
But she needn't have worried, for as brilliant as he was, Sherlock Holmes also seemed oblivious about normal human interactions; He noticed her lipstick but completely misconstrued her attempt to ask him out, and later proceeded to insult the size of her mouth in front of her boss and some strange man. However, Molly was the optimistic sort and gave herself a pat on the back for her first romantic foray in many many years, even if it had failed spectacularly.
So it was that a few weeks after meeting Sherlock Holmes, and the same day she was shot down for a date, the man in question picked up a stray in the form of Dr. Watson, whose first name she didn't quite catch, and he began to intrude on her work days less and less.