24 February 2014
Molly comes awake in the middle of the night, just after one o'clock, instinct telling her that something is wrong again.
She steps outside of her room and walks down to John's room. She raps softly on the door, which is closed, as usual. No answer, but John's a heavy sleeper. She knocks slightly harder, to silence. She doesn't want to bother him, but she can't be certain of her instinct, so she creeps downstairs to the sitting room. Even though Sherlock sleeps downstairs, she takes with her the gun that John has insisted she carry with her.
She lets her sight adjust fully this time, before opening the door. The hinges make no sound. The curtains are open, letting unobstructed moonlight illuminate the room.
And against the same wall as last time is a familiar shape.
Molly wonders numbly for several seconds if she's experiencing some kind of horrible déjà-vu, then comes to her senses and walks quietly towards the vampire and John, whose eyes are closed this time.
She's surprised that the vamp can't hear her breathing, or her heart thumping heavily in her chest, but perhaps he's distracted, because she's within nearly a meter of the dark muddle when John opens his eyes and sees her.
What transpires within the next few seconds is entirely unexpected, at least on Molly's part.
John opens his mouth and yells, "Stop!" just as Molly is lifting her gun. The vampire unfolds from John's wrist, again darkened, and spins around, eyes wide.
Molly stumbles backward, the hand holding the gun trembling, because the tall form in front of her wears a too-familiar face.
She turns and bolts, knowing how useless flight is against this kind of predator, but she isn't pursued.
"Molly!" Sherlock calls after her, but John grabs his arm before he can decide to follow.
"We'll fix this," John promises weakly. "She'll come back."
Sherlock wipes his mouth on his sleeve, staring dully out the door, eyes wide. He turns to John. "Oh God," he mumbles. His eyes flicker over John's face, then down to his wrist.
He walks numbly to the kitchen and grabs a thin towel.
"What are you doing?" John asks, staring at the empty doorway.
Sherlock spits on the towel and ties it around John's wrist. John nods in understanding. "Oh."
They're both shocked. Sherlock looks back out the door with John. "Did she…?"
And then they finally comprehend that Molly is alone on the streets of London, alone. At night.
"Oh my God," John says as he realizes. Sherlock looks back at him, wide-eyed. "Molly's in danger, Sherlock. She isn't thinking. She doesn't understand. We have to find her," John says urgently, and runs downstairs. Sherlock follows.
The street is deserted by the time they're out of the door. Molly has a couple minutes on them and she's panicked, which means she could have gotten quite far already. John looks around in dismay while Sherlock closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. His eyes open after a second, and he points in a direction. John doesn't question it, just follows.
Sherlock keeps the pursuit at a speed that John can keep up with, but just barely. They catch up to Molly in fewer than five minutes, but the whole time John is wondering if she'll be attacked before they reach her.
She's hiding in the shadow of a phone box when they see her. John reaches forward and stops Sherlock before they get too close. "She's got a gun and she's probably scared," John reminds Sherlock. "I'll handle this." The detective nods.
John approaches slowly. Molly makes no attempt to move, but stands stiffly upright, back to the phone box, gun clutched in both hands and pointed down.
"Molly, are you okay?" John asks cautiously.
She's breathing heavily, but slowly, which is a good sign. She eyes Sherlock over John's shoulder. The detective hangs back.
"Not sure," she answers quietly, voice tense. But she's calmer than John'd expected, after the initial shock. Perhaps it's all the time spent around cadavers that's allowed her to keep her cool this well.
John shuffles closer. "Do you think… I know this is a lot to ask right now, but do you think you could come back with us to Baker Street? It's not safe out here at this time. You know that," he reminds her.
Her eyes flicker back to Sherlock. John catches the movement. "He's perfectly safe, Molly. I promise. I've been living with him for a lot longer than you have, remember?"
Sherlock's phone buzzes in his coat pocket. He glances at it. The number is Mycroft's. It reads, CCTV picked up Molly Hooper leaving 221 Baker Street. Sending a car over.
"What is it?" Molly asks, somewhat agitatedly.
Sherlock debates opening his mouth to talk, but then passes the phone to John, who reads the text aloud to Molly.
She takes a deep breath, never taking her eyes off of Sherlock. "Will you tell him that it won't be necessary?"
John exhales a breath. "So you're coming back?"
"For now, yes. And — he walks in front," she says quietly, pointing at Sherlock.
John and Sherlock nod quickly at the same time.
They somehow make it back to the flat without incident. Sherlock is careful and doesn't so much as look back at Molly and John.
When they get back inside, they're relieved to find that Mrs. Hudson is still asleep.
"Does she know?" Molly asks, nodding towards the door to 221A. Sherlock shakes his head.
They head upstairs silently. Sherlock turns on the lights as soon as he can.
They arrange themselves in the consulting positions, Sherlock and John in their chairs, opposite of each other, and Molly on the sofa. It's close to the door and far enough away from Sherlock to give her some feeling of security.
Molly asks the questions.
"When did it happen?" is the first one.
Sherlock takes a deep breath before speaking for the first time. "It didn't," he answers.
Molly looks at John, wondering if she missed something or if possibly Sherlock misunderstood the meaning of her question. "It… didn't happen?" But clearly it had…
"I wasn't turned, if that's what you were asking. I was born like this. I'm what they've been calling a Generation vampire, as opposed to a Turned. You've probably heard the terminology in the news," Sherlock states.
Molly takes a moment to grasp this. "Okay." She pauses. She takes a couple of deep breaths before asking her next question. "I've seen you in the sun, lots of times. Is that just another myth, the burning in the sunlight thing?"
Sherlock shakes his head to this one. "No."
"But—"
"I was raised in a very conservative family, for vampires. They weren't very up-to-date. Most Generation aren't. But at a very early age, I was sick of staying in the shadows all the time. It's only directly in sunlight that we burn, so I'd seen it through windows and screens before, but most of the time I was only allowed out at night, for very good reasons. When I was eight, however, I started to dabble in chemistry. I experimented with finding a cure for the allergic reaction to sunlight. That, I never found, but by the time I was twelve, I'd made a working medication that partially weakened the reaction. With that first version, I'd get what looked like an awful sunburn after five minutes, but we heal quickly, so I got to test it a lot. I've been refining the formula ever since. The one I use now works for just over two weeks at a time."
Wide-eyed, Molly presses back into the sofa. "So when you asked me about the police checking with more than the sunlight test…"
Sherlock shakes his head. "That was just curiosity. I've never shared the formula or any sample of the medication with anyone. As far as I know, I'm the only vampire with something like this. Mycroft is the only one who even knows about it, other than John."
"Mycroft!" Molly realizes. "Is he… he's also…?"
The detective nods.
"But he doesn't use the medication?" Molly asks. "I don't know if I've ever seen him in daylight."
"He refuses to use it. He completely rejects his heritage, in fact. He doesn't feed. He only consumes human food, and as a result, he is incredibly weak. Only when it is absolutely imperative that he be out during the day does he contact me, and with great reluctance. He's only used the medication a few times, and in very small quantities," Sherlock explains.
Molly isn't sure whether this is reassuring or not. "You're the only one?" she asks finally.
Sherlock nods an affirmative.
Molly takes a little time to come up with her next question. It's an uncomfortable one.
"Er… well, this thing is… From everything I've heard about vampires, they — you — don't have a lot of control over, er, urges. John told me about the vampire that Greg had been holding and he'd been using drugs to suppress the craving for… blood." She winces, glancing at John's wrapped wrist. John tries too late to hide his hand.
Sherlock doesn't look. "You're wondering if I use similar drugs because otherwise I would clearly be attacking everyone with a beating heart who came within my sight line," he says coldly.
Molly flinches again. "N — no, I, er," she flounders.
"The answer is no. I don't use anything like that. It's a temptation but I have a lot of self-control. I always have."
"But you're not like Mycroft," Molly says hesitantly.
"I don't abstain, no. I think it would be letting myself go to waste. And I might as well answer your next question: Is John the only one I feed from? We actually haven't gotten that far, honestly. You interrupted us during the only two times that we've tried it. John didn't even know until the day that video came online, and I hadn't told him before because it wasn't relevant," he explains.
"So who do you—"
Sherlock anticipates this question, too. "Random individuals on the streets. Late-night stragglers, lonely people. I'm very careful, unlike most others. I am a scientist; I know how to administer sedatives and I know how much blood the human body can function normally on. I don't drain people. Like I said, I have a lot of self-control."
The three of them are silent for a long time. Molly can't think of any more questions just now, and though her adrenaline levels are probably back down to normal, she's itching to get off the sofa. She stands. John and Sherlock remain sitting, eyeing her cautiously.
Molly thinks for a long time. She looks at Sherlock, and then at John, and then out the window, and back at Sherlock and then the wall against which she'd found the pair of them earlier. When she comes to her decision, she looks back at John and Sherlock. And then she answers the question that they've all been dreading asking.
"I won't tell. And I'll stay," says Molly. Sherlock and John exhale loudly and look at each other. She's not finished, however. "I think I trust you. Both of you. But I will find somewhere else to stay if need be, and I'm sleeping with my gun loaded and ready to fire next to me from now on."
"I can get you a vial of acid if you'd like; it'd probably be more effective," Sherlock mutters. John scoots forward on his chair and kicks him, hard. Sherlock shuts up.
Molly looks at them sharply. "I hope that won't be necessary," she says, her voice strained.
"He's being tactless, as usual," John says, glaring. "Aren't you, Sherlock?"
The detective nods meekly.
A thought occurs to John. "He is thinking in the right direction, though, I think," he says.
"What?" Sherlock says loudly. "I'm not too keen on getting acid burns—"
"Shut up, Sherlock. I meant we should think about defense against vampires in general. I can't believe I haven't asked you about this already. That way Molly can feel better about all this and we can keep taking cases that require us to be out at night and you won't have to keep an eye on me all the time."
Sherlock nearly laughs. "There is nothing that I can teach you," he says derisively.
"Of course there is—"
"You misunderstand. Against the average vampire, the kind that doesn't know how to use his or her speed, any self-defense class would prepare you well enough. John, you've had formal combat training. You could probably teach that kind of thing better than I could. Just know how to use a gun and a knife and you'll be equally matched against most vampires. And before you ask, we don't have any secret weak points. We've talked about this."
John crosses his arms. "The average vampire, you said. What's the non-average vampire? What can we do against them?"
Sherlock shakes his head. "The self-aware vampire moves so fast that you couldn't see them in time to stop them. There aren't a lot of those, Generation or Turned."
"So you're saying we don't stand a chance so we shouldn't try?" Molly says angrily.
Sherlock is taken slightly aback. "That night when you came back from Harry's unexpectedly. When you caught us in the sitting room, you gasped. I heard you, stopped you from screaming, and ran downstairs and outside so that you would hear the door. When I heard you talking to John, I ran back upstairs. Your back was turned. John saw me. I went to my bedroom and undressed, and was able to answer you when you called for me," he tells her, as an example.
Molly frowns. "That's mostly sneaking around. Show me."
"Show you what?" Sherlock asks, puzzled.
"Do something. Run," she requests.
"What, in here?"
"Yes."
Sherlock looks around the room. "Window to refrigerator," he decides. "zero-point-zero-two seconds."
Molly crosses her arms, shaking her head. "Now that's just arrogant."
"Stand there," Sherlock instructs, pointing at an area in front of the couch. He moves over to one of the windows. "Watch the air between here and the refrigerator."
Molly does as he says, out of curiosity.
Sherlock disappears.
In Molly's peripheral vision, Sherlock is gone, and she sees a very brief blur before her eyes before he appears in the kitchen, next to the fridge.
Even John, who's seen this before, is open-mouthed in awe.
"Oh," says Molly.
Author's note: This fanfic was originally published on Archive of Our Own. I have not written anything new in this story for several months. I have several WIPs currently, and I'm having problems with pacing and such, so have decided to focus solely — only for now — on one of my fics, Seasons of Strangers. For the rest of the multi-chapter fics that I am planning on developing further, I am posting this notice to let any and all readers know that there will not be any chapter updates any time soon. That said, this post is also a guarantee that I will be continuing the story, no matter how long it takes. It simply means that I will no longer be focusing any notable part of my attention on developing the storyline, but on continuing and finishing Seasons of Strangers.