Always the Quiet Ones ~ A Sherlock Fanfic
No one suspects the nice ones. No one suspects the girl who stands in the back of the room. No one suspects the girl in an oversized sweater with no makeup, watching the world through thick rimmed glasses. No one suspects the quiet ones.
Wordcount: 1.8k
Genre: Angst
Warnings: This is an evil AU for a reason. Molly goes bad. It gets very dark.Think of it as the genocide run of Undertale, but with Sherlock. If that’s going to upset you then please don’t read this. Specific triggers: death, suicidal ideation/suicide, unhealhty relationships
A/N: This is so late I’m sooooo sorry, thank you Anon for requesting it!! This is an au where Molly is “not on the side of the angels”, as you put it. It’ll probably have like four or five more chapters. I hope you like it!
|| Read on AO3 ||
Sherlock Holmes has one curious way of keeping his mind sharp that is so unnoticeable that it’s never made it into one of John’s stories (although it causes him innumerable inconveniences). Few people know about it and even fewer realize its significance. The ones that do know tend to think of it as a quirk, an eccentricity, just one more unconventional trait that makes Sherlock Holmes…Sherlock Holmes.
Molly Hooper knows better. Sherlock deletes things. Entire people. Whole countries. How many days there are in a year. The concept of gratitude. He forgets…on purpose. She’s not sure there’s anything more despicable in a person.
She’s turning this thought over and over in her head, wondering if there’s any worse trait that you can deliberately give yourself, while she waits for her chips. The man at the counter is taking an unusually long time and she catches herself drumming her fingers against the counter. She shoves that hand in her pocket, quickly.
“One moment, please,” says the man behind the counter, and Molly wonders if he’d seen her fidgeting. His face wants to slip away before she notices, but before it can her eyes catch the drip of sweat on his forehead and the heavy sigh that lowers his shoulders as he turns away. She averts her eyes. The floor is scuffed and dirty.
“Miss Hooper?”
The familiarity of the voice paired with the formality of her name jolts something in the back of her mind. It’s like seeing someone you know at a crime scene, blinking unfeelingly down at a covered body. Molly shakes that image from her mind.
“Mr...Moriarty.”
He chuckles quietly, looks down in a parody of shyness. “Good to see you again.”
“Can’t say I return the sentiment, unfortunately.”
He grins at her as he slides past to a booth, and just the way he looks at her makes her feel dirty. “Would you like to sit?”
“I’m still waiting for my chips, thanks.”
A shrug. “Suit yourself, darling.”
“I will.” She clamps her mouth shut. He makes her want to say more, words that tumble out more naturally than when she’s around any other person, eased out by his charisma. She knows it isn’t just her; he has this effect on people. She promises herself that she will be immune to this, and soon.
The man comes back with her basket of chips. “Here y’are, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
She pays him and sits down opposite Moriarty, who is still wearing that shit eating grin. How can he walk around like this, she ponders, face open to the public, with everything that’s happened, and still have the- the GALL to smile like that?
He must be reading her mind, because he says, “Benefits of having...connections. You might want to get some.” He winks.
“I have you, don’t I?” she asks shortly.
“That you do, darlin’.” He lets his gaze wander briefly to the window, and absently snatches a chip from her basket. “So, Molly, what can I do for you?”
She’s still staring almost angrily at the chip in his hand, at his entitlement to everything and everyone around him, but at least he knows what he is. At least he sides himself squarely against the Ordinary, at least- she halts the thought. Justification will not be happening today. She can’t think while he’s sitting there. That’s a problem for home.
“I need something from you.”
He snorts softly. “I gathered, and…?”
“Revenge.”
He hardly reacts but she can tell he’s surprised. It’s out of character for her, she knows. God, she knows. She is so damn sick of people looking at her and underestimating her, looking at her and seeing poor gentle little Molly and so help her-
“Revenge? Really? That’s interesting. Heart not broken, I hope?”
“Not once you’re finished.”
He raises an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”
She copies his posture, leaning back and making a conscious effort to relax her limbs. She picks up a chip and chews, slowly. It’s just a little too hot but cool enough that she can detect the salt. She likes making him wait.
When she’s chewed and swallowed the chip she leans across the table and motions at him to do the same. For once a look of genuine interest interrupts the carefully constructed boredom that’s usually the trademark of his features. She brings her lips to his but does not kiss him; at the last instant she moves closer to his ear and whispers, so soft that even he has to strain to hear her. When she’s done she leans back, slowly, and begins working on her chips again. She glances up at Moriarty, trying not to appear too invested.
He’s staring out the window again. She’s almost disappointed until she hears him whisper, “I didn’t know you had it in you…”
He picks up his coat, stands, snatches one more chip from her basket. “Miss Hooper,” he announces softly, “I will be in touch.” He winks again as he walks out, but not before she’s seen something new in his expression, something even better than simple interest.
Molly picks at the remainder of her chips, watches out the window as a cab pulls up to number 221B and John and Sherlock step out. They look unreal through the warped window and the rain; she feels as though she’s looking at them through a tv screen.
James Moriarty looked...impressed.
The morgue is home. Molly has an apartment of course, and she has her cats, but nothing comes close to that feeling when she walks in and flips the too bright fluorescent lights on, blinks into it, and slides into her lab coat.
Funny that she feels more alive with dead people than she does surrounded by people who are actually dead. Perhaps it was because she was more alive in comparison. Or perhaps it was because they could sense that she was like them. Half dead.
The corpses could smell death.
It’s been maybe a month since that first meetup with Jim- Moriarty. Since her meetup with wanted criminal and terrorist James Moriarty.
How are you so different from him? a voice in her head whispers. She dismisses it easily.
I do not kill innocent people.
I don’t kill people, in general.
He needs to be free of his own existence.
He’s not human.
She ghosts her pen along the paper, writing the words over and over and over until they are burned into her mind. Not human not human not human. Sherlock is the one who kills innocent people. He’s too damn clever, too full of himself, too prideful to let go-he would sacrifice innocents just so his immaculate, intelligent image stands spotless.
Molly sat on the counter, swinging her legs and scribbling on a clipboard to look busy if anyone came in. Well. Not just anyone.
As though on cue the door swung open. There he was, the legend himself, all coltish legs and bright eyes under a coat that was heavy and dark with rain. “Have you got it?” he huffed, not even pausing to look at her.
Molly looks up from the clipboard. She’s watching him, eyes dark, and he’s not even paying attention.
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” she says, trying to adopt her usual “slightly embarrassed but also there are sleeping animals in the room” tone, instead of the one she wants to use, which is pure, howling rage.
“Good. Tomorrow morning at dawn?”
“I-yes.”
He’s finally looking at her. “Are you alright, Molly?”
“Perfectly fine.” she says, and huffs out a breath so quietly that he surely won’t hear her.
“Well then. See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Molly echoes, but he’s already out the door.
It’s raining again. Molly is sitting in the stairwell of an anonymous business building, knees tucked in against her chest. Her lab coat is thrown carelessly over the banister. She can see John even now. Just about to look up, she imagines. Just about to see.
She is sorry about John, but he must understand. He’s like her. He just hasn’t realized it yet.
Or maybe he has, and he’s too deep, too far under Sherlock’s oddly charismatic grasp, and not even this can save him. Molly raises her shoulders to her ears, huddled, and then drops them in an overdramatic shrug that no one ever sees. Oddly she still feels the need to keep up appearances. To act like a normal human being. I am a normal human being, she tells herself firmly.
Ah. There it is.
John is looking up. Finally. Molly feels a spark of nervous energy that starts in her hands and travels up. She didn’t need to be here, Moriarty could take care of things without ever knowing what he was really doing-in fact by staying she was somewhat placing herself under suspicion, but she had to know. She had to see the fruits of her plan.
Otherwise she’d never get any peace.
John hasn’t comprehended yet what is happening in the brief time it takes Molly to mull over those few thoughts. Molly stands, leans back against the railing, grips the rails as tight as she can, willing it to just happen already.
Even from this height she can see the moment that John understands, and her heart breaks a little for him.
He’ll heal. He’ll be fine. He’s better off now.
She sees John lurch forward, the messy sprint across the road, even hears his faint cry-
And then it’s over. He fell too fast for her to even take it in. Sherlock is broken on the sidewalk.
No, not Sherlock. A body is not a person. Molly knows this better than most people.
A body is not a person.
Neither is Sherlock Holmes now.
She stands for a moment, face pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass. She watches as the ambulances arrive and people clamor to see what’s happening. She watches the EMTS gather around him-it, the body, it’s not him-and she watches as they drag John away.
In what seemed like only a moment later there is a tap on her shoulder.
“You...lied...to me. You were supposed to save him.”
Molly turns slowly and looks him dead in the eye. “Yes, and no. I’ve saved the world from him.”
“You lied...to ME?”
“I did. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
She’s never seen him like this. The fake blood still staining his hair and face looks too real and his teeth are clenched in an animalistic snarl.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Molly.” His voice has suddenly taken on a softer quality. He places both hands on her shoulders and she goes perfectly still. She’s done her job. She has rid the world of Sherlock Holmes. She has saved John Watson and countless others.
“Start counting those heartbeats, dear. You don’t have many left.”
He takes one more deep breath and then pushes, and she reaches out to take his arm and they both crash through the glass in a crystal haze of pain and relief. She smiles, tastes blood for the last time, remembers one last thing: she is a hero.
END
