RTFM
Now, I don't care what anybody says, my personal headcanon for Molly Hooper is that she's really a BAMF and the HBIC when Sherlock's not around. This is why the following prompt on sherlockbbc_fic had me cackling with delight:
John, Sherlock and Molly in the morgue with an uncooperative device
Molly originally saves the day here
---
RTFM
Sherlock burst through the door, with John following at a more reasonable pace. Molly looked up from the paperwork she'd been doing and greeted the two men with a small friendly smile and a "Hello."
Sherlock, who was carrying a medium sized box, gave her a small nod. John, who was carrying two plastic bags full of...shopping? Molly could make out a packet of hobnobs and milk. Anyway, John gave her a friendly if rather beleaguered smile and a "Hi Molly."
The poor man probably hadn't had any proper sleep in the past few days. Sherlock was on a case and even she'd been stressed by his demands of tests and analyses.
"Anything?" Sherlock said to her.
"I'm sorry, but we've run every test we could think of," Sherlock's eyebrow twitched but Molly ignored him and continued, "But there is no evidence of poisoning."
He seemed to think of this for a second, "But the values..."
"None of the values - elevated or otherwise - suggest that something had been done to him to induce the cardiac arrest."
"But what if there was a combination..."
Molly shook her head, "We've considered that, too. But none of the traces found in his body or on his clothes - alone or combined - would have caused his death."
Sherlock picked up on the verb "Would..."
Molly sighed, "Could have, Sherlock. Could have. Unless there was some other existing medical condition - I've seen the records and I didn't find anything in the examination - Edmund Talbot's death appears to be of natural causes. What they are, though, I cannot say."
Sherlock furrowed his brow, looking extremely displeased by her announcement.
"A wealthy man - healthy and in his prime - with a young wife he was about to divorce and an estranged brother usually does not die of natural causes."
"And just because the facts tick all the right boxes does not mean he was killed either," John replied. Molly inferred that this was an argument they had before. The poor man really did look tired.
"Oh John, so little imagination," Sherlock tutted.
John scowled, "You just don't want to lose the bet."
Sherlock grinned, "It's the principle of the thing."
"Oh for fuck's sake," John muttered and sat down on a chair. Molly gave him a commiserating smile, which he reciprocated gratefully.
"Coffee?" she asked him and Sherlock immediately replied with "Yes. Black, two sugars."
She gave him an irritated look, mainly because he gave the same instructions every single time as if she couldn't be trusted to remember something as simple as that.
"John?" she asked the other man, sweetly.
"I rather fancy a cup of tea," he answered, hopefully.
"Tea it is, then," she said, leaving the two men behind to make the beverages. She tried to remember if she still had some ginger biscuits left. John seemed to like them. She remembered something that had occurred to her during her examination of Edmund Talbot, but at the time had dismissed it. But perhaps now, the observation had some bearing on the case.
By the time she got back to the lab, the box Sherlock had been carrying earlier had been opened and the contents spread all over the work counter. Sleek metallic pieces in different shapes and sizes, nuts and bolts and something that looked like a gutted out mobile phone cluttered her workspace. Someone had the grace to shift her paperwork to the side, in an untidy pile.
"Here's your tea," she announced to John. He looked up from his contemplation of two elements, smiling at the mug she'd offered and then at her. She plonked Sherlock's coffee at a safe distance from the mess.
"What's all this?" she asked, unable to keep the slight irritation out of her voice. She'd been looking forward to an afternoon of undisturbed paperwork and now Sherlock had turned her tidy and quiet lab into Frankenstein's workshop.
"A puzzle," he replied gleefully, picking up the mobile phone lookalike, studying it.
"And the reason why you have to solve it here..." she asked archly.
"Time is of the essence. Deadlines and all that," he answered dismissively, while picking up on of the metallic pieces and trying to fit it with the console in his hand.
"If this is some sort of doomsday device, I'd rather you not assemble it in my lab," she commented.
"John," he said to his companion, ignoring her, "this clearly fits here, see..." and he demonstrated exactly what he meant.
Shaking her head, Molly retreated to the corner where her paperwork was and quietly finished her work. The two men kept a running commentary while doing their task.
"Bloody stupid nuts..."
"John, the angle would suggest..."
"Fuck the angle, these tiny screws are driving me mad."
"Have you connected the..."
"Yes, I have connected the wiring like you told me to!"
"It's not working, John."
"I can see that, Sherlock."
"It should be working."
"Evidently, it's not."
"But we've done all the...“
The argument was still going on when Molly signed the last form. She stretched her back, rolled her head and with a pleased smile, slid the forms into the folder. She looked over at the two men, bickering over what looked like a small - well, she wasn't quite sure what it looked like. If she'd been pressed to give a description, it looked a lot like a mobile phone with Meccano pieces surrounding it.
Sherlock was pushing a lever but whatever it was supposed to do, it didn't. He scowled furiously at it.
"Why is it not working?" he asked John.
John, looking even more exhausted than before, seemed to be at the end of his patience, "I don't fucking know, Sherlock. You're the genius. You're the one who knows where all the bits go."
"Why are you so angry?" he merely asked.
Molly thought John was going to hit his friend, but then simply huffed and walked off to the other side of the lab. Leaning against the counter, he rubbed his eyes, muttering to himself.
Sherlock's attention was back on the thing in front of him. He looked at it, turned it, looked at it some more. Molly watched him, questioning why she found him so attractive, when something white caught her eye. She thought she'd accomplished all the forms she had pending. Reaching for the pieces of paper, she realized that it was a small booklet.
She looked at it, then at Sherlock, back at the booklet, then at John - who seemed to be eating biscuits now - and then back at the booklet. Then she looked around, as if trying to question the room in general whether this was happening or not. The room naturally didn't answer but it didn't matter, anyway, because it was happening.
"Sherlock..." she tried to say but the man shushed her.
"I'm thinking," he added.
"But..."
He looked at her, irritated, and said "Please." The word sounding more like "Shut-up" than anything polite.
She scowled at him, something she'd noticed she'd been doing more often lately. She studied the booklet. It had a curious smell.
Sherlock tinkered with the thing then pushed the lever again. Nothing.
"For fuck's sake," he exclaimed.
Molly had enough. Walking over to Sherlock, she took the device away from him, and methodically disassembled all the bits, putting all the similar ones with each other. Then, following the illustration in the booklet put the parts back together. The end product didn't look very dissimilar to Sherlock and John's effort earlier but when she pushed the lever, the tiny screen flickered to life. Ones and zeros started to appear.
Sherlock looked at the screen and then at her. There was something not unlike admiration on his face. Genuine, at that.
"Perhaps I do underestimate you," he said to her. She tried to fight it but she blushed. He gave her a quick, pleased smile, and then glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Come on, John, the game is still on," he said, picking up the device and rushing out of the room.
John groaned but picked up his things nonetheless. With a quick bye and thank you for the tea to Molly, John followed his flatmate, his shopping less one box of hobnobs.
Used to their exits, Molly shrugged her shoulders and looked at the mess they'd left. She'd bring the bubble wrap home for Toby to play with.
Sherlock burst back into the room. "Molly, eight pm, Friday. Wear a nice dress," he said and then left again.
She stood there for a moment, wondering what would happen next but when after five minutes the lab remained undisturbed, she proceeded with straightening the place.
Several thoughts raced through her head. Had Sherlock just invited her to dinner on Friday? What is it with men and instructions? Could Edmund Talbot have died from some sort of electric shock? Where did her ginger biscuits go? And what case was Sherlock working on that involved a data encryption device?
She picked up the instruction booklet but to her surprise it was blank. She thumbed the pages but all the writing she had earlier followed so carefully were no longer there. Curious. She turned the booklet and there, faintly, she could make out something. She grabbed the UV light wand from one of the drawers and then carefully scanned the seemingly empty pages. There in elegant script it said:
Congratulations Sherlock. For once you have managed to defy my expectations and followed simple instructions.
The real code is 51° 33′ 47″ N, 0° 10′ 6″ W.
Mummy is expecting you on Sunday. Bring flowers.
Molly considered texting Sherlock but then decided otherwise. She wondered how long it would take for him to figure it out.
In the meantime, she wanted to know if Edmund Talbot had been electrocuted.
__
Thirty minutes later in a taxi, very much in the south of London.
"The instructions make no sense."
John, who'd been lulled into a stupor by the ride and his own fatigue, groggily replied, "You're not making any sense."
"Why would he send instructions if it's supposed to be a puzzle?"
"Because he's a Holmes and you all move in mysterious ways?" John replied, earning a look from Sherlock.
"Really, John, really?" he added.
Fine, John thought, I'll play your game, only to make you shut-up again.
"Why would Mycroft send instructions?"
Sherlock gave him a triumphant look, "Because it was never about the device!"
"Right."
"Luckily, Molly was there. She's really good with these things, considering."
John raised an eyebrow, "Considering what? That she's a girl? That's sexist, Sherlock."
Sherlock ignored him, "Do you have the booklet?"
"Do I what? No...I just have the milk," John replied, holding up the plastic bag with the shopping.
"It's still at the lab then. Molly will have it," Sherlock said, reaching for his mobile. He quickly tapped out a message and sent it off.
Half a minute later, he received the reply. He smiled, delighted.
"Oh you clever girl," he murmured, looked up the coordinates and gave the driver new instructions. Then he googled expensive restaurants in London.
John just hoped that, for once, Sherlock had cash on him because all the cash machines he'd tried earlier had decided to throw a tantrum.
The End.
John, Sherlock and Molly in the morgue with an uncooperative device
Molly originally saves the day here
---
RTFM
Sherlock burst through the door, with John following at a more reasonable pace. Molly looked up from the paperwork she'd been doing and greeted the two men with a small friendly smile and a "Hello."
Sherlock, who was carrying a medium sized box, gave her a small nod. John, who was carrying two plastic bags full of...shopping? Molly could make out a packet of hobnobs and milk. Anyway, John gave her a friendly if rather beleaguered smile and a "Hi Molly."
The poor man probably hadn't had any proper sleep in the past few days. Sherlock was on a case and even she'd been stressed by his demands of tests and analyses.
"Anything?" Sherlock said to her.
"I'm sorry, but we've run every test we could think of," Sherlock's eyebrow twitched but Molly ignored him and continued, "But there is no evidence of poisoning."
He seemed to think of this for a second, "But the values..."
"None of the values - elevated or otherwise - suggest that something had been done to him to induce the cardiac arrest."
"But what if there was a combination..."
Molly shook her head, "We've considered that, too. But none of the traces found in his body or on his clothes - alone or combined - would have caused his death."
Sherlock picked up on the verb "Would..."
Molly sighed, "Could have, Sherlock. Could have. Unless there was some other existing medical condition - I've seen the records and I didn't find anything in the examination - Edmund Talbot's death appears to be of natural causes. What they are, though, I cannot say."
Sherlock furrowed his brow, looking extremely displeased by her announcement.
"A wealthy man - healthy and in his prime - with a young wife he was about to divorce and an estranged brother usually does not die of natural causes."
"And just because the facts tick all the right boxes does not mean he was killed either," John replied. Molly inferred that this was an argument they had before. The poor man really did look tired.
"Oh John, so little imagination," Sherlock tutted.
John scowled, "You just don't want to lose the bet."
Sherlock grinned, "It's the principle of the thing."
"Oh for fuck's sake," John muttered and sat down on a chair. Molly gave him a commiserating smile, which he reciprocated gratefully.
"Coffee?" she asked him and Sherlock immediately replied with "Yes. Black, two sugars."
She gave him an irritated look, mainly because he gave the same instructions every single time as if she couldn't be trusted to remember something as simple as that.
"John?" she asked the other man, sweetly.
"I rather fancy a cup of tea," he answered, hopefully.
"Tea it is, then," she said, leaving the two men behind to make the beverages. She tried to remember if she still had some ginger biscuits left. John seemed to like them. She remembered something that had occurred to her during her examination of Edmund Talbot, but at the time had dismissed it. But perhaps now, the observation had some bearing on the case.
By the time she got back to the lab, the box Sherlock had been carrying earlier had been opened and the contents spread all over the work counter. Sleek metallic pieces in different shapes and sizes, nuts and bolts and something that looked like a gutted out mobile phone cluttered her workspace. Someone had the grace to shift her paperwork to the side, in an untidy pile.
"Here's your tea," she announced to John. He looked up from his contemplation of two elements, smiling at the mug she'd offered and then at her. She plonked Sherlock's coffee at a safe distance from the mess.
"What's all this?" she asked, unable to keep the slight irritation out of her voice. She'd been looking forward to an afternoon of undisturbed paperwork and now Sherlock had turned her tidy and quiet lab into Frankenstein's workshop.
"A puzzle," he replied gleefully, picking up the mobile phone lookalike, studying it.
"And the reason why you have to solve it here..." she asked archly.
"Time is of the essence. Deadlines and all that," he answered dismissively, while picking up on of the metallic pieces and trying to fit it with the console in his hand.
"If this is some sort of doomsday device, I'd rather you not assemble it in my lab," she commented.
"John," he said to his companion, ignoring her, "this clearly fits here, see..." and he demonstrated exactly what he meant.
Shaking her head, Molly retreated to the corner where her paperwork was and quietly finished her work. The two men kept a running commentary while doing their task.
"Bloody stupid nuts..."
"John, the angle would suggest..."
"Fuck the angle, these tiny screws are driving me mad."
"Have you connected the..."
"Yes, I have connected the wiring like you told me to!"
"It's not working, John."
"I can see that, Sherlock."
"It should be working."
"Evidently, it's not."
"But we've done all the...“
The argument was still going on when Molly signed the last form. She stretched her back, rolled her head and with a pleased smile, slid the forms into the folder. She looked over at the two men, bickering over what looked like a small - well, she wasn't quite sure what it looked like. If she'd been pressed to give a description, it looked a lot like a mobile phone with Meccano pieces surrounding it.
Sherlock was pushing a lever but whatever it was supposed to do, it didn't. He scowled furiously at it.
"Why is it not working?" he asked John.
John, looking even more exhausted than before, seemed to be at the end of his patience, "I don't fucking know, Sherlock. You're the genius. You're the one who knows where all the bits go."
"Why are you so angry?" he merely asked.
Molly thought John was going to hit his friend, but then simply huffed and walked off to the other side of the lab. Leaning against the counter, he rubbed his eyes, muttering to himself.
Sherlock's attention was back on the thing in front of him. He looked at it, turned it, looked at it some more. Molly watched him, questioning why she found him so attractive, when something white caught her eye. She thought she'd accomplished all the forms she had pending. Reaching for the pieces of paper, she realized that it was a small booklet.
She looked at it, then at Sherlock, back at the booklet, then at John - who seemed to be eating biscuits now - and then back at the booklet. Then she looked around, as if trying to question the room in general whether this was happening or not. The room naturally didn't answer but it didn't matter, anyway, because it was happening.
"Sherlock..." she tried to say but the man shushed her.
"I'm thinking," he added.
"But..."
He looked at her, irritated, and said "Please." The word sounding more like "Shut-up" than anything polite.
She scowled at him, something she'd noticed she'd been doing more often lately. She studied the booklet. It had a curious smell.
Sherlock tinkered with the thing then pushed the lever again. Nothing.
"For fuck's sake," he exclaimed.
Molly had enough. Walking over to Sherlock, she took the device away from him, and methodically disassembled all the bits, putting all the similar ones with each other. Then, following the illustration in the booklet put the parts back together. The end product didn't look very dissimilar to Sherlock and John's effort earlier but when she pushed the lever, the tiny screen flickered to life. Ones and zeros started to appear.
Sherlock looked at the screen and then at her. There was something not unlike admiration on his face. Genuine, at that.
"Perhaps I do underestimate you," he said to her. She tried to fight it but she blushed. He gave her a quick, pleased smile, and then glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Come on, John, the game is still on," he said, picking up the device and rushing out of the room.
John groaned but picked up his things nonetheless. With a quick bye and thank you for the tea to Molly, John followed his flatmate, his shopping less one box of hobnobs.
Used to their exits, Molly shrugged her shoulders and looked at the mess they'd left. She'd bring the bubble wrap home for Toby to play with.
Sherlock burst back into the room. "Molly, eight pm, Friday. Wear a nice dress," he said and then left again.
She stood there for a moment, wondering what would happen next but when after five minutes the lab remained undisturbed, she proceeded with straightening the place.
Several thoughts raced through her head. Had Sherlock just invited her to dinner on Friday? What is it with men and instructions? Could Edmund Talbot have died from some sort of electric shock? Where did her ginger biscuits go? And what case was Sherlock working on that involved a data encryption device?
She picked up the instruction booklet but to her surprise it was blank. She thumbed the pages but all the writing she had earlier followed so carefully were no longer there. Curious. She turned the booklet and there, faintly, she could make out something. She grabbed the UV light wand from one of the drawers and then carefully scanned the seemingly empty pages. There in elegant script it said:
Congratulations Sherlock. For once you have managed to defy my expectations and followed simple instructions.
The real code is 51° 33′ 47″ N, 0° 10′ 6″ W.
Mummy is expecting you on Sunday. Bring flowers.
Molly considered texting Sherlock but then decided otherwise. She wondered how long it would take for him to figure it out.
In the meantime, she wanted to know if Edmund Talbot had been electrocuted.
__
Thirty minutes later in a taxi, very much in the south of London.
"The instructions make no sense."
John, who'd been lulled into a stupor by the ride and his own fatigue, groggily replied, "You're not making any sense."
"Why would he send instructions if it's supposed to be a puzzle?"
"Because he's a Holmes and you all move in mysterious ways?" John replied, earning a look from Sherlock.
"Really, John, really?" he added.
Fine, John thought, I'll play your game, only to make you shut-up again.
"Why would Mycroft send instructions?"
Sherlock gave him a triumphant look, "Because it was never about the device!"
"Right."
"Luckily, Molly was there. She's really good with these things, considering."
John raised an eyebrow, "Considering what? That she's a girl? That's sexist, Sherlock."
Sherlock ignored him, "Do you have the booklet?"
"Do I what? No...I just have the milk," John replied, holding up the plastic bag with the shopping.
"It's still at the lab then. Molly will have it," Sherlock said, reaching for his mobile. He quickly tapped out a message and sent it off.
Half a minute later, he received the reply. He smiled, delighted.
"Oh you clever girl," he murmured, looked up the coordinates and gave the driver new instructions. Then he googled expensive restaurants in London.
John just hoped that, for once, Sherlock had cash on him because all the cash machines he'd tried earlier had decided to throw a tantrum.
The End.