Death and the Maiden [a Molly/Moriarty fic]
Title: Death and the Maiden
Series: Sherlock (BBC)
Characters/Pairing: Molly Hooper/Jim Moriarty (with Sebastian Moran, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, & D.I. Lestrade)
Rating: PG-13 (Murders and discussions of suicide, but no real language or sexual situations)
Word Count: 6,700
Beta: The brilliant anjamarie
Spoilers: Series one of Sherlock and "The Final Problem"
Notes: This was inspired by the Molly/Moriarty mix I made for the wonderful mad_teagirl's birthday. Writing these two characters was uncharted territory for me, so hopefully this isn't a complete disaster. The title of the fic is taken from the Clogs song.
Summary: "He’d been obsessing over the girl since he watched her wade through a river, collecting rocks and inhaling water."
Molly Hooper is 10 years old when she learns that Carl Powers has died.
She had lived next door to the boy nearly her entire life. He had been her brother Charlie's best friend. He had eaten dinner with their family every Thursday night. Four summers ago he had taught her how to swim.
He had always been kind to her. She had liked him.
Molly Hooper goes to sleep and dreams about a car crash. She wakes with red tear tracks down her face and gets out of bed. She eats breakfast in silence with Charlie. Molly thinks about how her brother used to tell animated stories of what he dreamed about the night before during breakfast. She misses it almost as much as she misses Carl. She looks up at her brother and wonders if she should share her own dream; if she should tell him about the metal and the fear and the violence and the sickening twist in her gut. She doesn’t.
Breaking the silence, their mother promises to take them to the river this upcoming holiday in order to lift their spirits. It’s a trip she has been promising them since their father left them seven months prior. Molly forgets about her dream and dwells on the water.
She wonders how Carl had felt while he was drowning.
Three weeks pass and they drive to the river. Charlie doesn’t say much during the trip. He hasn’t said much since the day Carl died. Molly thinks it’s strange that their mother viewed this trip as an appropriate treat for her grieving children (being that drowning was the cause of their grief), but she doesn’t dare speak up.
Molly is grateful that their mother has taken them to the river; she finally has an appropriate location to perform her experiment.
After she’s parked the car, their mother begins a one-sided conversation with Charlie. Molly wanders off to gather rocks.
She hums a made-up tune while she fills her pockets with collected stones. She pauses for a moment once she realizes a strange boy with dark eyes has been watching her from the riverbank. She flashes him a small smile and waits for one in return. He doesn’t move an inch. She continues her task of collecting stones, hoping she’ll able to weight herself down enough to sink to the bottom of the riverbed.
It's not that she's trying to kill herself. It's not like she's trying to die. She just wants to understand what it felt like. She wants to know exactly what happened to Carl because she doesn’t understand.
She walks into the river and holds herself under the surface for nearly a minute, until she feels small hands grip her tightly, raising her to the surface.
It’s the dark-eyed boy from earlier.
Her mother is shouting and her brother’s face is paler than she’s ever seen it before. Molly coughs as the boy leads her to shore. Her mother runs up and throws her arms around her. She’s shaking.
“That was a dangerous game to be playing,” her mother repeats into her ear. “A very dangerous game.”
Molly tells her mother that she wasn't playing.
The look on her mother's face when she finally pulls away fills Molly with shame. She turns away and notices that the dark-eyed boy is still watching. He runs away once their eyes meet, trailing after a stern-looking man who had been ushering him back to the car park.
On the car ride back to Brighton, Charlie reaches over and grabs Molly’s hand, holding it until they arrive home. Their mother doesn’t say a word to her children during the return trip.
Before they go sleep that night, Charlie scoops her up in his arms and asks her to stay away from rivers. Molly promises him she will.
Molly asks him if he’ll be her best friend now because she doesn’t want him to be sad anymore. Charlie promises her that she already is.
***
Jim Moriarty is 10 years old when he first kills a boy.
Carl Powers had laughed at him. Carl Powers isn’t laughing at him anymore.
Jim Moriarty is laughing now.
Three years go by and he is never caught. He keeps Carl’s trainers as a trophy. They serve as a reminder of the very first accomplishment he has ever been proud of.
His father is the self-proclaimed king of the underworld. He’s raised by murderers and thieves. They teach him tricks that he practices and perfects and improves.
His father is a clever man, but Jim outsmarts him nine times out of ten.
His father doesn’t know about Carl Powers. He doesn’t know about Timothy Willis or Steven Jacobs or Jeremy Gordon. No one does.
Jim Moriarty has learned to keep tabs on the people who threaten him. The first to ever be worth his interest is a boy one year his elder named Sherlock Holmes. Jim’s been obsessing over him ever since the other boy noticed Carl Powers’ shoes were missing from his locker. Sherlock had been the only one to find the fact important and it was brilliant.
Jim thought himself extremely lucky that he had discovered the only other person he found equally fascinating just a few weeks later. Her name is Molly Hooper and she tried to drown herself. He’d been obsessing over the girl since he watched her wade through a river, collecting rocks and inhaling water. He had never even spoken a word to her, but he had held her head above the water because she was too interesting to let slip away so soon.
Jim Moriarty wonders what it is like to want to fill your pockets up with rocks.
***
Molly has been working at St. Bartholomew's Hospital for three months. Her life has gone from revolving around university to revolving around work, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She spends most her days finding out what caused the transition from life to death in strangers’ bodies and it’s wonderful.
She doesn’t talk to her mother.
Every Monday night, she watches E4 with Charlie’s girlfriend, Karen. They sit on his sofa and he brings home take-away. It’s the highlight of her week.
Sometimes Charlie and Karen throw dinner parties with the intention of introducing Molly to a colleague or friend of theirs they wish to set her up with. She never makes it past the first date.
She has trouble talking to people. She stumbles over words. She makes awkward jokes that no one but Charlie laughs at (with the exception of the one time she elicited a snicker from D.I. Lestrade. She'd felt warm that afternoon). She doesn’t mind too much.
She rides the Circle Line every day, from Edgware Road to St Paul's. She stops by Pret to grab her breakfast and always arrives at the morgue 15 minutes before her shift starts.
One morning when she shows up, she is introduced to a man named Sherlock Holmes. He compliments her hair and asks for a favor. She drops her cup of coffee.
***
Jim Moriarty has been crowned the new king of the underworld. His connections spread across Europe like evening shadows. He has a thousand faces that he wears with ease.
He had always been able to outsmart his father, and he had done so until his end.
Jim Moriarty takes a job at St. Bart’s to watch his number one obsession, Sherlock Holmes. He makes an intentional fool of himself on a daily basis.
One morning while awkwardly walking through the canteen, he sees something the makes him drop his I.T. persona for nearly six seconds.
Molly Hooper is talking to Sherlock Holmes. Not just talking, she’s beaming at him.
He’d taken this job to watch Sherlock, he hadn’t expected Molly Hooper to be there. She’d dropped off his radar at the age of seventeen when he started working for his father. Less free time had meant less obsessions. Only keep tabs on the people that could cause you trouble, his father had said.
Jim steps closer to the two, unnoticed (unimportant). Molly’s cheeks are flushed and her pupils are dilated. Sherlock utters a false compliment. Jim thinks he is going to be sick as he stumbles to the bathroom.
He tries not to think about pockets full of rocks and a girl swallowing the river.
***
Molly Hooper is 31 years old. She speaks a passable amount of French and her favorite film is Sabrina. She has a cat named Toby, her job at St. Bart's, a hopeless crush on one Sherlock Holmes. She has very little else.
Her favorite person in the world is her brother Charlie. He has been in a hospital bed for the last 17 weeks.
His car was plowed into on a Sunday morning. Karen was killed on impact. Molly had smashed three plates and one lamp when she heard the news.
Her mother hasn’t spoken a word to her since the accident.
Every evening since that horrible Sunday, Molly sits by his unconscious body after her shift, turns on his television, and watches teen dramas on E4 until she feels brave enough to leave his side.
Molly is comfortable with dead bodies, but she hates seeing her brother so closely resemble one. She’s used to strangers laid out under her scalpel, their secrets hers to discover. Death she knows well. But she can’t handle watching him die.
On March 26th, Charlie Hooper is taken off life support.
Molly Hooper lasts three hours until she decides to take herself off life support as well.
***
Jim Moriarty is struck by the sight of Molly Hooper gingerly opening the driver’s side door of a car that isn’t hers (she didn’t own a car, he’d checked). She has a hose coiled in her left hand. She is shaking.
Is she trying to off herself because of Sherlock Holmes? He’d watched his cruel dismissal of her in the canteen thirty minutes prior. Disappointment settled into his gut. He had hoped for so much more from her than a slighted woman’s suicide. Then he remembers the brother. Was it the brother? It must be the brother; he’d been a fool to think otherwise. A quick glance at his mobile confirmed that Charlie Hooper had passed away this morning.
He steps up to the car and clears his throat.
"Hello,” Jim rocks nervously on his heels, his I.T. persona fully equipped. "Excuse me, miss, but what exactly are you doing?" Her eyes dart up to his, sorrow slipping into shame. She’s embarrassed.
"Just checking the spark plugs." She laughs nervously.
"Sabrina. That’s from Sabrina." Jim knows it’s her favorite film. He’d learned it back when he used to watch her in Brighton. He’d found a copy when he was fifteen years old and played it three times in a row trying to decide what made her love it so.
"That's right."
"Miss Hooper? From the morgue?"
"Molly, yes."
"Molly." He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m Jim. Jim Cook, from I.T. I’ve seen you around. ‘The-girl-with-the-lovely-nose-and-pink-cardigans’ I called you until Mike finally told me your name.”
“Oh.” She brings her right hand up to her face. “Wait, what about my nose?”
“I’ve admired it in the past, your nose. I like it. That’s all.” He gestures to the stretch of hose in her hand. "Why on earth are you trying to off yourself?"
"Oh, I’m not… I just... I don't have a car, see, and the keys were on the seat and…"
"Well, Molly Hooper, I'm going to have to make sure you are not left to your own devices, as I’m afraid you’ll break into some other poor soul’s car to finish what you started in this one.” He reaches out his hand to hers. “You’re officially under my watch.”
“Okay.”
***
The light inside the Fox glows orange. She is on her second pear cider and she is smiling.
Jim Cook has let on that he knows things that he shouldn't already know about her. It's possible he’s just outright admitted to doing a bit of stalking. It should worry her. It doesn't. He's soft spoken and has a kind smile, but she's been around Sherlock Holmes long enough to know what is and what is not an act. And Jim is most certainly an actor.
It’s almost like he's been letting his cracks show on purpose, like he wants her to notice. Like it's a test. Is this a test? Should she call him out on it? Or just sit here and enjoy the orange light and the pear cider and the kind smiles.
It’s nice though, act or not. Nice to have the attention. Nice to sit and talk with a man who has a kind smile.
“Molly Hooper, what led you to the car park this afternoon?” After nearly an hour of avoiding the subject, he has finally brought it back to the event that led them there.
"I don't want to go to Paris.” She laid her head on the table. “I want to die."
"P.S. Don't have Sherlock at the funeral. He probably wouldn't even cry." Molly once again was helpless as a smile spread across her lips at the man's ability to quote her favorite film. She sat up straight and grabbed her drink.
"You know Sherlock?"
"Heard of him. I don't think you can work in this place and not have. Never met him though." She sees a look flash across his eyes. Another crack.
She glances at her mobile to check the time and notices it’s Monday.
Monday night. E4. Glee. She is about to miss Glee.
Monday nights on a paisley sofa eating Thai food with Karen and Charlie. It used to be the highlight of her week.
Monday nights in an uncomfortable hospital chair watching young, auto-tuned Americans.
She sets her drink down.
“Jim, would you like to come back to mine?”
He raises his eyebrow, stares at her for three seconds, and then stands up. “Lead the way.”
She makes tea and they watch Glee in her tiny flat.
He gives her a nervous kiss before he leaves.
That night, when she finally drifts to sleep, she doesn’t have a single dream.
Tuesday they eat lunch together in the canteen, and when her shift ends, he escorts her home. He holds her hand and declares himself her guardian.
He does the same on Wednesday and it’s when he goes to give her a kiss goodnight that she finally works up the courage.
“Who are you, Jim Cook? It’s all a lie, isn’t it? You are a lie, right?”
“Yes.” He grins at her like he’s never been prouder. “And no.”
“Okay. All right.” Four different emotions run over her face until she looks back up at him. “How?”
The man sits down next to Molly Hooper and begins to spill the secrets he was raised never to tell. Fifty-three minutes pass by.
“You probably aren’t even named Jim Cook, are you?” Her eyes are full of questions.
“Oh, it is Jim.” He smiles and lifts her hand to his lips, “Jim Moriarty.” He leaves a kiss. “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Anymore questions for me, Sabrina Fairchild?”
“Right, yes, right. You’re some kind of… evil mastermind?”
“I prefer the term consulting criminal.”
“Okay.”
“You’re handling this quite well, my lovely pathologist.”
"Yes, well, I’m just trying to… Just piecing things together. Do you… um.” She’s stumbling over her words again. “It’s just… How… Why… How?” He flashes his wolf grin in return, the one he had shown her for the first time an hour earlier.
“I’ll tell you everything, if you’d like. Everything I’ve ever done, every thought I’ve ever had, if that’s what you want. Not all at once, or course. That’d be far too boring, there’d be no reason to continue after that. But one by one, I might just let you collect all my secrets. In return, I have a single request.”
“And what’s that?”
“Molly Hooper, will you help me?” The strangest man she’s ever met stares at her with his dark eyes, a different creature altogether than the one who saved her in the car park.
Oh.
She nods yes.
He tells her the plan.
Thirteen hours later, Molly brings Jim into the lab to meet Sherlock Holmes.
It’s easy to act wounded around the detective. Easy to act flustered and angry and disappointed. Easy to act like her entire world has just crumbled after hearing his analysis of “Jim from I.T.”
Probably because it really isn’t acting.
She is hurt. Charlie had died and shouldn’t the great Sherlock Holmes be able to figure that out? He had passed by her not two hours after she had received the horrible news that awful day and he hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t he been able to read her sorrow in the click of her heels while she walked down the hallway towards the lab? She had helped him so many times in the past, wasn’t she deserving of a sympathetic glance or a reassuring hand on her shoulder? She knew he was capable of the act, she’d seen evidence of late. The genuine fondness painted on his face while he watched John Watson.
And that was it, wasn’t it? Sherlock had needed her help less since the army doctor came into his life. He’d been flirting less to get his way, showering her with fewer false niceties. Perhaps he had figured out what she was going through, but he saw no advantage to him in acknowledging it.
She runs from the room and very nearly breaks down. It’d been only five days since Charlie died (124 days since he’d last opened his eyes), and she hasn’t even properly mourned. She’s pushed him from her thoughts because it had been Jim who saved her in that car park.
And Jim should terrify her, she knows this. Knows that she should run away. But she can’t.
She can’t because the moment he placed his hand on the small of her back had been the moment she finally felt safe again.
In that moment, she knew she’d do anything he’d ask of her.
***
Jim Moriarty collects people he finds interesting. He rarely finds anyone worthy of a second glance. But every so often he finds someone extraordinary and demands their attention. Sometimes he plays games, sometimes he tells the truth.
With Molly Hooper it is a combination of both.
He takes her to a card game run by one of the only men he’s ever considered a friend. When Sebastian notices them approaching, he dismisses the crowd around him and envelopes Jim in a crushing embrace. When he finally sets him free, Jim turns to the pathologist.
“Molly Hooper, meet Colonel Sebastian Moran.”
He grabs her hand and kisses the back of her knuckles. "Pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Fairchild."
“Oh,” She turns red at the reference and decides to change the subject instead of addressing her actions in the St. Bart’s car park. “This is a thing you two do, isn’t it? The hand kissing... thing."
Sebastian gives her a wink while Jim returns to her side.
“We are gentlemen, are we not? I don’t see why you should expect any less from a colonel and a fine business man like myself." He punctuates this with a grand flourish and a bow.
Sebastian excuses himself from his company and takes them out for drinks at the Tyburn. Sitting in the pub, Jim entwines his fingers with Molly’s.
They end the night in a shooting range. The two of them teach the pathologist how to kill a man, how to maim a man, and how to simply scare a man.
She’s good with a rifle. He knew she would be; he’d watched her with a scalpel before.
Kill, maim, scare. They run through scenarios and teach her which action the situation calls for.
She’s good. He knew she would be.
***
Molly has spent every night since the day Charlie died with Jim Moriarty. He tells her secrets about pink phones and semtex coats. He tells her about how he helps those who ask.
He takes her to places where everyone knows his name (a name no one is supposed to say). She meets the handful of men and women Jim actually trusts and they treat her like she’s important. She likes each and every one them.
She wonders why she feels so comfortable around known killers.
On April 4th, Jim and Sebastian take Molly to a house they frequent in Surbiton. The two men each have their own residences in central London, but this house is their “Fortress of Solitude” according to Sebastian (a comment that earns him a grimace and head shake from Jim).
It’s filled with firearms, electronics, and a shabby-chic interior design.
Molly thinks it feels like home.
“We’re taking you on your first outing tomorrow night, Fairchild.” Sebastian winks as he passes her a rifle from his collection. “Her name is Rosa, she’s yours now. Treat her well.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t fret, precious.” Jim walks up to her side and kisses her temple. “Moran, Andrews, and Parkinson will be there as well. The lot of you will be safely out of sight. Well, I say safely…”
“He never means safely.”
“I thought that might be the case."
“And doesn’t that make it more fun? You never know what might go boom.” Jim rocks back and forth on his heels, grinning like he’s never been prouder of himself.
That night she dreams about a waterfall. She wakes up in a cold sweat and reaches for Jim by her side. The bed is empty. She opens her eyes and sees him backlit against the window, typing on his laptop.
She rises out of bed and asks him if he needs any help. He simply stares at her, genuine confusion across his face.
It’s then that she realizes he has never let anyone into his world in this way before; that this is all brand new to him, too.
It’s then that she feels like his equal, that she understands the amount of trust he’s placed in her. She pulls his face towards her and with a kiss, she tries to demonstrate that she understands.
She feels powerful and it’s dizzying.
***
It’s April 5th and Jim Moriarty has never been happier. Every cell is his body is buzzing with excitement because tonight is the night that Sherlock Holmes finally comes out and plays. His mobile chimes:
Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The Pool. Midnight.
Jim feels a satisfied grin pull at his lips as he watches John Watson walk by.
“That’s Sherlock’s friend, the doctor,” Molly turns to look at Sebastian in the backseat. “John. That’s John.”
“Correct. He’s about to be cast as the starring role in tonight’s performance.” Sebastian slips on his balaclava, ready to abduct his fellow solider.
“Tonight we take loyalty and love and set it ablaze.” Jim raises his eyebrows for emphasis as he becomes the proper showman once again. “It’ll be a blast.”
***
It’s April 6th and Molly Hooper has killed a man. She doesn’t know his name and she thinks she should be bothered, in shock, possibly sick on her shoes. But she isn’t any of these things. Dead bodies are nothing new to her; she's lived her entire adult life surrounded by them. And now the nameless officer is just another one. He’s not the body of someone she liked, not the body of someone who was kind to her. Just the body of the man pursuing her, pursing Jim, while they fled from the wreckage of the pool.
She was fine. He was dead.
They have a dinner party the next night at the Surbiton house. An elegant table set for three snipers, two known crime lords, a pathologist, and a mad man. It should feel strange, but it doesn’t.
She’s reminded of the parties Charlie and Karen used to have, and how awkward she had felt. How she crashed and burned with every new acquaintance.
The faces around her now, murderers and thieves, all smile at her. Respect her. The comradery is surprising at first. Jim cares so little about the majority of the world, but the exceptions to his rule are sitting around her. Here is the meager portion of the world that Jim Moriarty thinks is worth a damn, and she’s among them.
She doesn’t understand why she’s been instantly accepted into the round table of the underworld, but she’s grateful.
Halfway through the second course, Sebastian Moran leans over to whisper in Molly’s ear.
"You and me, Fairchild, we have an advantage."
"And what advantage is that?" She doesn’t stumble over her words.
"We don't even register on Sherlock Holmes' radar, unlike M here.” He gestures toward Jim, sitting on her right. “We are the lucky two who might just have the ability to pull his ass out of the fire if he ever needs it."
She smiles into her glass as she takes a sip.
The evening goes on and the party moves into the sitting room. They talk equally of the mundane and the macabre. Jim keeps an arm around Molly’s waist all night like he’s proud of her.
***
They each share one secret every night, just the two of them.
It’s June 21st when Jim tells her about killing Carl Powers.
Molly stays at her own place the next night.
He wonders if that secret had been a mistake.
The next time he sees her pick up her rifle, her hand isn’t as steady as it had been.
He wonders if she had been a mistake.
***
Molly Hooper shoots Greg Lestrade in his left arm. Kill, maim, scare. She’d run through the scenarios and kill was the appropriate response. But she ignored her training and made her own decision.
She’d always liked Lestrade. He had laughed at her joke once. He had scolded Sherlock on her behalf more than once. He’d been kind to her.
“My dear,” Jim spat out as he took her chin in his hand. “What exactly was that in there?”
“I got you out of there.”
“I got me out of there. You missed.” Jim let go of her face and turned his back on her. “Intentionally.”
“I couldn’t,” she raised her voice slightly. “I didn’t want to.”
"You didn’t want to?" He turned back towards her. Molly watched as his eye gave a twitch. “That was my life at risk, Molly Hooper, and you risked it for the sake of your silver fox D.I.”
“He wasn’t my… He wasn’t a friend of mine, but he was... Whenever he came by the morgue he was nice. He always remembered my name before I ever bothered learning his.” She took a step closer to him. “So yes, I didn’t want to. I still shot him, you still got away. I just didn’t want to see him dead. I didn’t want him to be just another body.”
“No, no, no!” Jim thundered, pacing back and forth. “This isn’t how this goes at all!”
And it’s that moment when Molly finally understands that the man who she's fallen for, the man who has changed her life, the man who has made her happier than she'd ever been before, is the most dangerous man in London.
He's a killer and a mad man, and she can't really judge because she’s already killed thirteen men in the name of Jim Moriarty. And that probably makes her just as mad.
So no, she doesn’t feel any judgment, she just simply understands. She finally gets that he could kill her at any moment and she's afraid.
She's finally afraid of dying.
And it’s that realization that motivates her to knock the raving man unconscious with the butt of her rifle.
***
"My goodness, darling. You've tied me to a chair. Why? From the way you’re looking at me, I’ve the feeling that this isn’t for a fun reason."
He can read the fear running through her nerves. She is terrified of him and for the first time in his life, he doesn’t like the taste of it. In fact, he hates that she is afraid. It hurts. It burns. His tongue turns to lead as his heart sinks into his gut. She isn’t the mistake. He is the mistake.
He feels ashamed. The feeling is strange and wrong and all he wants to do is crawl out of his own skin.
"I thought you were going to kill me.”
"Hmm." It’s all he can manage.
It’s then that Sebastian walks by the open doorway, shaking Jim out of his retreat into his own head. The colonel pauses to watch the vignette play out.
"Alright, boss?"
"Just dandy." He flashes his teeth like a shark.
"Alright, Fairchild?" She nods in response. "I'm sure whatever happened he deserves it." He gives a wink and keeps on walking down the hall. Jim swears he can actually hear him whistling.
Molly must have heard it as well because when he turns his head to face her, she’s actually fighting off a smile.
“Hello.”
“Hi.” And then she’s laughing. He doesn’t know if it’s because of how ridiculous the situation is, or if it’s simply hysteria. But he’s so relieved the fear is gone from her eyes that he joins in.
When she finally calms down, she kneels down in front of the chair and places her hands on his knees.
“I’m grateful, you know.” She rubs her eyes with the back of her left hand. “Grateful for everything you’ve done for me, taught me. If I had the chance to go back to the car park and do everything over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” She begins to untie his right hand. “I never fit until you let me into your world.” She moves onto his other bound wrist. “And I’ll never understand why you let me in, why you picked me, but I’m glad you did. I want you to understand that I truly consider it a blessing.” She leans up and presses a kiss to his lips. “I also want you to understand that I’m not going to follow you blindly. I will occasionally make my own judgment calls.” She stands and takes two steps back from the chair. “And if you’re not okay with that, well, let’s just say if you have me killed, I’ll haunt you until your dying day.”
“How long have you been practicing that speech?”
“Since I hit you over the head with Rosa.” She looks proud of herself.
“It was good.” If he’s honest with himself, he’s proud of her too. “Very powerful. I liked it.” He finally finds the strength in his legs to stand up.
***
The months go by and her life takes on a bizarre routine of St. Bart’s, morgue, Jim Moriarty, dark deeds, and repeat. She still watches teen dramas on E4 with Toby on her lap, but now she has to record her programs and watch them late at night with Jim after she’s taken out a bank manager with a sniper rifle for his sake.
And it’s wonderful.
When laying down the facts of the last year, an average person might come to the conclusion that Jim and Molly’s relationship is terribly unhealthy. They might examine her life before Jim and her life now and decided that he’s painted her black.
If Molly still spoke to her mother, she would surely call her daughter a fool. “Can't you see a man like this Moriarty could never love you?” she’d say. “You’re playing a very dangerous game.”
If Charlie were still here, he would sit Molly down and ask her to stop. He’d make her promise to keep herself safe.
And she would have stopped for Charlie. She’d stayed away from rivers, hadn’t she?
But Charlie is gone.
Molly knows Jim's voices. She's watched and studied each one to learn when he's lying, when he's playing someone for a fool. She knows the tone he takes when he genuinely likes someone, genuinely respects him or her. It's the tone he's taken with her ever since the day she asked who he was and he in turn asked for her help.
It had felt like a precious gift. To be liked, respected, by anyone.
He might have blackened her heart, but isn’t that what happens when you set something on fire?
***
Jim Moriarty is sitting with Sebastian Moran (discussing the weather, of all things), when he hears a key in the lock. He listens to heels click down the hall until they reach the back room. He stands up to greet the pathologist when he sees the panicked look on Molly’s face.
"Sherlock stared at me for about three seconds longer than he normally does today."
"That’s not good,” Sebastian pushes himself off the sofa. “It means he's finally realized you've changed."
"It means he might know everything. Or he will soon." She’s breathing heavily. She’d hurried here. Jim feels the twinge of pride she so often inspires in him.
"It means today was your very last day in the morgue.” He holds out his hand to Molly. "We're going to Paris, Sabrina Fairchild."
“Paris? I don’t think running to another country will stop him from finding us, Jim.”
“No, it won’t. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Secrets to be revealed, dearest. Secrets to be revealed. The question you should be asking is what’s the first thing we’re going to do once we arrive?”
“All right, what’s the first thing we’re going to do once we arrive?”
"We're going to bake a cake."
Of course it wasn't cake, it was a bomb, but he still smiled up at her and said "One, two, three, crack. New egg," in a ridiculous accent while snipping a wire.
She lets out a laugh that crinkles her nose and he wonders if he’ll ever tell her about the time he watched Sabrina three times in a row just so he could understand why she’d always loved it.
***
Sherlock Holmes receives their message loud and clear. He follows the three of them through France as they leave him a breadcrumb trail of destruction.
And then one day he just stops.
Molly is baffled, but Jim understands. And of course he does. Molly had been able to see how deep the similarities between the criminal and the detective were right away.
“He wants us to follow him.”
So they do. They follow him back to 221b Baker Street while he picks up his army doctor. They follow the two of them to the train station. And they follow the two of them across Switzerland.
It’s mundane, really, spying on Sherlock and John through her sniper’s scope. She watches the two men sit amidst beautiful scenery drinking tea, and all Molly can think of is that they remind her of a honeymooning couple.
She feels guilty for a moment.
But then she remembers that Jim had needed her help, and Sherlock hadn’t. She had chosen her side long ago.
She has long since began to trust Jim Moriarty with her life.
But she doesn’t trust him with his own.
That night while Molly sleeps, she once again dreams of waterfalls. She’s awakened from the reoccurring nightmare by Jim and Sebastian making plans to lead Sherlock (alone) to Reichenbach Falls.
She internalizes her opinions on the matter until she’s alone with Jim. Hours have passed by that time and she has allowed her imagination to run rampant, her brain now brimming with worst-case scenarios.
She lets him know every last thought she has about his current plan of action.
She can tell he isn’t listening to a single one.
"It's the way the game is played!”
"But it's suicide!"
“You do remember how we met, don't you? In the car park. I don't think you have any room to talk, darling."
"You and I both know that wasn't the first time we met, Jim." And that did it. He was finally listening.
"You remember?"
“You saved me that time, too.”
“How long?”
“Since the night you asked for my help.”
“Oh.” He took a few steps forward. “I’ve always wondered, Molly Hooper, why you had weighted your pockets down with rocks.”
“All I wanted was to know how Carl felt when he drowned.”
“Oh.” A cheeky smile spread across his face as he began to rock back and forth on his heels. “But I had poisoned him, you strange little thing, he didn’t actually drown. Well, in a way he did, but still…”
“Stop it. I know that now.” She hit him playfully on the shoulder. And wasn’t that strange? Joking about Carl Powers’ death. She truly has changed.
But he has not. Despite her protests, Jim heads out to meet Sherlock Holmes alone.
Sebastian and Molly head after him, of course. All part of the plan. But she’s terrified.
When she finally asks Sebastian if he thinks Jim will make it out of this alive, the colonel simply calls her "Fairchild" and kisses her forehead.
He doesn’t say anything else as they finish their march up to the top of the falls.
By the time she reaches her appointed position and peers through her sniper’s scope, Sherlock has already arrived. She watches as Jim talks to Sherlock, watches while the detective writes a letter that he pins under his beloved mobile.
And then the fight begins. She goes to take aim but she can’t. She can’t pull the trigger because their limbs are so intertwined that she doesn’t know which man she’d hit, and the ache in her heart tells her that she doesn’t want to shoot either of them.
That’s when she sees Sherlock push Jim.
“No.”
That’s when she sees Jim fall.
“No, no, no.”
She throws Rosa across her back and begins running. She looks back briefly and sees Sebastian taking aim as Sherlock climbs up the falls. Always the solider. She’s grateful for the distraction he provides as she makes her way to the riverbed below.
The fall might not have killed him. There is hope. They hadn't been as high up as they could have been, and the water is deep. If his head isn’t smashed in, if his back isn’t broken over rocks, he might be down there. He might be safe.
And then she sees it: a body. She runs towards the water's edge.
“Don’t you dare be dead, Jim Moriarty.”
"Hello." He says it casually, as if he didn’t just fall off a bloody Swiss waterfall. She doesn’t know if she wants to shoot him or simply collapse in tears.
"Hi." Apparently it’s tears. "You're alive."
"So I appear to be." Jim moves to pull himself out of the water and swears from the effort. "Bastard pushed me off a cliff."
"I saw.” She reaches up a hand to wipe at her face and lets out an awkward laugh. “It was probably the single most horrifying moment of my life."
"But a cliff! I mean, really? What a way to have potentially gone out from this world. I know it was me who picked out this scenic location for our grand showdown, but honestly. He just went and immediately pushed me off the cliff! Didn't even let me have a decent monologue. Utter bastard." Molly smiles at him as she wades into the river.
"I've got to get you out of here, John is bound to turn up any minute." She wraps an arm around him and helps him onto the shore.
“Look at you, Molly Hooper, saving my life for once.”
“I’ve saved your life plenty of times.”
“Sure you have.” He grins like an idiot. He’s battered and soaking but, by some miracle, he’s not broken.
He’s not a body floating down river.
He’s alive.
And he’s hers.
Series: Sherlock (BBC)
Characters/Pairing: Molly Hooper/Jim Moriarty (with Sebastian Moran, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, & D.I. Lestrade)
Rating: PG-13 (Murders and discussions of suicide, but no real language or sexual situations)
Word Count: 6,700
Beta: The brilliant anjamarie
Spoilers: Series one of Sherlock and "The Final Problem"
Notes: This was inspired by the Molly/Moriarty mix I made for the wonderful mad_teagirl's birthday. Writing these two characters was uncharted territory for me, so hopefully this isn't a complete disaster. The title of the fic is taken from the Clogs song.
Summary: "He’d been obsessing over the girl since he watched her wade through a river, collecting rocks and inhaling water."
Molly Hooper is 10 years old when she learns that Carl Powers has died.
She had lived next door to the boy nearly her entire life. He had been her brother Charlie's best friend. He had eaten dinner with their family every Thursday night. Four summers ago he had taught her how to swim.
He had always been kind to her. She had liked him.
Molly Hooper goes to sleep and dreams about a car crash. She wakes with red tear tracks down her face and gets out of bed. She eats breakfast in silence with Charlie. Molly thinks about how her brother used to tell animated stories of what he dreamed about the night before during breakfast. She misses it almost as much as she misses Carl. She looks up at her brother and wonders if she should share her own dream; if she should tell him about the metal and the fear and the violence and the sickening twist in her gut. She doesn’t.
Breaking the silence, their mother promises to take them to the river this upcoming holiday in order to lift their spirits. It’s a trip she has been promising them since their father left them seven months prior. Molly forgets about her dream and dwells on the water.
She wonders how Carl had felt while he was drowning.
Three weeks pass and they drive to the river. Charlie doesn’t say much during the trip. He hasn’t said much since the day Carl died. Molly thinks it’s strange that their mother viewed this trip as an appropriate treat for her grieving children (being that drowning was the cause of their grief), but she doesn’t dare speak up.
Molly is grateful that their mother has taken them to the river; she finally has an appropriate location to perform her experiment.
After she’s parked the car, their mother begins a one-sided conversation with Charlie. Molly wanders off to gather rocks.
She hums a made-up tune while she fills her pockets with collected stones. She pauses for a moment once she realizes a strange boy with dark eyes has been watching her from the riverbank. She flashes him a small smile and waits for one in return. He doesn’t move an inch. She continues her task of collecting stones, hoping she’ll able to weight herself down enough to sink to the bottom of the riverbed.
It's not that she's trying to kill herself. It's not like she's trying to die. She just wants to understand what it felt like. She wants to know exactly what happened to Carl because she doesn’t understand.
She walks into the river and holds herself under the surface for nearly a minute, until she feels small hands grip her tightly, raising her to the surface.
It’s the dark-eyed boy from earlier.
Her mother is shouting and her brother’s face is paler than she’s ever seen it before. Molly coughs as the boy leads her to shore. Her mother runs up and throws her arms around her. She’s shaking.
“That was a dangerous game to be playing,” her mother repeats into her ear. “A very dangerous game.”
Molly tells her mother that she wasn't playing.
The look on her mother's face when she finally pulls away fills Molly with shame. She turns away and notices that the dark-eyed boy is still watching. He runs away once their eyes meet, trailing after a stern-looking man who had been ushering him back to the car park.
On the car ride back to Brighton, Charlie reaches over and grabs Molly’s hand, holding it until they arrive home. Their mother doesn’t say a word to her children during the return trip.
Before they go sleep that night, Charlie scoops her up in his arms and asks her to stay away from rivers. Molly promises him she will.
Molly asks him if he’ll be her best friend now because she doesn’t want him to be sad anymore. Charlie promises her that she already is.
***
Jim Moriarty is 10 years old when he first kills a boy.
Carl Powers had laughed at him. Carl Powers isn’t laughing at him anymore.
Jim Moriarty is laughing now.
Three years go by and he is never caught. He keeps Carl’s trainers as a trophy. They serve as a reminder of the very first accomplishment he has ever been proud of.
His father is the self-proclaimed king of the underworld. He’s raised by murderers and thieves. They teach him tricks that he practices and perfects and improves.
His father is a clever man, but Jim outsmarts him nine times out of ten.
His father doesn’t know about Carl Powers. He doesn’t know about Timothy Willis or Steven Jacobs or Jeremy Gordon. No one does.
Jim Moriarty has learned to keep tabs on the people who threaten him. The first to ever be worth his interest is a boy one year his elder named Sherlock Holmes. Jim’s been obsessing over him ever since the other boy noticed Carl Powers’ shoes were missing from his locker. Sherlock had been the only one to find the fact important and it was brilliant.
Jim thought himself extremely lucky that he had discovered the only other person he found equally fascinating just a few weeks later. Her name is Molly Hooper and she tried to drown herself. He’d been obsessing over the girl since he watched her wade through a river, collecting rocks and inhaling water. He had never even spoken a word to her, but he had held her head above the water because she was too interesting to let slip away so soon.
Jim Moriarty wonders what it is like to want to fill your pockets up with rocks.
***
Molly has been working at St. Bartholomew's Hospital for three months. Her life has gone from revolving around university to revolving around work, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She spends most her days finding out what caused the transition from life to death in strangers’ bodies and it’s wonderful.
She doesn’t talk to her mother.
Every Monday night, she watches E4 with Charlie’s girlfriend, Karen. They sit on his sofa and he brings home take-away. It’s the highlight of her week.
Sometimes Charlie and Karen throw dinner parties with the intention of introducing Molly to a colleague or friend of theirs they wish to set her up with. She never makes it past the first date.
She has trouble talking to people. She stumbles over words. She makes awkward jokes that no one but Charlie laughs at (with the exception of the one time she elicited a snicker from D.I. Lestrade. She'd felt warm that afternoon). She doesn’t mind too much.
She rides the Circle Line every day, from Edgware Road to St Paul's. She stops by Pret to grab her breakfast and always arrives at the morgue 15 minutes before her shift starts.
One morning when she shows up, she is introduced to a man named Sherlock Holmes. He compliments her hair and asks for a favor. She drops her cup of coffee.
***
Jim Moriarty has been crowned the new king of the underworld. His connections spread across Europe like evening shadows. He has a thousand faces that he wears with ease.
He had always been able to outsmart his father, and he had done so until his end.
Jim Moriarty takes a job at St. Bart’s to watch his number one obsession, Sherlock Holmes. He makes an intentional fool of himself on a daily basis.
One morning while awkwardly walking through the canteen, he sees something the makes him drop his I.T. persona for nearly six seconds.
Molly Hooper is talking to Sherlock Holmes. Not just talking, she’s beaming at him.
He’d taken this job to watch Sherlock, he hadn’t expected Molly Hooper to be there. She’d dropped off his radar at the age of seventeen when he started working for his father. Less free time had meant less obsessions. Only keep tabs on the people that could cause you trouble, his father had said.
Jim steps closer to the two, unnoticed (unimportant). Molly’s cheeks are flushed and her pupils are dilated. Sherlock utters a false compliment. Jim thinks he is going to be sick as he stumbles to the bathroom.
He tries not to think about pockets full of rocks and a girl swallowing the river.
***
Molly Hooper is 31 years old. She speaks a passable amount of French and her favorite film is Sabrina. She has a cat named Toby, her job at St. Bart's, a hopeless crush on one Sherlock Holmes. She has very little else.
Her favorite person in the world is her brother Charlie. He has been in a hospital bed for the last 17 weeks.
His car was plowed into on a Sunday morning. Karen was killed on impact. Molly had smashed three plates and one lamp when she heard the news.
Her mother hasn’t spoken a word to her since the accident.
Every evening since that horrible Sunday, Molly sits by his unconscious body after her shift, turns on his television, and watches teen dramas on E4 until she feels brave enough to leave his side.
Molly is comfortable with dead bodies, but she hates seeing her brother so closely resemble one. She’s used to strangers laid out under her scalpel, their secrets hers to discover. Death she knows well. But she can’t handle watching him die.
On March 26th, Charlie Hooper is taken off life support.
Molly Hooper lasts three hours until she decides to take herself off life support as well.
***
Jim Moriarty is struck by the sight of Molly Hooper gingerly opening the driver’s side door of a car that isn’t hers (she didn’t own a car, he’d checked). She has a hose coiled in her left hand. She is shaking.
Is she trying to off herself because of Sherlock Holmes? He’d watched his cruel dismissal of her in the canteen thirty minutes prior. Disappointment settled into his gut. He had hoped for so much more from her than a slighted woman’s suicide. Then he remembers the brother. Was it the brother? It must be the brother; he’d been a fool to think otherwise. A quick glance at his mobile confirmed that Charlie Hooper had passed away this morning.
He steps up to the car and clears his throat.
"Hello,” Jim rocks nervously on his heels, his I.T. persona fully equipped. "Excuse me, miss, but what exactly are you doing?" Her eyes dart up to his, sorrow slipping into shame. She’s embarrassed.
"Just checking the spark plugs." She laughs nervously.
"Sabrina. That’s from Sabrina." Jim knows it’s her favorite film. He’d learned it back when he used to watch her in Brighton. He’d found a copy when he was fifteen years old and played it three times in a row trying to decide what made her love it so.
"That's right."
"Miss Hooper? From the morgue?"
"Molly, yes."
"Molly." He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m Jim. Jim Cook, from I.T. I’ve seen you around. ‘The-girl-with-the-lovely-nose-and-pink-cardigans’ I called you until Mike finally told me your name.”
“Oh.” She brings her right hand up to her face. “Wait, what about my nose?”
“I’ve admired it in the past, your nose. I like it. That’s all.” He gestures to the stretch of hose in her hand. "Why on earth are you trying to off yourself?"
"Oh, I’m not… I just... I don't have a car, see, and the keys were on the seat and…"
"Well, Molly Hooper, I'm going to have to make sure you are not left to your own devices, as I’m afraid you’ll break into some other poor soul’s car to finish what you started in this one.” He reaches out his hand to hers. “You’re officially under my watch.”
“Okay.”
***
The light inside the Fox glows orange. She is on her second pear cider and she is smiling.
Jim Cook has let on that he knows things that he shouldn't already know about her. It's possible he’s just outright admitted to doing a bit of stalking. It should worry her. It doesn't. He's soft spoken and has a kind smile, but she's been around Sherlock Holmes long enough to know what is and what is not an act. And Jim is most certainly an actor.
It’s almost like he's been letting his cracks show on purpose, like he wants her to notice. Like it's a test. Is this a test? Should she call him out on it? Or just sit here and enjoy the orange light and the pear cider and the kind smiles.
It’s nice though, act or not. Nice to have the attention. Nice to sit and talk with a man who has a kind smile.
“Molly Hooper, what led you to the car park this afternoon?” After nearly an hour of avoiding the subject, he has finally brought it back to the event that led them there.
"I don't want to go to Paris.” She laid her head on the table. “I want to die."
"P.S. Don't have Sherlock at the funeral. He probably wouldn't even cry." Molly once again was helpless as a smile spread across her lips at the man's ability to quote her favorite film. She sat up straight and grabbed her drink.
"You know Sherlock?"
"Heard of him. I don't think you can work in this place and not have. Never met him though." She sees a look flash across his eyes. Another crack.
She glances at her mobile to check the time and notices it’s Monday.
Monday night. E4. Glee. She is about to miss Glee.
Monday nights on a paisley sofa eating Thai food with Karen and Charlie. It used to be the highlight of her week.
Monday nights in an uncomfortable hospital chair watching young, auto-tuned Americans.
She sets her drink down.
“Jim, would you like to come back to mine?”
He raises his eyebrow, stares at her for three seconds, and then stands up. “Lead the way.”
She makes tea and they watch Glee in her tiny flat.
He gives her a nervous kiss before he leaves.
That night, when she finally drifts to sleep, she doesn’t have a single dream.
Tuesday they eat lunch together in the canteen, and when her shift ends, he escorts her home. He holds her hand and declares himself her guardian.
He does the same on Wednesday and it’s when he goes to give her a kiss goodnight that she finally works up the courage.
“Who are you, Jim Cook? It’s all a lie, isn’t it? You are a lie, right?”
“Yes.” He grins at her like he’s never been prouder. “And no.”
“Okay. All right.” Four different emotions run over her face until she looks back up at him. “How?”
The man sits down next to Molly Hooper and begins to spill the secrets he was raised never to tell. Fifty-three minutes pass by.
“You probably aren’t even named Jim Cook, are you?” Her eyes are full of questions.
“Oh, it is Jim.” He smiles and lifts her hand to his lips, “Jim Moriarty.” He leaves a kiss. “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Anymore questions for me, Sabrina Fairchild?”
“Right, yes, right. You’re some kind of… evil mastermind?”
“I prefer the term consulting criminal.”
“Okay.”
“You’re handling this quite well, my lovely pathologist.”
"Yes, well, I’m just trying to… Just piecing things together. Do you… um.” She’s stumbling over her words again. “It’s just… How… Why… How?” He flashes his wolf grin in return, the one he had shown her for the first time an hour earlier.
“I’ll tell you everything, if you’d like. Everything I’ve ever done, every thought I’ve ever had, if that’s what you want. Not all at once, or course. That’d be far too boring, there’d be no reason to continue after that. But one by one, I might just let you collect all my secrets. In return, I have a single request.”
“And what’s that?”
“Molly Hooper, will you help me?” The strangest man she’s ever met stares at her with his dark eyes, a different creature altogether than the one who saved her in the car park.
Oh.
She nods yes.
He tells her the plan.
Thirteen hours later, Molly brings Jim into the lab to meet Sherlock Holmes.
It’s easy to act wounded around the detective. Easy to act flustered and angry and disappointed. Easy to act like her entire world has just crumbled after hearing his analysis of “Jim from I.T.”
Probably because it really isn’t acting.
She is hurt. Charlie had died and shouldn’t the great Sherlock Holmes be able to figure that out? He had passed by her not two hours after she had received the horrible news that awful day and he hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t he been able to read her sorrow in the click of her heels while she walked down the hallway towards the lab? She had helped him so many times in the past, wasn’t she deserving of a sympathetic glance or a reassuring hand on her shoulder? She knew he was capable of the act, she’d seen evidence of late. The genuine fondness painted on his face while he watched John Watson.
And that was it, wasn’t it? Sherlock had needed her help less since the army doctor came into his life. He’d been flirting less to get his way, showering her with fewer false niceties. Perhaps he had figured out what she was going through, but he saw no advantage to him in acknowledging it.
She runs from the room and very nearly breaks down. It’d been only five days since Charlie died (124 days since he’d last opened his eyes), and she hasn’t even properly mourned. She’s pushed him from her thoughts because it had been Jim who saved her in that car park.
And Jim should terrify her, she knows this. Knows that she should run away. But she can’t.
She can’t because the moment he placed his hand on the small of her back had been the moment she finally felt safe again.
In that moment, she knew she’d do anything he’d ask of her.
***
Jim Moriarty collects people he finds interesting. He rarely finds anyone worthy of a second glance. But every so often he finds someone extraordinary and demands their attention. Sometimes he plays games, sometimes he tells the truth.
With Molly Hooper it is a combination of both.
He takes her to a card game run by one of the only men he’s ever considered a friend. When Sebastian notices them approaching, he dismisses the crowd around him and envelopes Jim in a crushing embrace. When he finally sets him free, Jim turns to the pathologist.
“Molly Hooper, meet Colonel Sebastian Moran.”
He grabs her hand and kisses the back of her knuckles. "Pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Fairchild."
“Oh,” She turns red at the reference and decides to change the subject instead of addressing her actions in the St. Bart’s car park. “This is a thing you two do, isn’t it? The hand kissing... thing."
Sebastian gives her a wink while Jim returns to her side.
“We are gentlemen, are we not? I don’t see why you should expect any less from a colonel and a fine business man like myself." He punctuates this with a grand flourish and a bow.
Sebastian excuses himself from his company and takes them out for drinks at the Tyburn. Sitting in the pub, Jim entwines his fingers with Molly’s.
They end the night in a shooting range. The two of them teach the pathologist how to kill a man, how to maim a man, and how to simply scare a man.
She’s good with a rifle. He knew she would be; he’d watched her with a scalpel before.
Kill, maim, scare. They run through scenarios and teach her which action the situation calls for.
She’s good. He knew she would be.
***
Molly has spent every night since the day Charlie died with Jim Moriarty. He tells her secrets about pink phones and semtex coats. He tells her about how he helps those who ask.
He takes her to places where everyone knows his name (a name no one is supposed to say). She meets the handful of men and women Jim actually trusts and they treat her like she’s important. She likes each and every one them.
She wonders why she feels so comfortable around known killers.
On April 4th, Jim and Sebastian take Molly to a house they frequent in Surbiton. The two men each have their own residences in central London, but this house is their “Fortress of Solitude” according to Sebastian (a comment that earns him a grimace and head shake from Jim).
It’s filled with firearms, electronics, and a shabby-chic interior design.
Molly thinks it feels like home.
“We’re taking you on your first outing tomorrow night, Fairchild.” Sebastian winks as he passes her a rifle from his collection. “Her name is Rosa, she’s yours now. Treat her well.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t fret, precious.” Jim walks up to her side and kisses her temple. “Moran, Andrews, and Parkinson will be there as well. The lot of you will be safely out of sight. Well, I say safely…”
“He never means safely.”
“I thought that might be the case."
“And doesn’t that make it more fun? You never know what might go boom.” Jim rocks back and forth on his heels, grinning like he’s never been prouder of himself.
That night she dreams about a waterfall. She wakes up in a cold sweat and reaches for Jim by her side. The bed is empty. She opens her eyes and sees him backlit against the window, typing on his laptop.
She rises out of bed and asks him if he needs any help. He simply stares at her, genuine confusion across his face.
It’s then that she realizes he has never let anyone into his world in this way before; that this is all brand new to him, too.
It’s then that she feels like his equal, that she understands the amount of trust he’s placed in her. She pulls his face towards her and with a kiss, she tries to demonstrate that she understands.
She feels powerful and it’s dizzying.
***
It’s April 5th and Jim Moriarty has never been happier. Every cell is his body is buzzing with excitement because tonight is the night that Sherlock Holmes finally comes out and plays. His mobile chimes:
Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The Pool. Midnight.
Jim feels a satisfied grin pull at his lips as he watches John Watson walk by.
“That’s Sherlock’s friend, the doctor,” Molly turns to look at Sebastian in the backseat. “John. That’s John.”
“Correct. He’s about to be cast as the starring role in tonight’s performance.” Sebastian slips on his balaclava, ready to abduct his fellow solider.
“Tonight we take loyalty and love and set it ablaze.” Jim raises his eyebrows for emphasis as he becomes the proper showman once again. “It’ll be a blast.”
***
It’s April 6th and Molly Hooper has killed a man. She doesn’t know his name and she thinks she should be bothered, in shock, possibly sick on her shoes. But she isn’t any of these things. Dead bodies are nothing new to her; she's lived her entire adult life surrounded by them. And now the nameless officer is just another one. He’s not the body of someone she liked, not the body of someone who was kind to her. Just the body of the man pursuing her, pursing Jim, while they fled from the wreckage of the pool.
She was fine. He was dead.
They have a dinner party the next night at the Surbiton house. An elegant table set for three snipers, two known crime lords, a pathologist, and a mad man. It should feel strange, but it doesn’t.
She’s reminded of the parties Charlie and Karen used to have, and how awkward she had felt. How she crashed and burned with every new acquaintance.
The faces around her now, murderers and thieves, all smile at her. Respect her. The comradery is surprising at first. Jim cares so little about the majority of the world, but the exceptions to his rule are sitting around her. Here is the meager portion of the world that Jim Moriarty thinks is worth a damn, and she’s among them.
She doesn’t understand why she’s been instantly accepted into the round table of the underworld, but she’s grateful.
Halfway through the second course, Sebastian Moran leans over to whisper in Molly’s ear.
"You and me, Fairchild, we have an advantage."
"And what advantage is that?" She doesn’t stumble over her words.
"We don't even register on Sherlock Holmes' radar, unlike M here.” He gestures toward Jim, sitting on her right. “We are the lucky two who might just have the ability to pull his ass out of the fire if he ever needs it."
She smiles into her glass as she takes a sip.
The evening goes on and the party moves into the sitting room. They talk equally of the mundane and the macabre. Jim keeps an arm around Molly’s waist all night like he’s proud of her.
***
They each share one secret every night, just the two of them.
It’s June 21st when Jim tells her about killing Carl Powers.
Molly stays at her own place the next night.
He wonders if that secret had been a mistake.
The next time he sees her pick up her rifle, her hand isn’t as steady as it had been.
He wonders if she had been a mistake.
***
Molly Hooper shoots Greg Lestrade in his left arm. Kill, maim, scare. She’d run through the scenarios and kill was the appropriate response. But she ignored her training and made her own decision.
She’d always liked Lestrade. He had laughed at her joke once. He had scolded Sherlock on her behalf more than once. He’d been kind to her.
“My dear,” Jim spat out as he took her chin in his hand. “What exactly was that in there?”
“I got you out of there.”
“I got me out of there. You missed.” Jim let go of her face and turned his back on her. “Intentionally.”
“I couldn’t,” she raised her voice slightly. “I didn’t want to.”
"You didn’t want to?" He turned back towards her. Molly watched as his eye gave a twitch. “That was my life at risk, Molly Hooper, and you risked it for the sake of your silver fox D.I.”
“He wasn’t my… He wasn’t a friend of mine, but he was... Whenever he came by the morgue he was nice. He always remembered my name before I ever bothered learning his.” She took a step closer to him. “So yes, I didn’t want to. I still shot him, you still got away. I just didn’t want to see him dead. I didn’t want him to be just another body.”
“No, no, no!” Jim thundered, pacing back and forth. “This isn’t how this goes at all!”
And it’s that moment when Molly finally understands that the man who she's fallen for, the man who has changed her life, the man who has made her happier than she'd ever been before, is the most dangerous man in London.
He's a killer and a mad man, and she can't really judge because she’s already killed thirteen men in the name of Jim Moriarty. And that probably makes her just as mad.
So no, she doesn’t feel any judgment, she just simply understands. She finally gets that he could kill her at any moment and she's afraid.
She's finally afraid of dying.
And it’s that realization that motivates her to knock the raving man unconscious with the butt of her rifle.
***
"My goodness, darling. You've tied me to a chair. Why? From the way you’re looking at me, I’ve the feeling that this isn’t for a fun reason."
He can read the fear running through her nerves. She is terrified of him and for the first time in his life, he doesn’t like the taste of it. In fact, he hates that she is afraid. It hurts. It burns. His tongue turns to lead as his heart sinks into his gut. She isn’t the mistake. He is the mistake.
He feels ashamed. The feeling is strange and wrong and all he wants to do is crawl out of his own skin.
"I thought you were going to kill me.”
"Hmm." It’s all he can manage.
It’s then that Sebastian walks by the open doorway, shaking Jim out of his retreat into his own head. The colonel pauses to watch the vignette play out.
"Alright, boss?"
"Just dandy." He flashes his teeth like a shark.
"Alright, Fairchild?" She nods in response. "I'm sure whatever happened he deserves it." He gives a wink and keeps on walking down the hall. Jim swears he can actually hear him whistling.
Molly must have heard it as well because when he turns his head to face her, she’s actually fighting off a smile.
“Hello.”
“Hi.” And then she’s laughing. He doesn’t know if it’s because of how ridiculous the situation is, or if it’s simply hysteria. But he’s so relieved the fear is gone from her eyes that he joins in.
When she finally calms down, she kneels down in front of the chair and places her hands on his knees.
“I’m grateful, you know.” She rubs her eyes with the back of her left hand. “Grateful for everything you’ve done for me, taught me. If I had the chance to go back to the car park and do everything over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” She begins to untie his right hand. “I never fit until you let me into your world.” She moves onto his other bound wrist. “And I’ll never understand why you let me in, why you picked me, but I’m glad you did. I want you to understand that I truly consider it a blessing.” She leans up and presses a kiss to his lips. “I also want you to understand that I’m not going to follow you blindly. I will occasionally make my own judgment calls.” She stands and takes two steps back from the chair. “And if you’re not okay with that, well, let’s just say if you have me killed, I’ll haunt you until your dying day.”
“How long have you been practicing that speech?”
“Since I hit you over the head with Rosa.” She looks proud of herself.
“It was good.” If he’s honest with himself, he’s proud of her too. “Very powerful. I liked it.” He finally finds the strength in his legs to stand up.
***
The months go by and her life takes on a bizarre routine of St. Bart’s, morgue, Jim Moriarty, dark deeds, and repeat. She still watches teen dramas on E4 with Toby on her lap, but now she has to record her programs and watch them late at night with Jim after she’s taken out a bank manager with a sniper rifle for his sake.
And it’s wonderful.
When laying down the facts of the last year, an average person might come to the conclusion that Jim and Molly’s relationship is terribly unhealthy. They might examine her life before Jim and her life now and decided that he’s painted her black.
If Molly still spoke to her mother, she would surely call her daughter a fool. “Can't you see a man like this Moriarty could never love you?” she’d say. “You’re playing a very dangerous game.”
If Charlie were still here, he would sit Molly down and ask her to stop. He’d make her promise to keep herself safe.
And she would have stopped for Charlie. She’d stayed away from rivers, hadn’t she?
But Charlie is gone.
Molly knows Jim's voices. She's watched and studied each one to learn when he's lying, when he's playing someone for a fool. She knows the tone he takes when he genuinely likes someone, genuinely respects him or her. It's the tone he's taken with her ever since the day she asked who he was and he in turn asked for her help.
It had felt like a precious gift. To be liked, respected, by anyone.
He might have blackened her heart, but isn’t that what happens when you set something on fire?
***
Jim Moriarty is sitting with Sebastian Moran (discussing the weather, of all things), when he hears a key in the lock. He listens to heels click down the hall until they reach the back room. He stands up to greet the pathologist when he sees the panicked look on Molly’s face.
"Sherlock stared at me for about three seconds longer than he normally does today."
"That’s not good,” Sebastian pushes himself off the sofa. “It means he's finally realized you've changed."
"It means he might know everything. Or he will soon." She’s breathing heavily. She’d hurried here. Jim feels the twinge of pride she so often inspires in him.
"It means today was your very last day in the morgue.” He holds out his hand to Molly. "We're going to Paris, Sabrina Fairchild."
“Paris? I don’t think running to another country will stop him from finding us, Jim.”
“No, it won’t. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Secrets to be revealed, dearest. Secrets to be revealed. The question you should be asking is what’s the first thing we’re going to do once we arrive?”
“All right, what’s the first thing we’re going to do once we arrive?”
"We're going to bake a cake."
Of course it wasn't cake, it was a bomb, but he still smiled up at her and said "One, two, three, crack. New egg," in a ridiculous accent while snipping a wire.
She lets out a laugh that crinkles her nose and he wonders if he’ll ever tell her about the time he watched Sabrina three times in a row just so he could understand why she’d always loved it.
***
Sherlock Holmes receives their message loud and clear. He follows the three of them through France as they leave him a breadcrumb trail of destruction.
And then one day he just stops.
Molly is baffled, but Jim understands. And of course he does. Molly had been able to see how deep the similarities between the criminal and the detective were right away.
“He wants us to follow him.”
So they do. They follow him back to 221b Baker Street while he picks up his army doctor. They follow the two of them to the train station. And they follow the two of them across Switzerland.
It’s mundane, really, spying on Sherlock and John through her sniper’s scope. She watches the two men sit amidst beautiful scenery drinking tea, and all Molly can think of is that they remind her of a honeymooning couple.
She feels guilty for a moment.
But then she remembers that Jim had needed her help, and Sherlock hadn’t. She had chosen her side long ago.
She has long since began to trust Jim Moriarty with her life.
But she doesn’t trust him with his own.
That night while Molly sleeps, she once again dreams of waterfalls. She’s awakened from the reoccurring nightmare by Jim and Sebastian making plans to lead Sherlock (alone) to Reichenbach Falls.
She internalizes her opinions on the matter until she’s alone with Jim. Hours have passed by that time and she has allowed her imagination to run rampant, her brain now brimming with worst-case scenarios.
She lets him know every last thought she has about his current plan of action.
She can tell he isn’t listening to a single one.
"It's the way the game is played!”
"But it's suicide!"
“You do remember how we met, don't you? In the car park. I don't think you have any room to talk, darling."
"You and I both know that wasn't the first time we met, Jim." And that did it. He was finally listening.
"You remember?"
“You saved me that time, too.”
“How long?”
“Since the night you asked for my help.”
“Oh.” He took a few steps forward. “I’ve always wondered, Molly Hooper, why you had weighted your pockets down with rocks.”
“All I wanted was to know how Carl felt when he drowned.”
“Oh.” A cheeky smile spread across his face as he began to rock back and forth on his heels. “But I had poisoned him, you strange little thing, he didn’t actually drown. Well, in a way he did, but still…”
“Stop it. I know that now.” She hit him playfully on the shoulder. And wasn’t that strange? Joking about Carl Powers’ death. She truly has changed.
But he has not. Despite her protests, Jim heads out to meet Sherlock Holmes alone.
Sebastian and Molly head after him, of course. All part of the plan. But she’s terrified.
When she finally asks Sebastian if he thinks Jim will make it out of this alive, the colonel simply calls her "Fairchild" and kisses her forehead.
He doesn’t say anything else as they finish their march up to the top of the falls.
By the time she reaches her appointed position and peers through her sniper’s scope, Sherlock has already arrived. She watches as Jim talks to Sherlock, watches while the detective writes a letter that he pins under his beloved mobile.
And then the fight begins. She goes to take aim but she can’t. She can’t pull the trigger because their limbs are so intertwined that she doesn’t know which man she’d hit, and the ache in her heart tells her that she doesn’t want to shoot either of them.
That’s when she sees Sherlock push Jim.
“No.”
That’s when she sees Jim fall.
“No, no, no.”
She throws Rosa across her back and begins running. She looks back briefly and sees Sebastian taking aim as Sherlock climbs up the falls. Always the solider. She’s grateful for the distraction he provides as she makes her way to the riverbed below.
The fall might not have killed him. There is hope. They hadn't been as high up as they could have been, and the water is deep. If his head isn’t smashed in, if his back isn’t broken over rocks, he might be down there. He might be safe.
And then she sees it: a body. She runs towards the water's edge.
“Don’t you dare be dead, Jim Moriarty.”
"Hello." He says it casually, as if he didn’t just fall off a bloody Swiss waterfall. She doesn’t know if she wants to shoot him or simply collapse in tears.
"Hi." Apparently it’s tears. "You're alive."
"So I appear to be." Jim moves to pull himself out of the water and swears from the effort. "Bastard pushed me off a cliff."
"I saw.” She reaches up a hand to wipe at her face and lets out an awkward laugh. “It was probably the single most horrifying moment of my life."
"But a cliff! I mean, really? What a way to have potentially gone out from this world. I know it was me who picked out this scenic location for our grand showdown, but honestly. He just went and immediately pushed me off the cliff! Didn't even let me have a decent monologue. Utter bastard." Molly smiles at him as she wades into the river.
"I've got to get you out of here, John is bound to turn up any minute." She wraps an arm around him and helps him onto the shore.
“Look at you, Molly Hooper, saving my life for once.”
“I’ve saved your life plenty of times.”
“Sure you have.” He grins like an idiot. He’s battered and soaking but, by some miracle, he’s not broken.
He’s not a body floating down river.
He’s alive.
And he’s hers.