(Sherlock/OUaT) To Jump, Not Fall for the community
Title: To Jump, Not Fall
Author: ciaimpala
Fandoms: Once Upon a Time and Sherlock (BBC)
CharactersRuby; Molly Hooper, with mentions of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes
Pairings: Ruby/Molly
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1600
Spoilers: Spoilers through Season 2 Episode 3 of Sherlock (BBC), spoilers for Once Upon a Time through Season 2 Episode 1
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and Sherlock (BBC) belong to their respective creators
A/N: This was a really fun challenge for me! Thanks to jacquelin825 for looking this over for me :)
Summary: Molly has to get away, but ends up where she never expected.
She had to get away after Sherlock jumped. She doesn’t say die, because she is the one who knows he is alive, not well, but alive, somewhere in Tibet last time she checked. He doesn’t send her postcards of course, not because he can’t (she’s sure he could develop some sort of code, or at least an alias, she wouldn’t have to be able to read the message, just receive it), but because he doesn’t bother to.
That, Molly is sure, weighs in just as heavily on her decision as does seeing John Watson haunt his own home, only sitting in one armchair, brewing enough tea for two. She would have imagined herself feeling sorry for poor John, that Sherlock chose her to help him implement his mockery of death itself instead of his scribe.
But instead she just felt sad. Mostly for herself, if she was having an honest day, because as much as John drank himself into stoicism, burdened so horribly by his unknowledge, Sherlock cared enough about him not to tell him the truth. Sherlock chose to shield John, to leave his very world itself just to keep John from harm’s way.
And he told her.
Because if harm found her, at least his secret would die with her, right?
And nothing in Sherlock would die because she was gone, she felt this deep within her soul.
So she packs up everything, which isn’t much, and climbs into a cab. She’s taking the first flight to the States, letting fate decide (though not like it’s done much for lately, if she’s being honest, which she only is now). She doesn’t say goodbye to anyone, not even Lestrade, not even John. She might just come out and tell them everything, and what would that do now? Earn them each a bullet to the head, send John on a suicide mission around the world trying to track down the master of illusions?
The plane ride is long. Somehow Molly thought it would be faster, though a trip to a new life would be like in the movies she never could stop watching, bumbling strangers tripping into her luggage and proposing marriage on the tarmac, friendly stewardesses sensing her inner angst and placing her with a wink and a smile in first class, where she meets an American billionaire who sweeps her off to his secluded estate and she never has to read a mystery again.
But she’s in the back of the plane, stuck in the middle, eyes blurring as she tries to focus on the generic romance novel she has laid out in her lap. Finally she just falls asleep in the in-between.
She’s swerving on the road already when she hits the sign. She can’t get a hold of the steering wheel, her hands feeling so out of place, her body twisting to the wrong side, her mind still in the wrong time zone.
The sign looms out of the darkness with no time for avoidance, and the rental car crashes into it, plowing right between Story and Brooke.
When Molly comes to, it’s to find a woman hovering her, all dark hair and smooth skin and piercing eyes. “Are you alright?” the woman asks, and Molly nods, then winces as the pounding headache starts to make its way in. “Can you walk?” And Molly nods again, even though she knows how much it will hurt.
“I’m Ruby,” the woman says with a broad smile, offering her shoulder for Molly to lean on, but Molly is determined to walk on her own. She makes it five steps before letting herself rest a few fingers on Ruby’s strong upper arm.
“Molly,” Molly says softly, and earns another smile from Ruby.
“You’re not from around here,” Ruby states, as if there was never a question.
“The accent give me away?” Molly replies, finding herself almost smiling back, and Ruby laughs, as if at some inside joke she hopes to share sometime soon.
“We don’t really get anyone new around here,” Ruby answers with a wink. She gestures to the line that the front of Molly’s car had just crossed when it crashed, with an almost wistful shrug.
The town oddly reminds Molly a little bit of home, small town England with one large looming clock and a café, where everyone knows everyone and outsiders are clearly outsiders.
And at first, everyone does stare at her, as they gather around as if called by some mysterious sign.
“I don’t recognize her,” one shorter man says bluntly, coming closer and peering at her like some museum specimen.
“She’s not a princess,” another man chimes in, and Molly winces.
“Thanks for the honesty,” she mutters under her breath, and Ruby laughs.
“She’s a visitor,” Ruby says calmly, with a meaningful glance at a woman with short dark hair and a man standing protectively next to her, arm around her waist.
And suddenly, that’s like it explains everything. There’s some unspoken understanding that goes flying around everyone gathered around, and Molly is hurried to the hospital, laid down a bed, and there’s a doctor hovering over her, telling her his name is Dr. Whale, which is really strange as far as Molly is concerned, she thought the name Sherlock was strange, but this takes the cake, and then he’s feeding her some lovely painkillers, and her head isn’t hurting anymore.
*******
It’s amazing how quickly Molly accepts the stories she is told when she wakes up. “I helped a man jump off a building and pretend to die,” she mumbles, groggily coming into consciousness. “He used to flog corpses.” Ruby laughs, even louder this time, and Molly shrugs, a grin spreading across her face before she can stop herself.
“I was never much for fairytales,” Molly says softly, later, when she’s perched in a cozy booth in Ruby’s grandmother’s diner, eating her second slice of apple pie and nursing her second mug of hot chocolate.
“Oh c’mon, you never wanted to be a princess?” Ruby asks, leaning against the counter with a wicked grin. “Have the prince swoop in, save the day?”
“I wanted to be the one who discovered the cure for the sleeping curse,” Molly admits, even softer this time, hugging the mug close to her chest, staring down into the steam.
“True love’s the answer to that mystery,” Ruby says, and Molly wants to solve a mystery on her own so badly, and she thinks Ruby just might be the magnifying glass, so she leans over and kisses Ruby, all chocolate and marshmallows and apples and wood.
*******
Molly’s amazed by how simple it all is, in the end. Ruby’s grandmother teaches her how to make apple pies, and Ruby teaches her how to smile again. Molly ends up working in the hospital, patching up the occasional sword wound or curse gone awry. She takes long lunch breaks with Ruby, that turn into long breaks in bed that end with them drinking hot chocolate and eating apple pie on top of the tousled sheets.
There are no newspapers here, no telly, no news from the outside world at all. There’s just no way to get that news in, the town is totally isolated, a world unto itself. It’s perfection, all curses broken and poetic words straight from a storybook, wishing wells and heroic speeches that actually mean something.
No one jumps from a building.
No one makes her break their best friend’s heart, the heart of a good man who had already given up so much fighting for his country, and gave up everything else fighting for his friend.
She tells Ruby the story one night, Ruby’s arms around her waist, her words muffled into the soft curve of Ruby’s neck. She tells Ruby how she helped save a life by draining a man’s soul, by making it so he could watch his best friend jump to his death so he could live.
And Ruby just holds her tighter, and whispers into her skin, “He had no right to ask you that, no right at all. You are worth so much more than that.”
*******
Ruby shows Molly how to run, really run, and Molly rests her head against Ruby’s soft fur when she gets tired. Ruby is so much more than a warm body, so much more than a warm heart. She makes Molly hot chocolate, she makes Molly smile, and she makes Molly stop wondering about a cruel world, about illusionists and broken hearts, about Tibet.
She has realized, truly realized, that Sherlock made his own choices, and she made hers, and that she’s glad she saved John, because in the long wrong, he will be okay. Because as she’s learned, true love is the only thing to break the sleeping curse, and John’s sleepwalking will end because Sherlock will come shatter the curse, he won’t be able to stay away.
After all, even though she once worked in a morgue, Molly knows quite a lot about life, now doesn’t she?
-END-
Author: ciaimpala
Fandoms: Once Upon a Time and Sherlock (BBC)
CharactersRuby; Molly Hooper, with mentions of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes
Pairings: Ruby/Molly
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1600
Spoilers: Spoilers through Season 2 Episode 3 of Sherlock (BBC), spoilers for Once Upon a Time through Season 2 Episode 1
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and Sherlock (BBC) belong to their respective creators
A/N: This was a really fun challenge for me! Thanks to jacquelin825 for looking this over for me :)
Summary: Molly has to get away, but ends up where she never expected.
She had to get away after Sherlock jumped. She doesn’t say die, because she is the one who knows he is alive, not well, but alive, somewhere in Tibet last time she checked. He doesn’t send her postcards of course, not because he can’t (she’s sure he could develop some sort of code, or at least an alias, she wouldn’t have to be able to read the message, just receive it), but because he doesn’t bother to.
That, Molly is sure, weighs in just as heavily on her decision as does seeing John Watson haunt his own home, only sitting in one armchair, brewing enough tea for two. She would have imagined herself feeling sorry for poor John, that Sherlock chose her to help him implement his mockery of death itself instead of his scribe.
But instead she just felt sad. Mostly for herself, if she was having an honest day, because as much as John drank himself into stoicism, burdened so horribly by his unknowledge, Sherlock cared enough about him not to tell him the truth. Sherlock chose to shield John, to leave his very world itself just to keep John from harm’s way.
And he told her.
Because if harm found her, at least his secret would die with her, right?
And nothing in Sherlock would die because she was gone, she felt this deep within her soul.
So she packs up everything, which isn’t much, and climbs into a cab. She’s taking the first flight to the States, letting fate decide (though not like it’s done much for lately, if she’s being honest, which she only is now). She doesn’t say goodbye to anyone, not even Lestrade, not even John. She might just come out and tell them everything, and what would that do now? Earn them each a bullet to the head, send John on a suicide mission around the world trying to track down the master of illusions?
The plane ride is long. Somehow Molly thought it would be faster, though a trip to a new life would be like in the movies she never could stop watching, bumbling strangers tripping into her luggage and proposing marriage on the tarmac, friendly stewardesses sensing her inner angst and placing her with a wink and a smile in first class, where she meets an American billionaire who sweeps her off to his secluded estate and she never has to read a mystery again.
But she’s in the back of the plane, stuck in the middle, eyes blurring as she tries to focus on the generic romance novel she has laid out in her lap. Finally she just falls asleep in the in-between.
She’s swerving on the road already when she hits the sign. She can’t get a hold of the steering wheel, her hands feeling so out of place, her body twisting to the wrong side, her mind still in the wrong time zone.
The sign looms out of the darkness with no time for avoidance, and the rental car crashes into it, plowing right between Story and Brooke.
When Molly comes to, it’s to find a woman hovering her, all dark hair and smooth skin and piercing eyes. “Are you alright?” the woman asks, and Molly nods, then winces as the pounding headache starts to make its way in. “Can you walk?” And Molly nods again, even though she knows how much it will hurt.
“I’m Ruby,” the woman says with a broad smile, offering her shoulder for Molly to lean on, but Molly is determined to walk on her own. She makes it five steps before letting herself rest a few fingers on Ruby’s strong upper arm.
“Molly,” Molly says softly, and earns another smile from Ruby.
“You’re not from around here,” Ruby states, as if there was never a question.
“The accent give me away?” Molly replies, finding herself almost smiling back, and Ruby laughs, as if at some inside joke she hopes to share sometime soon.
“We don’t really get anyone new around here,” Ruby answers with a wink. She gestures to the line that the front of Molly’s car had just crossed when it crashed, with an almost wistful shrug.
The town oddly reminds Molly a little bit of home, small town England with one large looming clock and a café, where everyone knows everyone and outsiders are clearly outsiders.
And at first, everyone does stare at her, as they gather around as if called by some mysterious sign.
“I don’t recognize her,” one shorter man says bluntly, coming closer and peering at her like some museum specimen.
“She’s not a princess,” another man chimes in, and Molly winces.
“Thanks for the honesty,” she mutters under her breath, and Ruby laughs.
“She’s a visitor,” Ruby says calmly, with a meaningful glance at a woman with short dark hair and a man standing protectively next to her, arm around her waist.
And suddenly, that’s like it explains everything. There’s some unspoken understanding that goes flying around everyone gathered around, and Molly is hurried to the hospital, laid down a bed, and there’s a doctor hovering over her, telling her his name is Dr. Whale, which is really strange as far as Molly is concerned, she thought the name Sherlock was strange, but this takes the cake, and then he’s feeding her some lovely painkillers, and her head isn’t hurting anymore.
*******
It’s amazing how quickly Molly accepts the stories she is told when she wakes up. “I helped a man jump off a building and pretend to die,” she mumbles, groggily coming into consciousness. “He used to flog corpses.” Ruby laughs, even louder this time, and Molly shrugs, a grin spreading across her face before she can stop herself.
“I was never much for fairytales,” Molly says softly, later, when she’s perched in a cozy booth in Ruby’s grandmother’s diner, eating her second slice of apple pie and nursing her second mug of hot chocolate.
“Oh c’mon, you never wanted to be a princess?” Ruby asks, leaning against the counter with a wicked grin. “Have the prince swoop in, save the day?”
“I wanted to be the one who discovered the cure for the sleeping curse,” Molly admits, even softer this time, hugging the mug close to her chest, staring down into the steam.
“True love’s the answer to that mystery,” Ruby says, and Molly wants to solve a mystery on her own so badly, and she thinks Ruby just might be the magnifying glass, so she leans over and kisses Ruby, all chocolate and marshmallows and apples and wood.
*******
Molly’s amazed by how simple it all is, in the end. Ruby’s grandmother teaches her how to make apple pies, and Ruby teaches her how to smile again. Molly ends up working in the hospital, patching up the occasional sword wound or curse gone awry. She takes long lunch breaks with Ruby, that turn into long breaks in bed that end with them drinking hot chocolate and eating apple pie on top of the tousled sheets.
There are no newspapers here, no telly, no news from the outside world at all. There’s just no way to get that news in, the town is totally isolated, a world unto itself. It’s perfection, all curses broken and poetic words straight from a storybook, wishing wells and heroic speeches that actually mean something.
No one jumps from a building.
No one makes her break their best friend’s heart, the heart of a good man who had already given up so much fighting for his country, and gave up everything else fighting for his friend.
She tells Ruby the story one night, Ruby’s arms around her waist, her words muffled into the soft curve of Ruby’s neck. She tells Ruby how she helped save a life by draining a man’s soul, by making it so he could watch his best friend jump to his death so he could live.
And Ruby just holds her tighter, and whispers into her skin, “He had no right to ask you that, no right at all. You are worth so much more than that.”
*******
Ruby shows Molly how to run, really run, and Molly rests her head against Ruby’s soft fur when she gets tired. Ruby is so much more than a warm body, so much more than a warm heart. She makes Molly hot chocolate, she makes Molly smile, and she makes Molly stop wondering about a cruel world, about illusionists and broken hearts, about Tibet.
She has realized, truly realized, that Sherlock made his own choices, and she made hers, and that she’s glad she saved John, because in the long wrong, he will be okay. Because as she’s learned, true love is the only thing to break the sleeping curse, and John’s sleepwalking will end because Sherlock will come shatter the curse, he won’t be able to stay away.
After all, even though she once worked in a morgue, Molly knows quite a lot about life, now doesn’t she?
-END-