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Oh God. Oh God... Oh God! What did I do? What do I do?! How am i going to explain this? What's going to happen to me?
Sherlock, I need to call Sherlock.
Molly picked up her phone and dialed Sherlock's number with shaking fingers. No answer.
Damn it! What am I going to do? Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.
Greg? I could call Greg! No, no terrible idea. He's a police detective! But... who else do I have?
Before she could change her mind she had dialed Lestrade's number and pushed call.
"Greg Lestrade." His voice was firm, familiar, and completely comforting as he answered. The sound of it made Molly able to speak without sobbing, though her voice wobbled a little embarrassingly.
"Hi, Greg? It's Molly. Molly Hooper. From St. Barts? I..."
"Molly!" Greg cut her off cheerfully, apparently not noticing the wobble. "Hi, I was actually thinking about seeing you. Er, calling you, I mean, because I haven't seen you. How are you? And, uh, Tom."
"Actually... um... I need your help. With something. I.. um... Could you come over to my place?" I sound desperate. Do I sound desperate? Do I sound like a woman who's just...
"Of course. Do you need me to bring anything?" Whatever Greg heard in her voice had softened his.
"Um... maybe some garbage bags," she admitted, trying hard to think. What will we need?
"Molly, are you ok? What's happened?"
"I just..." Molly couldn't hold it together anymore. She broke off, pulling the phone away from her face to hopefully muffle her sobs, but she could still hear Greg on the other end.
"Hang on, Molly. I'll be right over," he promised.
Greg made it to Molly's flat sooner than was strictly legal. He'd only been there once before, when he dropped her off after a long shift working on one of his cases, but somehow he remembered the way perfectly. Molly opened the door just a crack when he rang the bell, and he saw that her eyes were red and puffy from crying. He also noticed a tiny smear of something red on the back of her hand... If he didn't know any better he would think it was blood.
"Molly. What happened?" he asked, almost demanded, as she finally let him in. He turned to face Molly and she, quite unexpectedly, collapsed into him and burst into tears.
"Greg! I did something horrible and I don't know how it happened or how to explain it and I just need hlep and I didn't know who to call and I tried calling Sherlock but he wouldn't pick up..." she babbled on.
"Shhhh. Shhhh. It's ok. Molly, I'm here," Greg tried to soothe her, patting her head a little awkwardly. He'd handled his share of crying witnesses and such, but they didn't usually fling themselves into his arms. "Take a deep breath. Relax. Why don't you go sit down on the sofa and I'll go grab you a glass of water from the kitchen..."
"NO!" she screamed, and Greg practically jumped in shock at her reaction. "Greg, please..." she struggled to get the words out without resuming crying. "P-please, let me explain what happened f-first." She was trying to keep her breaths steady. Greg patted her head again, a little absently, as he led her to the couch and sat down with her, angled to her face with his knee just brushing hers.
"We, um... we had a bit of a row." Molly finally choked out, but then went no further.
"Who? You and Tom?" Greg's mind was already supplying him with a hundred ways this story could end, and he didn't like a single one of them. How could he, when he knew that the ending was a distraught and all-alone Molly Hooper?
"...Yeah." Molly confirmed Tom's involvement.
"Molly... Did he hit you? Threaten you?" Greg looked closely at her, checking for bruises or cuts or... If that skinny bastard had raised a hand against Molly, who was the sweetest...
"No! Nothing like that. We've just been... bickering. All the time, over such silly things. Ever since John and Mary's wedding. But this time he... he left for a while. And I just felt horrible. It was a stupid thing to be fighting about, they always were, and I wanted to apologize, so I thought I would bake him cookies... I have this old family recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies..." she started to cry again. Greg reached out to take her hands in his, noticing that odd red spear again as he did. It... it was blood. But molly was leaning into his shoulder, still crying, so he didn't say anything, just let her get everything out. Meanwhile, his suspicions, his imagination, was getting a little out of control.
If she insists he didn;t hurt her, then who's blood is it? Molly couldn't have hurt anyone, let alone Tom. She loves him, right? They're... cute together, I guess. They were at John's wedding, weren't they? Though they did seem a bit... off. A bit distant. And then there was that business with the fork... No. She wouldn't, couldn't. This is a friend, not a-a homicide case! And even if it were... He looked down at the young woman crumpled against him, feeling suddenly very protective of her. Protective and... maybe a hint of something else. Then Molly sat up, wiped away her tears, and looked at him. Yep, definately something else. Oh. Molly continued her explanation.
"When he came back I wanted to apologize. But he was still upset, and was shouting, and I got angry again and was yelling, too." She stopped for a second to compose herself a little more, "I was chopping vegetables for dinner. The cookies were on the counter, cooling. He went over and ate one. I told him they were for after dinner and-and I t-turned around w-with the knife in my hand and he w-walked t-t-towards me... and it was an accident. he just... he was walking, and then he was falling, and I was going to help catch him... but, but t-the knife went in-into his s-stomach, and then he really did f-fall... When I realized what had hap-hap-happened, I bent down next to him to stop the bleeding. I looked at his face and-and-and he wasn't breathing any-anymore! I don't know what happened. The wound wasn't deep enough to have killed him. I'm a doctor - I do post-mortems! I know what types of wounds can kill people! This-this one, it sh-shouldn't have k-killed him!" She broke down again but quickly recovered. "Wh-when I went to t-try CPR, I realized that his airway was blocked! I-I-I think he must have been allergic to-to-to the peanuts! I didn't know he was allergic! He never t-told me!"
"Why didn't you call an ambulance? The police?" Greg asked, forgetting for a moment that he was the police.
"He was already gone, and the knife wound, and the shouting. How does that look? I panicked! I wanted Sherlock to help me bring the body to Bart's. He didn't answer so I called you. I can't lift him on my own."
That's when Greg remembered about being the police. He should, he really should call it in, reassure Molly that, no matter how it looked, the investigation would no doubt find her innocent. He should trust in the system. But... but she'd said Sherlock. Sherlock would have helped her dispose of a body without so much as a blink, and then his blasted imagination was picturing a grateful Molly falling into Sherlock's arms and that was just...No.
"Alright. What's our plan? How are we going to explain his absence when people ask about him? What are his family and friends going to say?"
Molly's frantic thought stilled for the first time since... since Tom had come back still angry. Greg was here, Greg had come, and he was going to help. They could do this. And she had had some time to think through plans, waiting alone in the flat for him to arrive, so she took a deep breath and managed to speak almost normally.
"We can cremate him at Bart's. He didn't get on with his family, he wasn't even going to invite them to the wedding. He hardly had any guests at all, actually... it was one of those stupid things we fought over. We had a couple of mutual friends and I think that was it. He wasn't known for keeping in touch. I can say that we broke up and he moved to America or something."
Molly finally felt ready to venture back into the kitchen where the body - Tom. I can't start just thinking of him as another body already! - lay on the floor. Greg followed her wordlessly, until she turned to him and asked "Did you bring the garbage bags? We need to line the trunk of your car with them, so we don't get any evidence in it."
His face would have been funny, if anything about this could be funny. He was so clearly thinking what the hell have I gotten myself into and quite possibly when did little Molly Hooper become such an expert in disposing of evidence? But all he said was "What? Oh, yeah, the bags. They're in my car. How are we going to get him downstairs without being notices?
Eventually they decided to have Greg move his car into the alley next to the flat and to carry the body down the fire escape. Molly tried to help bear her share of the 160 lbs of dead weight, but if she was honest, Greg wound up doing most of the work. And if she was really, really honest... it was very interesting to be presented with evidence of just how strong Greg was. Tom had been a tall man, while Greg was more pleasantly average, but he didn't complain about the burden even once as they carefully navigated down the rickety escape.
The ride to Bart's was silent and awkward. They parked in the back where the official bodies were delivered for autopsy, found a gurney, and wheeled Tom inside and to the furnace room. Molly had watched the bodies being cremated before, she often felt like it was her duty to pay that one last respect, even to strangers, but she'd never worked the furnace herself. Still, she remembered how to turn it on, and to wait for the temperature to get to at least 760 degrees Celsius. Once the furnace was up to temperature, they pushed Tom close to the flames, and then really looked at each other for the first time since Molly's apartment. Are we really going to do this? Molly asked herself, tired to ask him with her expression. But Greg didn't hesitate, just rolled the body into the oven and let Molly close the doors with a definitive clang. And then they just stood there.
Do I thank him? I ought to thank him. I ought to do more than that, I ought to... What do you do for someone who's helped you burn a body? Invite him back for tea?
Greg walked abruptly over to Molly and then froze again, and he was right there and he'd been so nice to hold earlier, when she was crying, so she reached out to hug him again, giving a sigh of relief as his arms wrapped around her.
Sherlock never would have done this, even if I'd got him to come. And she'd needed more than just a partner-in-crime. She'd needed... Molly pulled back, just slightly, so that she could see Greg's face. Sometime between the flat and the furnace, his expression had changed from what am I doing to... something else. Something maybe possibly not quite unlike the look Tom used to give her, back when they were first engaged, before all the petty fights and the peanut butter cookies. And if Molly was crying again, this time it wasn't just for shock and loss, but also because maybe everything would be alright after all.