Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

James Moriarty leaned against the graffiti covered, concrete wall. He didn’t usually do his own dirty work but today he needed to see some blood; he needed to… what did he really need? He hated not knowing things, he always knew, it was half of his business to know. The other half of his business however… Footsteps echoed around the large, empty space and a silhouette swept across the wall followed by the figure of a small, rather anxious looking man in a rather shoddy two-piece suit and not-quite-white shirt with the buttons done up lopsidedly and an amazingly average haircut.

“What?” Jim asked sharply. The man flinched and kept his eyes averted.

“Erm, th-th-there’s been a problem.” Of course there had been a problem; he knew there had been a problem but that was not why he wanted the man here.

  “I’m sure we can sort it out, don’t be so jumpy Len.” His voice was suddenly friendly and he jumped forward and got right up near Len’s face so they were inches from each other.

“Come on Len-Len-Lenny, what’s the news?” He enjoyed the way so-called-Len squirmed under his gaze as he tried to work up the courage to convey a message Jim already knew.

“Well the thing is erm… my position in the erm that is to say that…” he stumbled over his sentences and generally tried to avoid the topic in question.

“You were stupid enough to be found digging and now I have lost a useful, if imbecilic, insider in a key government office?” Len paled and his eyes widened. He nodded.

“Oh dear, that is a shame.” He walked slowly around the shabby man who kept his face forward, staring at the graffiti on the wall. Jim never understood why people did that when it obviously put them at a disadvantage, was it fear or was it fear of showing it?

He stood directly behind Len then violently grabbed his hair to force his chin upwards and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“I’d say that I’m sorry about the stains on the suit but I’m not because that suit really is terrible.”

He drew the knife across Len’s neck and blood sprayed across the wall. Usually he would have just shot him but today he was in a cutting kind of mood. He let Len collapse to the floor where blood sporadically gurgled from the gaping wound on the man’s neck and pooled about him on the floor.

Jim poked the lifeless corpse with the toe of one of his carefully polished shoes and sighed.

“You all die so easily, it’s no fun; you just keel over and DIE.” He yelled vehemently at the dead body.

He thought it would make him happy but he just felt empty and he stood there over the deceased man and wondered what was missing. 

Chapter Text

A new body had just been brought into the morgue a few minutes ago and Molly Hooper was just setting out her instruments as she always did. The man had had his throat slit. She started with her external examination, noting down the lack of tattoos, red marks on the back of his left hand (presumably from nervous scratching) and scraping the dirt from under the man’s nails. She wrote a few more things down before she was satisfied she had got everything and was just about to start her internal examination when the door opened and a familiar dark, coat-clad man swept into the room, dramatic as ever. Why did he have to come here now? She had mostly gotten over Sherlock but having him in the room while she was trying to work was still distracting to say the least. She looked up and smiled just as John came in, slightly out of breath.

“Why do we have to run everywhere, what’s wrong with walking? Oh hi Molly,” He said after plonking himself down in a stool in the corner.

“I need to use your lab,” Sherlock stated, ignoring John’s question.

“Oh, yes, okay,” she took off one of her gloves and fumbled around in her pocket for her keys, “here,” she chucked them over to Sherlock who promptly swept out of the room again.

“Thank you Molly,” said John apologetically.

“That’s okay John, I’ll bring some coffee up when I’m finished up here,” she gestured at the unfortunate man on the slab.

“Thanks see you later,” he called as he hurried after Sherlock and the door swung closed behind him.

It was just over an hour later and Molly had finished dissecting and taking samples of the abdominal organs; she was now in the process of removing the top of the skull. The little circular saw made a loud grinding sound as she cut through the relatively thin layer of bone. She finished and put the cranium to one side. There was a sound behind her.  John would have said hello so it must be Sherlock.

“Um, hello Sherlock, what are you looking for?” she asked whilst carefully lifting the exposed brain into a metal bowl, not looking up.

“Hello Molly.”
She stiffened and turned around slowly. She was astoundingly calm considering the circumstances. There, casually sat on the same stool John was sat on earlier, elbow resting on a shiny, steel work surface was one of the last people she wanted to see. An absurd thought came to mind and she thought at how rude it was for him to interrupt her autopsy. Rude? This man was on a completely different level altogether from rude! She realised she’d been silent for several seconds and touched her forehead exasperatedly, forgetting the brain matter on her latex gloves.

“…Jim?”

Chapter Text

“…Jim?”

“You’ve got some brain on you,” he got up and sauntered over until they were a few feet away from each other.

“Are you here to kill me?” she asked with barely a tremor in her voice, the prospect of death didn’t affect her like it did other people, her job being such as it was. Death was an inevitable fact of life but that didn’t mean she wanted it to come any faster.

“No, no, no! Why would I want to kill sweet little Molly Hooper? No, I just need something you ha...” Suddenly Molly launched herself at him, producing a scalpel from the table behind her, barrelling him over onto the floor.

“You turn up now with your stupid suit!” she slashed a line down his side, ruining said suit jacket. “After all you did,” why was she getting like this? The fact that he could just walk right in here and mess things up just made her so angry, “You Irish twat!” She plunged the scalpel into his forearm which he had put up to protect himself but didn’t get chance to land another blow as Jim grabbed her arm with his hand on the uninjured arm and knocked the scalpel, now covered in his blood, out of the way. He gripped her arm and slowly got to his feet, producing a gun from inside his ruined suit jacket. His eyes flashed mischievously as he re-evaluated her.

“Look, the mouse has grown fangs, naughty Mol,” he mock scolded her.

“You’re bleeding on my floor, what do you want?” The blood was dripping from his fingertips but he didn’t seem to notice. He was unbelievable. Molly tried to ignore that voice in her head which longed after the psychological complexity which she had once been attracted to in Sherlock which this man whom she once loved for different reasons (a lie, she reminded herself sharply) who was standing in front of her now possessed.

“Seeing as you asked so politely; I need that dead man’s finger,” he reached over, got a pair of scissors and, in one movement, cut off her corpse’s finger. He pulled a brown envelope from his pocket and dropped it inside. Molly Hooper had changed a lot since they last met; under that polite, shy person was so much anger, anger at him. He enjoyed her anger but he didn’t know why.

“Why?” Why was she even asking? Was she making small talk with a psychopath now?

“Oh, you know negotiations and blackmail. It’s amazing what one finger can do when the other side has a fingerprint database and a few secrets to hide,” he turned around and walked towards the door, ”This was nice,” he said vacantly, “We should do it again sometime.” Blood was still dripping from his arm and he left a trail of drops across the floor of the morgue and hummed a tune, which faded away as he disappeared down the corridor, which Molly didn't recognise. 

Chapter Text

Jim paced around his penthouse flat in a state of deep thought.

Molly sat on her sofa, trying to concentrate on the programme on the telly.

Why was he thinking of Molly, she was just a pawn, an insignificant part of the grand scale of things. Why wouldn’t she just “GET OUT OF MY HEAD” he yelled aloud, kicking the table in vicious frustration as he did so.

She fidgeted distractedly whilst trying to forget todays encounter. He just had to flaunt the fact he was supposedly invulnerable. He got on her nerves awfully but, for some strange reason, she didn’t hate him. No matter how much she wanted to, she just couldn’t.

There were two conflicting parts of his mind; on the one hand he didn’t need emotions running rampant and affecting his judgement, but on the other hand he was not one to deny himself the things he wanted.

She got up suddenly causing Toby, her cat who was comfortably curled up by her feet, to hiss in irritation before nestling back down again. Padding through to the kitchen she retrieved a wine glass and a three-quarter-full bottle of red wine which had been left on the worktop from the previous day.

He had just changed into his favourite suit, luckily not the one he had been wearing earlier. He was still a bit miffed about that, his arm still throbbed, the jacket alone cost over £500 and he was usually very careful to not get blood on him at work. He carefully tied his silk tie around his neck and appraised himself in the mirror. He saw himself staring back and was silently pleased at how disturbing he found his own gaze.

She stared into the depths of her glass and saw her gaunt face reflected back in the blood-red liquid. She didn’t drink that often but it was usually when she was alone; she felt lonely and so she drank more. But tonight she just found herself staring aimlessly at her wine, not touching a drop.

Jim hailed a taxi and gave the address. It had just started to rain and the raindrops refracted the light from various car lights and shop windows, tracing streams of the shattered lights down the windows. His mind wandered to his work and many projects he had running at the moment. That Sherlock thought he had dismantled his web, and, to be fair, he did make quite a big dent in his extensive network at the time. Fortunately the world of secrecy, scams and murder has a very fast market; jobs come and go in a couple of days and through these fast paced deals many new connections can be made… and information acquired. Nobody who needs to do business of this certain kind can be described as an innocent flower and therefore probably has at least one of two secrets of a compromising nature. There was that heist he needed to frame some people for and he had a short list of names he needed to remember to give to Sebastian. His mind came back to the present as the taxi pulled up to the curb. He paid the driver in clean notes (he always checked his notes for blood stains) and told him to keep the change. Nobody could say he wasn’t polite, even when he was killing people he thought himself to be polite; albeit in a round-about way. The rain wasn’t heavy as he stepped out onto the pavement outside Molly’s flat.

Chapter Text

The rain pattered down in the semi-darkness and speckled the shoulders of his jacket. The mood was not so much melancholy as expectant as he strode up to the door and pressed the buzzer without hesitation.

She was suddenly shaken out her reverie as the sharp sound of her buzzer shattered the silence. It was getting on for 11pm now; she didn't have many friends but any of them could be counted on to make unexpected calls at odd times of the day. She was okay with that though and she wandered who had been murdered as she made her way over to the intercom on the wall.

“Hello?”

“It’s me again,” she froze for a second and glared at the disembodied voice.

“What do you want?” she felt like she was repeating herself but it was a perfectly valid question.

“I’ve come to make an… apology of sorts,” she was certain this was a blatant lie; in fact she would have been less suspicious if he had threatened to kill all of her friends again. She decided to ignore him. She didn’t even think of calling anyone for help.

He examined the keypad and produced a tiny screwdriver from his pocket. Of course his apology was a lie and he knew she wouldn’t believe it and definitely wasn’t going to let him in. What was he even doing? He quickly and carefully unscrewed the cover and cut two wires, rewired them differently and was rewarded with a small spark and a click.

Footsteps on the staircase. She already had a knife in her hand but it was shaking. She wasn’t pumped full of adrenaline like before and the fear showed. She watched as the door handle moved and the door slowly opened.

“Sit down,” he demanded in a low voice, a voice which showed superiority with a thinly veiled threat.

She sat back down in her chair and didn’t say a word, the knife still clamped in her shaky grip.

“I’ve been wondering,” his steely gaze never leaving her eyes, “why I didn’t kill you earlier.”

He reached inside his jacket. I’m going to pull out this gun. I’m going to kill her.

He’s going to pull a gun out. He’s going to kill me. These were the thoughts running through each of their minds.

He did indeed pull the gun out. He held it to her head. His eyes pinned her in place and showed no enjoyment or anger or regret, they were just empty. She thought of the people that would miss her when she was gone. Sherlock would get angry at himself for not seeing through Moriarty’s ruse. He would run around trying to find him while pretending to not be enjoying himself. Of course both he and John would be sad but his would come through as anger while John would probably withdraw into himself and get a bit depressed. They would miss her because that is what people do. Greg and Mrs Hudson would be shocked, then sad, and then they would forget. She had seen it before lots of times in the people who came to identify bodies. She thought about what she had achieved in life. She had wanted to become a doctor so she got a medical degree. She became a pathologist. She got the job she wanted but then it just stopped. Nowhere else for her to aim for.

She closed her eyes and let the scene go blank.

Autopsy Report- 003112

Name: Hooper, Molly
Age: 33 years
Gender: F
Race/ethnicity: white British
Date of death: 10/05/14
Autopsy performed: 12/05/14
Eyes: brown
Hair: brown
Distinctive features: none
Cause(s) of death: Single gun-shot to the forehead, massive trauma at exit wound- v close proximity.

Her lying there with the blood spreading across the floor like a blood-red rose opening its petals…

And as she let the torrent of thoughts flow through her mind, even planning her own autopsy report, she also thought of what little impact she had had on the world. Hundreds of other people around the world would die today who would be forgotten too. Nobody was important in the end and all there is after is to forget. She opened her eyes.

“Just do it then.”

The entirety of her thoughts had taken only a few seconds and Jim was still there, talking and holding the end of the gun up against Molly’s skull.

“What?” he said, stopping mid-sentence.

“I said just do it then,” she repeated, resigning herself to her fate.

“You actually want to die?” he looked at her incredulously, trying to figure her out.

“I don’t particularly want to die, I just don’t really care if I do,” she answered in all honesty.

This struck a chord with Jim and he then felt a bit odd. He had felt what she was describing but had never put it into words. He took the gun away from her head and studied her. He found himself having to re-evaluate her yet again. There were so many parts of Molly’s personality which you don’t see while she is around average people. There was the awkward girl who cannot have a conversation to save her life. There was the hot anger at being taken for granted and being under-valued who can utilise a scalpel to save her life. And there was the cold and uncaring side to her with which she, apparently, can be just psychopathic enough to gain Jim Moriarty’s sympathies (such as they are) to save her life.

Molly Hooper who are you?

Chapter Text

He sat down at Molly’s table, resting his head in his hands one of which still held the gun he had been about to kill her with.

“Why?” He knew what she meant. Why didn’t you kill me?  The honest truth was that he didn’t know.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin another good suit with blood stains now would I,” he said mockingly, as if talking to a child, ” I just wanted to see how you would react.” He hated making hollow threats and hoped this would cover his apparent lapse in judgement. 

You should kill her, what are you doing?
But she’s so… different.
She is the same; they are all the same. Shoot her in the head.
I need to see what makes her tick.
THEN RIP OUT HER HEART!
No... I need to know.

It would not be right to describe Jim Moriarty as having a conscience. If he were to answer truthfully how he made these kinds of decisions he would probably describe it as like trying to convince someone suicidal not to jump. Ironic. No matter how in control he appeared outwardly; two parts of his consciousness were in eternal battle, hidden behind those dark eyes.

He studied the half-full wine bottle.

“You have a terrible taste in wine,” he gestured towards it,” may I?”

“You’re the one with the gun,” she stated dejectedly.

“Though you still seem to be clinging onto that knife for dear life,” he said with his back turned as he got a glass from a cupboard.  She looked down at the knife as if she had forgotten she had it. Her knuckles were white and her fingertips had gone numb. They both knew she wasn’t going to use it; she just needed to feel like she had some measure of control no matter how small.

“Ugh, it’s even worse than I thought,” he exclaimed, “I’m hungry; we are going to get dinner.” He brandished the gun to illustrate his point and make it perfectly clear that she had no choice in the matter. She shrugged on her coat and was ushered out of the door and into the damp night. Jim had just locked his phone when a taxi pulled up to the curb un-hailed. He went to open the door for her but she moved in front of him and opened it a bit more aggressively than she intended and got in. He got in the other side and she shuffled as far away from him as she could get. The atmosphere inside was brittle to say the least. Where was he taking her? It may have been another ruse to get at Sherlock but she doubted it. Both stared out of their respective windows, lost in their thoughts.

I’m either making a creepy impression or I’m absolutely ruining my reputation.

Dinner? What was this madman playing at? Not to mention that it’s nearly midnight.

The taxi pulled up outside an unfamiliar building which would not have looked out of place in Victorian London. Jim stepped out and headed towards some steps which appeared to lead down below street level. She hesitated for a moment as she looked down them apprehensively but followed when he looked back with an expectant but entirely insincere smile. There were a large pair of heavy doors at the bottom which were adorned with ornate gold scrollwork and red and blue stained glass windows through which a dim glow could be seen from inside. He opened them with a dramatic flourish and Molly’s first thought was that this was probably the poshest way to be kidnapped ever.

There were murmurs of people sitting around tables which were dotted about the room. The people were obviously well off but apparently even rich people got midnight breakfast. Fishes swam in fish tanks set into the walls which also had red lamps in the shapes of flowers made of glass hung at regular intervals. Jim led her to a table in the corner and they sat down. No one said a word as a waiter handed them each a menu.

“I’ll have the soup and she’ll have the lobster,” Jim said charmingly to the waiter who looked at him with surprised recognition before composing himself.

“Of course, and to drink?”

Molly was sure she could see a hint of fear in his expression.

“Your best red please,” he looked the waiter right in the eye and smiled widely which made him flinch a little before he told them their drinks would be out in a minute and hurried away. Jim saw Molly’s questioning look and laughed lightly.

“This particular establishment and I have been in business before. Let’s just say we had a couple of differences and I had to… how can I put this delicately? One might say I had to have some of their staff violently murdered.” It came as no surprise to Molly but it wasn’t nice to be reminded, as if she could forget, that she was in the company of a crazed criminal who, if that wasn’t bad enough, had lied to her. She just sat there and looked at him.

The look said ‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’ and to be perfectly honest Jim was impressed by the way she was taking all of this. There was an uncomfortable silence and Jim pretended to be interested in the fish. This gave Molly the chance to look at him properly for the first time.

She tried hard to find some fault in his outward appearance, anything that gave away the deranged man within. He looked so much better in a clean-cut suit than he had looked as ‘Jim from IT’. Stop it, he was using you. His black hair was combed back neatly and matched his dark, bottomless eyes. Who cares what he looks like; he tried to kill your friend. But then she started to think how little she actually meant to anyone, including herself. This happened sometimes; she dwelled too much on things. Even Sherlock, a sociopath, had a best friend. Could she even claim as much? She spent her time floating among half-friends and just people she simply knew making meaningless conversation because, she had to admit it now, she was lonely. Nobody had come to her unless they needed a goldfish looking after or a body examining or needed something. Not once had anyone come around to her flat specifically to see her… until tonight. He was a homicidal maniac but he did look good in a suit.

“How did you do it?”

“What?”

“How did you fake your death? I saw your body, brains… leaking onto the floor” this had been what puzzled her most. She saw the pale, lifeless corpse while it was being kept in her mortuary temporarily after being taken off the roof. She assumed it was taken for someone else from Scotland Yard to have a look at.

“Have you ever read Romeo and Juliet?” She looked genuinely interested, not just spurring on the conversation or filling the silence. She nodded and thought of the gaps in his reasoning.

“You shot yourself in the head.”

“Have you ever seen a film called Fight Club?” She had seen this film and nodded again. He was using film references? What? So Jim had angled the gun so it didn’t fatally wound him and took some drug to make himself look dead? It was so simple and she was surprised nobody had thought of it.   

“That’s clever” she said before she could stop herself.

He looked at her reproachfully but was secretly overjoyed at the compliment. Their conversation was interrupted by the drinks. The same waiter announced his arrival by declaring the make and age of the bottle wine he was presenting for show. He avoided eye contact and poured the wine carefully into the glasses after Jim had tasted it and nodded his approval. Molly saw a slight shake in the waiter’s hands and remarked on this as he walked away.

“It seems that you made quite an impression on him,” she was tired and she was talking as if she was with any normal person. May as well, she thought. That man must be traumatised from seeing co-workers brutally killed in front of him but she found, to her confusion and worry, that she wasn’t bothered by this. 

“Yeah, I did really,” Jim said offhandedly. They both took a sip of wine at the same time. This was the best Molly had ever tasted and she didn’t want to think how expensive it probably was.

“Why… why are you taking me out to dinner?” The big question, the answer would determine each ones opinion of the other. It was a simple question but one of the hardest Jim had come across in his whole life. There was a tension between them and Jim hesitated slightly before clearing his throat.

“Molly Hooper,” he took a breath, “You were one of the most boring and impressionable people I have ever had the misfortune to meet, everything about you says normal,” he said the word normal as if just pronouncing it left a bad taste in his mouth, “ you were the epitome of normality and you, as a person, represented everything I despise and hate about the human race,” he stared down at the table and sighed, “But you have changed, Molly Hooper, changed immeasurably. You aren’t who you once were, are you? What kind of game are you playing? ” She thought about her answer for a while.

“It is true that I have changed. People change. Not everything is a game to be played,” she frowned in concentration, “I just don’t really care anymore.”

“You feel separate, no longer normal. The people you used to care about don’t really mean that  

“…yes…how did you…?” Molly would definitely not have taken Moriarty to be the type to empathise with anyone, especially her.

Suddenly the realisation dawned on her that he himself must have experienced this. Oh fuck! She better not be on the way to becoming a psychopath, living a life where only cheap thrills give it any meaning or joy. She didn’t want this.

“So, back to the point in question, I have forcibly made you eat dinner with me because I am interested to see how you adapt to your new found indifference,” and to see if you are the same as me. Molly heard the unfinished sentence and knew what he had refrained from saying. It made her uneasy that he would tell her such a personal thing about himself.

The food came and Jim ordered another bottle of wine. It seemed to have gone down by itself but it was very nice and she wasn’t adverse to another generous glass full.

She found herself telling Jim about how she had felt lonely but now she just didn’t really mind. She talked to people every day at work but when she was tired or preoccupied she had, on rare occasion, had an odd feeling of intense hatred towards her colleagues and their meaningless chat. She was spilling her guts to a man she had hated, who had lied to her for ages. The food was amazing but she barely tasted it as she tried to put across her point. Jim listened intently as Molly got more and more intoxicated and added in explanations and advice. It didn’t matter what he said, she was never going to remember tomorrow, he could say what he wanted, and his reputation be damned.

They talked together way into the early hours of the morning and there was only one other table occupied apart from theirs. Molly stifled a huge yawn and blinked. Jim, who had only had two glasses, helped a very drunk Molly to a waiting taxi and took her home. He made sure she got to her bed and then went to his own flat to ponder over what had been quite an eventful night.