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Sherlock didn't know what had happened. He had planned on meeting the criminal mastermind that had set up all those bombs in London to exchange the thumb drive with all the information his brother had wanted on it, but when he got to the pool no one was there. He'd waited for a short time, but no one arrived. After a half hour, he'd gone home, finding John waiting there with a tale of how he'd found a woman who was actually receptive to his flirting but it had turned out to be a waste of time. He listened half-heartedly and then left to go to his room. He had not expected the evening to turn out as it had and he needed to think on what could have possibly driven the man away from the information.
After a week he stopped. He couldn't make heads or tails of it and there were much more pressing concerns right now. A serial killer had begun stalking victims in London and there had been three bodies in a week. The killer was escalating and Lestrade wanted the killer found now. So here he was at St. Bart's, looking at the victim molly had autopsied the day before, hoping there was a clue he had possibly missed. He doubted it because he had been thorough, but he could hope. He'd called Molly in to assist and as time ticked by she got more and more cross. Finally, she spoke. “You, Sherlock, can be an arrogant, insensitive arsehole sometimes, you know that?” Molly glared at him over the dead body in between them. “But this takes the cake. It's my day off, and I have better things to do than be here because John wasn't available. I've been here for an hour and you've not spoken to me once. I should have just stayed home.”
“And yet you came,” he said, not looking up from the body. He was surprised she was angry, surprised she was telling him off because that was unlike her. But this case was too important to bother with that right now.
“Maybe it's because I'm a glutton for punishment,” she muttered.
“Pardon?” he asked, finally looking up. He had heard exactly what she said but he just wanted to see if she repeated it.
She looked at him. “Forget it. Do you need my expertise or not? I spend enough time here as it is. I have things I need to take care of today and I can't do them while I'm here helping you.”
“I may have need of you in a bit,” he said, waving a hand before looking back down at the body.
“You may have need of me?” she asked incredulously. “Unbelievable. I'll put up with a lot from you, Sherlock. More than I probably should have. But I'm putting my foot down. You'll get nothing else from me from here on out.” She moved away from the table and made her way around it. “I'm washing my hands of you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, lifting his head up sharply. He turned and saw she was already at the doors. “Molly, what exactly do you mean?” All he got in response was the sound of an opening door and then the sound of it closing. He quickly pushed the drawer back into the refrigeration unit and then made his way out of the morgue. He moved at a quick clip to get to the lift, where Molly was standing. “What do you mean you're washing your hands of me?” he asked as he got next to her.
“I don't want to talk to you right now, Sherlock,” she said, not looking at him. The lift doors opened and she stepped inside. He hesitated a moment, but before the doors could shut he slipped inside the lift. “Don't you have more important things to do, Sherlock?” she asked, jamming her finger on the button for the first floor.
“Right now I want to figure out why you're so angry,” he said as the doors closed. She didn't respond, and after a moment he reached over for the emergency stop button and pushed it. “I believe I deserve an explanation.”
She reached over and pushed the button again. “You deserve a lot, but an explanation isn't what I feel like giving you.”
He pressed the emergency stop button again. “Tell me now.”
“My, aren't you pushy,” she said, hitting the button again. “But that's your problem. It's always about what you want, what you need. You don't care two figs about anyone who isn't John.
Sherlock hit the button again. “All of this because I said I may have need of your opinion?”
She hit the button again, a retort on her lips, and then she frowned. She hit the button again, and then a third time. “Wonderful,” she murmured.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, these are old lifts. Now I can't get it to start moving again.” She opened the panel to reach for the phone to use in emergencies and pulled it out, putting it to her ear. Then with a sigh she hung it back up. “And the phone is out of order.”
“So we're stuck here?” he said.
“Pretty much.” She glared at him. “And it's all your fault.”
“How is it my fault? If you'd simply not pushed the button we could have had our conversation and been done with it. But you had to keep pushing the button.”
“After you kept doing it!” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I didn't want to have this conversation, Sherlock. If you'd simply let me cool down I probably would have apologized even though it wasn't my fault. But you had to keep pushing. Why was it so important to know why I want nothing more to do with you?”
“I don't have many people I trust, and I don't want to alienate the few I do trust,” he said with a sigh. He watched her blink slightly and was surprised. Didn't she know he trusted her? That he did, in fact, value her opinions even if they led to the wrong hypothesis at times? That he would protect her because she was... He trailed the thought off. “I do trust you, Molly. I promise.”
“But you don't like me,” she said quietly. “Some of the things you've said towards me verge on verbal abuse. You got a bit better after you meet John but there are times you waste my time and brush me off and I hate it. I might fancy you, but I honestly deserve better and it's about time I left my crush on you behind and moved on, and the only way to do that is to have nothing to do with you.” She moved away from the panel and towards the side, putting her back to the wall and then sliding down so she was sitting. “It will be easier that way. Safer, too.”
“Do you mean because of my enemies?” he asked. “Because you assist me?”
“No, I mean I won't get hurt by you.” She looked up at him. “You don't like me the way I like you. I don't even know if you're capable of fancying another human being, to be honest. I don't really know all that much about you, come to think of it. I know bits and pieces, like the fact you play the violin or the fact you have an older brother or how you take your coffee with two sugars. But other than those little things you're a mystery. I had hoped maybe one day I'd unravel it, but it's not worth it anymore.”
He moved over towards the wall of the lift next to her and sat down. After a moment he tilted his head back, shutting his eyes. “Part of me wants to keep things exactly as they are, where I know quite a bit about you and you know nothing about me. As you said, it's safer that way.”
“Are you afraid I'll hurt you?” she asked, surprised. “I wouldn't do that, Sherlock. At least not purposefully. No matter how bad or callously you treat me I would never purposefully hurt you, I swear.”
“And I believe you, but I still hesitate. I don't have friends, just one. Just John. I know he won't hurt me. And I'm fairly sure you really believe you won't hurt me, but there might be a situation in the future and you'll choose to hurt me, for one reason or another.”
“I'm not that type of person, Sherlock. I thought you had known that by now. Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do. You know bits and pieces you've deduced about me, but even after all this time you don't actually know me.”
He lifted his head up and looked at her. He studied her, not in a way to deduce things about her, but just to look at her. She appeared to be genuine in her speech, and she looked as though she was a bit saddened with the turn the conversation had taken. And he had to admit she had a point; he had made no attempts to get to know her. He had treated her as just another tool in his arsenal, another chess piece to move as he needed. John looked at her as more than that. He looked at her as a friend. And if John could trust her, perhaps he could too. “When I was very young I had a dog,” he said quietly.
“Sherlock?” she asked.
“I had no friends when I was growing up, really, and my brother didn't take much of an interest in me because he was already much older. But he did get me a dog, mostly because neither he nor my parents wanted to be bothered by me. It was a small dog. I never did learn what breed, mostly because I think it was a mutt. And I quite enjoyed having a dog, but one day he 'ran away' and I never saw him again. I never thought about owning a pet again after that.”
She was quiet for a moment before she nodded. “What was his name?”
“Redbeard.”
“That's a good name,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “Do you want to learn something about me?”
“Yes,” he replied with a nod.
“When I was ten my father gave me a chemistry kit for Christmas. The very first day I used it I caused a small explosion in the backyard. My mother panicked that I had been hurt or I'd burn the house down but my father had chuckled and told me to observe the results and learn from my mistake so that the next time I performed that particular experiment it would go off without a hitch.”
“That sounds like sensible advice,” Sherlock replied.
“It is. It's advice I've held dear ever since.” She tilted her head slightly. “Can you tell me something else about you? I'd like to learn more.”
“I can,” he said. “Though perhaps it might be best if you tell me what you would like to know. Then I won't bore you with things you don't care about.”
“I don't think you could bore me,” she said, her smile getting bigger. “But I'd like to know more about your childhood. About why you are how you are today. Maybe you could start with your earliest memory?”
He nodded, and then he began to talk. Every time he shared a story she shared one as well. He started to not mind being stuck in an elevator with her, and he got the feeling that she no longer wanted to wash her hands of him. He was glad for that. The more he listened to her stories the more he realized she was quite interesting, and the more he realized she would be a good friend. It was with surprise when the lift jostled a bit and started moving again. He glanced at his watch and saw an hour had passed. He watched Molly stand up and then he did the same. “I think, perhaps, we've started to become friends,” he said as he watched her adjust her clothing.
“I think we have too,” she said with a smile towards him. “Which is nice.”
He gave her a faint smile in response, one that wasn't forced or fake, and he saw her own grin widen in response. He turned his attention back to the doors and saw them open on the first floor, with two maintenance men and a crowd of people behind them looking shocked that there had actually been people inside. “The phone is dead,” he said as he stepped out, Molly a step behind him.
They made their way through the crowd and towards the door. “Aren't you going to go back to the body?” she asked.
“I think I've learned all I can from it,” he replied. He paused for a moment. “People are going to talk, aren't they? About the two of us being stuck in the lift together.”
“Probably. But it's all right. It might spice things up around here a bit.” She gave him a smile and turned away from him towards the door. “Well, if you don't need me I'll be off. I have errands to run and all.”
“Would you like some tea first?” he asked as she took a step away from him. “I've enjoyed our conversation.”
She stopped, then turned around. “Shouldn't you get back to the case?”
“It can keep for an hour,” he said.
“Well, all right then,” she said with a nod. “We can go get some tea and keep talking. But only for an hour. I really do need to take care of those errands.”
“I'll only keep you an hour, then,” he said with a nod before gesturing towards the doors. She started to walk towards them and he walked right behind her. This had been a surprising twist to the day, he realized, but it wasn't an altogether bad one, and he was thankful for that. Time would tell what came of it, but he hoped it was only good things.