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She knows this man. How does she know this man?
He definitely wasn’t one of the many doctors she had met during her first few weeks at Bart’s. She couldn’t place him in any of her uni classes either. She’s wondering if maybe he just resembles one of her postmortems, but that doesn’t make the familiarity go away.
“Um,” she says “Excuse me, sir?”
He looks up from the microscope he’d taken charge of while she had been on her break, and simply glances at her. Before Molly can ask who he is and if he got permission to be in the lab, the very nice, and often exhausted, DI Lestrade comes rushing into the room from behind her.
“Christ, Sherlock, you can’t go running away from me like that. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you!”
“Yes well,” he says, eyes now on Lestrade, “I am an adult. I can take care of myself, you know.”
Molly sees the DI rolling his eyes and she smiles. Clearly this man needs a minder more than he is aware. Lestrade smiles apologetically at Molly.
“Sorry, Doctor Hooper. Sherlock here just started shadowing me on the job. He’ll probably be around the lab often from now on, hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s no trouble at all! I’m always happy to help the Yard.”
She hears the Sherlock fellow sigh. His blue (very, very blue) eyes are just so familiar and who he is sits on the tip of her tongue. He finishes with whatever he was looking at under the microscope and walks right past Molly and almost into the hall, until she calls after him.
“Sorry, um, I’m Molly. Molly Hooper. Doctor Hooper. I’m fairly new around here myself. Who did you say you were again?”
He steps back fully into the room and reaches his hand out for her to shake. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes.”
A metaphorical light bulb goes off above Molly’s head. The name unleashed memories of a warm summer day. The feeling of a warm breeze, grass underfoot, and pure innocent happiness fills her.
Shaking his hand she says, “Holmes? Any relation to a William Holmes?”
He goes a little pink and glances towards Lestrade, who isn't even trying to hide his interest, before looking back to Molly.
“That’s my first name. William. I go by Sherlock these days.”
“William Holmes!” Molly nearly shouts, getting wide eyed looks from both men. “I know you! Or I knew you. We were married once!”
Lestrade’s eyes nearly pop out of his head, mouth open and eyebrows reaching his hairline. “Married?!”
“No, I mean, sorry. Not married married. Sorry!” Her hand goes to her mouth as if to shove the words back in. Sherlock looks at her, unmoving. “We, when we were children, a pirate game…”
When he says nothing, Molly feels obligated to explain further, hoping he remembers.
“Don’t worry we weren’t married long! I can recall falling in love with a bumble bee that same afternoon and left you for him instead.” She laughs at her own retelling. Sherlock still doesn’t seem to be remembering, but Lestrade is clearly enjoying this.
“Well would you look at that!” Lestrade says, hitting Sherlock on the back. “Came to work one morning only to meet your ex-wife again!”
Sherlock seems to come out of his mind and back into the room. He looks to Lestrade who is still looking delighted and then back to Molly. "I hope you won’t be leaving me again, Doctor Hooper,” he says, “as I will be needing to check out the John Doe's corpse. I’ll be waiting in the morgue.”
And with that he leaves the lab, Lestrade and his ex-wife behind.