Chapter Text
Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Brother’s Wife
‘He was not handsome and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing.”
“What strange creatures brothers are.”
Jane Austen
It was after midnight. The streets were silver with rain and traffic was thin. A lone man stood looking up at a set of dark windows in a nondescript building in the heart of London. He was tall and pale and stood in the pool of light cast by a lone light post. He was dressed in charcoal grey with a dark topcoat, blending into the night. His face, half in light half in shadow, was haggard and sad. A cab passed by, illuminating the street and the man’s silent vigil. He looked down and seemed to sag as if under a great weight. Lifting his head and gathering himself, he took one last look, turned, and slowly walked away. All that remained behind was the quiet patter of the rain as first light began to rise over London.
******
Molly Hooper was waiting. It always seemed as if she was always waiting for something. Waiting to grow up, waiting to get through primary school and then waiting to get through Uni. Then she waited for her first job, her second and finally she landed her current job at the Pathology Department at St. Bart’s. She had waited through multiple boyfriends, some more promising than others, all dim history now. Finally, for the past two years she had been waiting for Sherlock to come home.
The past twenty three months had been filled with great joy and horrific pain. Molly was conflicted, confused and was now facing one of the hardest decisions of her life. She looked at the ring on her finger and tears began to fall.
She had risked everything to help him, her job, her security and even her life. When he fell, she caught him, killed him and resurrected him all on the same grey afternoon. She took him home, stitched him up, forced food into him and then took him into her bed. He was as beautiful unclothed as clothed but detached and technically proficient in his lovemaking. He made the effort but the spark was not there and though the act was repeated multiple times, she knew her infatuation with him had died as well. She loved him, yes, but it was a love born of friendship, not passion. She had thought she had wanted him more than anything but once she had him she had not known what to do with him. He spent two weeks in her small flat, just long enough for Molly to decide that he was not for her.
Mycroft knew, of course. He knew everything except that last, most intimate complication. He may have suspected but since there had been no joy in the brief union, there was little to give them away. He had been appraised of the plan and had assisted smoothing things over for her at Bart’s after the hasty post mortem and resultant suspicion when the perfect Molly Hooper had apparently lost or mishandled the paperwork in the death of one Sherlock Holmes. Molly was not fond of Mycroft. If anything, he was even odder than Sherlock and infinitely creepier. His perfect composure and effete manners masked a cold and calculating mind. He looked right through her and she was sure he didn’t like what he saw.
No one seemed surprised that Sherlock had jumped. Nor were they surprised that Molly Hooper, covered in his blood and wearing a tight, white mask of grief, had insisted in handling the body in the end. What did surprise them was how quickly she came back to work and how easily she took the professional reprimands. But everyone noticed that a light had gone out in Molly and she, though seldom noticed and often discounted, felt she was disappearing into her work and the pale walls of the morgue.
Sherlock left on a Wednesday, with a brief uncomfortable hug and barely a look behind him. Life spun on and her routine once more lapsed into the mundane. Mycroft had checked in on her soon afterwards, coolly concerned and knowing somehow that she and Sherlock had crossed the line from friends to…what? Molly was unsure. Were they lovers? Were they friends that had shared a brief flare of passion after the murder of their former lives? She missed him but at the same time was relieved that he had gone. She needed time to think and assess what she really wanted, both from Sherlock and herself. She had lived in his orbit for so long, behaving stupidly and allowing her infatuation to blind her that she really didn’t know what to think once the desire to possess him had turned to ashes.
Two months to the day after Sherlock’s departure, Molly Hooper was waiting again. This time in a doctor’s office far removed from her insular world at St. Bart’s. She already knew what the doctor would tell her.