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At first glance, she hadn’t really felt there was much about Molly Hooper to give a second glance to. She was pleasant, she was...nice. She was pretty, even if she tried a bit too hard. But there hadn’t been much there that had enticed her, in either a romantic sense or a friendship sense. Molly was a mate of John’s, a friend from his past with Sherlock. They’d been moderately close, drifted apart, gotten a bit closer when Sherlock came back.
At the wedding, she’d paid brief bits of attention to her. Mainly she’d seen her try a bit too hard to look nice, and that her date was a pisspoor substitute for Sherlock, something that had been clear to everyone in attendance if they looked close enough. She saw her give Sherlock moon eyes and stab Tom in the hand with a fork. And she saw Tom give her the cold shoulder the rest of the evening and her try and have a good time after that. All in all, that day probably hadn’t been one of Molly’s finest. But she had other things on her mind, so she gave Molly the barest amount of attention and that was that.
It wasn’t until Charles had decided he wanted dossiers on all of Sherlock’s friends that she had learned more and Molly had piqued her interest. Sherlock had piqued it more, of course, but the bits and pieces she had learned about Molly had made her feel that, perhaps, she’d missed a golden opportunity in the lead-up to John and Mary’s wedding to get to know a genuinely interesting person. So she made it a point to rectify that, especially as she got to know Sherlock better. Oh, she had to make sure Molly didn’t know that she was romantically interested in Sherlock, he was adamant about that, but it was nice to have a good friend in Molly, especially since Mary was focusing more and more on John.
And then it seemed like everything had gone to hell at once. Mary...Mary had broken into her workplace to try and kill Charles, and Sherlock had let her know it was all a lie, their whole relationship. And she could see Molly’s life was imploding at the same time, with her calling off her engagement to Tom when he started focusing more on the wedding than the marriage and insisting that she make all the changes when they became husband and wife. When most people said misery loves company they meant that miserable people were only happy when the people around them were miserable as well but she and Molly had decided that what it really should have meant was life decided that when it was going to make one person miserable it was going to make everyone miserable, or at least that was the case if you associated with Sherlock Holmes.
It was good, though, that she had someone to commiserate with. She didn’t like the idea of being alone. She didn’t want to be alone. No one wanted to be alone, she knew that, but she’d spent so long being surrounded by people but being lonely. It wasn’t until she’d met Molly, though, that she realized that she hadn’t really been alone, not like she had. Molly really had no one, except her makeshift family, and as time went on she saw Molly was getting close to saying fuck it all and pushing Sherlock away, and she could very well lose the rest because of that because her chosen family was so intrinsically linked around that great oaf.
She wanted her to know it didn’t have to be, though. That there were other people in the world who wanted to be near her, who wanted her to be a part of their lives. Who appreciated her and cared for her and needed her. Because somehow, somewhere between not giving her a second glance and now, she’d developed feelings for her. And not feelings of affection...it was more than that. It was deeper than that. She was fairly sure that she might be in love with Margaret Hooper.
And it was a bloody scary thought.
She had thought she’d felt love for Sherlock. When she’d seen him hold up the ring in front of the camera her heart had burst for the few moments she’d still remained conscious. And her heart had been broken when she’d found out it had all been a ruse. But the swiftness she’d gotten over it all...that had alerted her that maybe, deep down, she’d known it wasn’t genuine. Oh, she knew he cared, at least a little. But he didn’t love her.
But there were times, with Molly, that she thought that maybe she did. Brief moments, brief actions, brief glimpses where she would get the idea that maybe Molly felt more than friendly feelings towards her. There would be lingering touches, sidelong glances, half said words, and it just made her wonder. If only she knew, then she would tell her that yes, she loved her, she did. And she wouldn’t hurt her, not the way the men in her life had. She would never hurt her like that.
Molly had the brightest smile, the warmest laugh, like she had never seen loneliness or loss of love or the darkness of humanity, and yet there was a sadness in her eyes and in the silence that sometimes stretched between them that would remind her that Molly was familiar with far worse and far greater than she ever wished to know. She had been hurt by so many people and in so many ways, and yet she continued to see the best in people, continued to love freely and wholly, and she wanted to love Molly the same way in return, if Molly would let her.
But, she supposed, she wasn’t sure she’d get the chance.
It was funny. For a woman who she’d never have given a second glance to, she was on her mind an awful lot. She ran through her thought more than she didn’t. She invaded her dreams. And she had no idea if anything would ever come of it, if there would ever be any hope of anything ever happening between them, as much as she might yearn for it.