So I must confess to something! Some of you may have noticed this on (or maybe it's just my freak computer or crap internet connection) but sometimes when I post things like reviews or make a private message, my computer decides not to send the most recent information. So I accidentally posted only the first two sentences of a review (they were the negative parts, in fact, the only negative things I had to say about the story, and they made me look like a complete bitch. For anyone who saw that on the story Hideout, I've apologized profusely to the author and she has decided not to remove the incomplete review.

So I'm a nice person! I swear! I didn't mean it!

And for now, another oneshot, because I've been busy, but still wanted to write something.

Contrary to popular belief, Molly had friends. Of course, they weren't particularly good friends as they were not the sort to invite her to gatherings on holidays, but the sort she could go to the pub with, and she was for the most part fine with that. She was, after all, an introvert and not particularly good at small talk. She loved talking about things she cared for, like science, medicine, and good literature, but found that a majority of the population only enjoyed speaking occasionally on such topics and never particularly in depth. The doctors and nurses she knew had little time or interest in Fitzgerald or Abelard and Heloise. The young man working at the library didn't have the stomach for decomposition patterns. She simply consisted of a weird cross section of humankind and found few in her peer group. Her dating life was dead, but it didn't help that she had little interest in it, and the few times she tried it backfired and reminded her that she actually liked it better when she was alone.

She sat, contemplating her dark flat. It seemed far less—not hers—after Tom had ripped all his cheap graphic prints off the walls and hauled out his beige sofa. Evidence of his existence could only be found in tiny holes in the wall and a scarf she would be donating. He was boring, his dog was boring—although she did discover that she liked dogs so she might get one—and she would not have been happy occupying the same space as him for a long, long time. It wasn't fair to him. He needed to find the dull girl that Molly was masquerading as and buy a dull house and have two dull children who perpetuated their dullness elsewhere and far away from Molly. Slowly, with a glass of champagne to accompany her, she went about rebuilding her flat, returning it to its former glory. All of her posters, bands, television shows, diagrams of human and cat bodies—Tom said they were tacky and juvenile but Tom was gone now—returned to the walls, and that big ugly sofa was replaced with the beanbags he had stuffed in her closet. Molly decided that she would invest in a sofa though. It would be a brand new one and bright red. Beige is ugly anyway.

Every relationship resulted in the same thing. Molly's world being sewn and glued back together again.

Andrew Simms

Molly didn't partake in any of the drama involved in secondary school, so when she went to university, she fully intended for that pattern to continue. Yet pressure from her parents and friends, and a genuine curiosity led her to asking someone she found intelligent and attractive out. She reasoned that regulating men to asking women out was illogical. He was even more shy than she was and quite quick to both agree and suggest they go to a coffee shop. Sweet. Easy. Simple. He was kind and he did love her dearly, but they were both quite practical when in their second year, he received an offer to go to the Canada for research as an undergraduate. No promises were made and the relationship was broken off quite cleanly.

The posters returned to her dumpy little student housing two days later.

Nina Ramos

By seventeen, Molly had it pretty much figured out that swung both ways. Nina came crashing in her third year of university. It was pretty easy, they were roommates, and Nina would kiss her when absolutely pissed. Eventually the other girl decided that enough was enough and asked Molly out. It was a strange, almost secretive romance that thrilled Molly, but like most intense things, it burned out quite quickly. Nina was immensely clever, but she couldn't see a future for herself or anyone, leading her to be rather despondent and lacking in her academics, and eventually to ignoring Molly entirely. This led to more drinking, smoking, and drugs steadily increasing. Molly knew Nina did it to slow her mind and all of its nervous energy, and to keep a darkness Molly couldn't comprehend from taking the woman away entirely.

Before her last year at university, Nina came home high as a kite, with love bites and lipstick all over her neck and face, and her bra stuffed in her bag. Molly calmly asked her to leave. Within a few days, all of Nina's meager possessions had been picked—or violently ripped—from the tiny flat they shared, and Molly was able to put her Janis Joplin poster back up; Nina hated Janis Joplin.

Shane Freeman

It was when Molly met Shane that she realized she had a physical type; tall dark hair, pale skin, on the skinnier side of things. When Shane walked in to her lab, plopped down in the bench beside her and suggested they do something fun, two months since their first conversation had passed. Both wondered at it for a bit, before deciding it would be good fun to break into someone's house and move everything two inches to the left. That was the first time Molly did anything remotely daring. Shane enjoyed living on the edge of things, teetering over it without actually falling off like Nina did. He was wild, insane, passionate and he loved her dearly. That was an irrefutable fact. Shane Freeman loved Molly Hooper without any reservations. The tabloids surrounding Sherlock in the future loved to use Molly as some sort of scapegoat, portraying her as loveless creature with a deep and hopeless infatuation with Sherlock Holmes, but Molly Hooper was loved.

Molly was even smart enough to love him back. Unlike practical little Andrew, Shane made wild promises and believed in them so much that Molly couldn't help but let herself get caught up in his excitement. They both worked a lot (Molly was attending medical school, Shane was a lower level IT person) and were both rather tied to London as a whole, and both wanted children, so it was natural to them that they should marry. The wedding itself wasn't to be too elaborate, student loans impeded them financially, and while Shane loved a show, he respected Molly's wishes to just get the certificate with witnesses and keep her name rather than take his or hyphenate it. They were in no rush, keeping the engagement long so that everyone in their families could be introduced, and so that they could plan their futures further.

A nice place in town.

Children.

Molly would become a pathologist.

Shane would work part time.

Little dates.

Family vacations.

…Molly's life would have been very different had a single driver turned left rather than right. There would not have been a twelve car pileup. Shane's taxi—a number which Molly knew to that day—was ultimately crushed, killing both driver and passenger. When the police knocked on her door she took the news without sitting, without blinking, without even processing it really. Then she closed it, looking around the room and seeing everything that belonged to Shane, everything that wasn't hers. Slowly, but surely, she took his base guitar and put it in the center of the room. Everything else he owned followed, this purge requiring much more effort than the last one, as this time she was working alone, as this time, her boyfriend—no fiancé, didn't even have the balls to survive long enough to dump her. Shane affected her space the least, letting her keep her beanbags and her posters.

But an hour and a full dumpster later, Molly Hooper's flat was restored.

Names Molly can remember:

Jordan Copper

George Whiler

Phillip Asterly

Todd Hamilton

Sean Martin

Leah Grey

Brent Goodman

The next names flew by in a hurry, none even lasting long enough to move in, just people that flitted by, barely holding Molly's interest, let alone her heart. She resigned herself to the fact that she was better off alone after all, just as she determined as a teenager. Apparently she was either a reasonable teenager or her personal melodrama simply translated into the next life. She dated occasionally, but built up a different life. She reached out to her mother when her father was diagnosed with cancer, and Molly spent time in Manchester, seriously considering moving there. When her father passed, holding the hands of both daughter and mother, Molly decided London was her city. It always had been. It was where she could be her.

James Moriarty

After meeting Sherlock and finding herself completely enamored with the man, Molly longed for a proper distraction. It came readily in Jim. Ultimately they had three dates. He once sat and watched Glee with her and left behind a jacket by mistake. When Sherlock told her Jim was gay as a biscuit, she fully intended to return it to him still. She gently told him he should get himself sorted, but didn't get the chance to return the jacket. It was a simple black one, nothing special, but when she found out who Moriarty actually was, it became a representation of all things demonic and evil to her. She took six showers that day, each time passing it and forming fists.

She ended up shredding it to bits, and burning each bit slowly, so that the fire detector wouldn't go off. After it was gone, her lingering disgust for allowing herself to let that man into her sacred flat—her small solace and sanctuary—dissipated, and though the threat was still there, she was at ease. Moriarty saw her as nothing after all.

Tom Bailey

After Sherlock 'died' Molly was lonely. She hadn't been that lonely since Shane died, and she ended up working her way through every mildly attractive person who was interested in sight. John also wanted to talk to her all the time, and so she made up a little lie.

"I've moved on, I have a boyfriend and…Sherlock's gone."

She fully intended to spend more time at home, drinking and eating with her cat for company, perhaps taking a class or obtaining a new hobby. However, some friends from medical school introduced her to Tom. Tom was boring. Incredibly boring. But Molly managed to convince herself that maybe she culd be happy. But each time he talked about the kids they would have—it reminded her too much of Shane—her heart sank a little. She didn't want to have kids that were half Tom Bailey with equally boring names like Jane or Tim. Sherlock swooped in the way he always did, slowly eroding the lie she told herself.

The final straw had been something completely ordinary. It was a mundane argument over a mundane thing, but everyone always assumed Molly was a pliable person, easily bending without breaking.

"It's tacky, Molly, and childish too. No one wants to see Doctor Whatever and a Picasso print that looks like a three year old scribbled on it when they first walk in. Imagine their first impression."

"Uhm that we're fun and cool people?"

"No, that we'reunprofessional. We have to look accomplished for dinners with my boss—"

"I am accomplished—"

"Well that's hardly—"

"I am a bloody doctor. A pathologist. I have an MD, a PHD, two masters, and no debt."

"That's not the same—"

"No, what you're saying is that I have accomplishments that I shouldn't be proud of because they require cutting into icky dead people, and looking at bacteria all day and you don't consider them proper dinner conversation. You're also saying that you would be ashamed to have your employers see my taste in home décor and what I've done doesn't justify it. I can decorate my home the way I want."

"This is our home Molly you can't expect to raise children—"

"I DON'T WANT YOUR CHILDREN!" Molly took a deep breath, and took off the ring, "I'm done with this."

Tom was suddenly looking quite apologetic, as if thinking that would get her to change her mind, "Molls, you can't possibly mean that—"

"I want you and your shit out of here by tomorrow morning."

While he was in the bedroom, she took down every single ugly painting he had up and to spite him unrolled and pinned every other Picasso print she had stored in its place. Her books would return to their proper shelves once she got herself a nice glass of the vintage champagne she was saving for when she finally kicked him out. And that was what led her to that moment of contemplation.

Molly never kicked Sherlock Holmes out.

He probably wouldn't have left anyway. He did what he wanted when he wanted to do it, without any regard for anyone else's feelings, although she felt that maybe her smacks had gotten to him. Sherlock sent her a text detailing that he was being sent away and was likely not to come back, but Molly knew better. The moment that Moriarty appeared on the screen, she knew strings would be pulled and Mycroft Holmes would bring his brother back. It was simple and straightforward. Molly was relieved, but it didn't stop her from taking a file from Barts home and reading it like she did every year.

It would have been strangely poetic if Sherlock was lost to her on the anniversary of her fiancé's death.

She didn't hear him come in. That really didn't surprise her, as she was still immersed in the report, still looking at their names and faces and wondering how such a terrible event could have possibly occurred.

"I'm back."

"I knew you would be." Molly replied shortly, "Why are you here?" She flipped the page.

"I thought it would be better than texting 'Oh never mind, I'm alive after all.'" Sherlock drew closer to her and looked over at the file, "A car crash why are you—?"

"It's funny. I had already taken physics, you know. I know how it works. Statistics too. I was really good at statistics." Molly interrupted, her voice unusually firm, "I know inertia, probability—I know all of it. I know the chemical reactions the human body needs, and how much damage it can take before it's rendered useless—but still, I open this file, and I puzzle over it, and I've long since memorized every single name of every single person who died, and who was on the scene, and I know how it occurred. Easy. Just physics. I know why it occurred. A man named Andrew Sims turned left. Then I wondered if he was my Andrew Sims and what do you know? It's a small world."

"Who was Andrew Sims?" He asked, although Molly knew he already knew.

"My first boyfriend, back in the city to visit his parent." Molly replied, "And this here, is Nina Ramos, my first girlfriend. She had been an addict, but clean for almost a year and was going to start a new job. Shane Freeman, my former fiancé…he was wonderful…they…I calculated the chances of this occurring. I was more likely to be struck by lightning six times in London."

Sherlock looked over all of them, all of having dark hair and pale skin, "You have a type."

"Lucky me." Molly replied sarcastically, "So can you let me sit here miserable and alone for a bit?"

"No." Sherlock sat down taking the folder from her hands, "You feel guilty for something you had no control over."

"I feel guilty, but the blame doesn't lie with me. I accept that." Molly sighed, running a hand through her hair, "People always leap into my life and end up trying to change me—usually starting with my flat. Then I chase them away—not Shane though, he didn't leave me of his own accord—and put my flat back together." Molly shook herself facing him, "Enough about me. What do you think? Moriarty? Imposter? Dangerous?"

Sherlock recoiled at the change of subject, "Molly—"

"What do you need?" She interrupted earnestly.

He gave no response, instead pulling her in a small and short embrace. Months later, it would be Molly moving in for once, and not the other way around. Sherlock insisted that she do whatever she wished to make 221B feel like home. This involved removing the experiments from the kitchen, obtaining a separate refrigerator for the body parts, and of course, keeping all of her favorite posters, as well as throwing her beanbags in the corner of the room. Even if things went wrong, she would never have to ask Sherlock to leave.

I just really like examining Molly in different lights…which tend to be rather melancholy. Oops.