Disclaimer: I own nothing but my imagination. Or at least…I can only hope.

Summary: Molly Hooper's life can be described in three makeshifts family. The one she lost, the one she left, and the one she found. This story is everything in between, because even sometimes, Molly Hooper is known to be wrong. AU.

A/N: No excuses…okay fine, I have a lot of excuses and they are all in my super long A/N at the bottom, but just know that I love you all tremendously. I've missed you all tremendously and I'm back, with what I hope will be an interesting story. So yeah…hope you all enjoy! Reviews are always appreciated and any mistakes are mine and mine alone! Also, while this will have Sherlolly in it, it won't be the complete center of it. Well, I lie. It will and it won't. It will be important but I think it's the relationships around it that are also important. The bottom A/N explains it better. Hopefully. Keeping it as M for future stuff.

Title is taken from the song Weightless by Courtney Jones. Which may seem kind of ironic given what's going on in the story, but it'll come together. Hopefully. Well, that and the song is kind of what started me writing Sherlolly again. So, thanks Courtney,

Warnings: violence, coarse language, sexual content, murder, espionage, angst, emotional trauma, familial problems, potential PTSD…you know, all that good stuff. Will amend tags whenever something comes up, but that's it for this chapter. Hope you all enjoy!

And frozen in the footsteps untaken (we stand side by side)

Prelude

She didn't think it would hurt this much. It's irrational, she tells herself, for it to hurt. Because it's fake. Everything is fake.

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She wants to rip out her hair and scream. She can feel her heart stutter in her chest, she can feel her blood pounding in her veins and suddenly, all she can hear, all she can concentrate on, is the sound of her breathing as she grips the kitchen counter and leans forward, trying to ease the sudden and debilitating ache in her chest.

Tom stands in the entrance of the kitchen, hands in his pockets and shoulders slouched, eyes staring at her in concern. "Molls?" He asks, his familiar worried voice cutting through the air and suddenly, she remembers all those years ago when it was the four of them and how they struggled to get through one case after the other; how they struggled to keep each other afloat in the hellish chaos that became their lives until they forgot who they were, where they came and the only thing that mattered, the only thing that kept them going was finishing the case, getting back alive and each other. The four of them. "Are you…are you okay?"

Am I okay? Am I okay? She wants to laugh and she doesn't realize she is laughing until he takes a step back. She thinks she's bordering on hysterical and maybe, this time, she truly has lost it, because she could have changed this. She had the chance to change this and she didn't. So really, there is no one to blame but herself and the deepest pit of self-loathing that she has carved out with her name on it. "I'm fine." She tells him, knowing full well what that particular four letter word means to her, to him, to them. "I'm just fine."

"We should have a word that warns us when one of us is going to fly into a fucking fit." Tom brings up one day. It's a hot day in Cairo and Molly is standing off to the side, binoculars to her eyes, covertly looking out the window, She's wearing cargo pants and a quarter sleeve shirt and she can feel the sweat seeping through her clothes and finds she really hates the Middle East.

"Why?" Mary garbles, pencil in her mouth as she looks at the blueprints sprawled in front of her, "because you can't handle us?"

Molly chuckles and Tom glares until Mary laughs and Janine (beautiful and deadly Janine) shrugs her shoulders as she cleans out their weapons, laying them down in orderly fashion from smallest to largest, "Fine."

"What?"

She rolls her eyes and carefully puts down a rifle. "Fine." She repeats slowly. "It's a common enough word. It's a clipped word. It's a loaded word. It's our word for when we're not okay. When we're ready to explode and we don't want anyone near us. Fine."

Mary looks up and nods, "fine, it is."

Molly and Tom nod their agreement.

She's brought back to the present when she hears the front door open and shut and she looks up, realizing that Tom has left. Grabbed his tweed jacket and walked out the flat, to give her the space he knows she requires.

She sighs and sinks down into the chair, hand reaching out and pressing play on the answering machine.

You have one saved message.

"Hey Molly, it's uh…it's John. Listen, I know that me and Mary, we haven't been around much, what with us on our honeymoon but um…it's just…well…it's quite awkward really-"

"I think it's cute!" She hears Mary shout in the background.

John snorts into the phone, "yeah, okay…no. You remember Janine? Mary's maid-of-honor? Well…did you know that she and Sherlock were dating? Or in a relationship? And have been for a while? Just…give me a call back, yeah? I'm…not that it's a bad thing…it's not, truly…it's just…weird. Something is weird. Thought you might know. You were always close to him. Or well…I mean…you know. Bye."

They all knew this was coming. She knew this was coming. She just never thought she would be left in the dark as to when and how and where.

(And that, she thinks, is what hurts the most…amongst other things.)

"You four will be training together. Better get used to each other, because unless you're all fucking horrible, these people will become the only family you'll know."

The man who ushered them in leaves them, his words disappearing with his presence.

"So," the only guy out of their makeshift group says, "how'd you all get suckered into this?"

"Father."

"Father."

"Mother."

"My uncle." Molly answers, still feeling a gaping wound at the thought of her dead uncle. The only one to take her in after her mother and father died in freak accidents and who taught her how to survive in a world with skills that she never thought she would need. And then she got the phone call, late on night, his voice screaming into the receiver that she needed to run and go away, go to the train station and ask for an attendant named Mike Ranger and that he was sorry, so sorry Molls…I never…we never wanted this life for you, Molly.

And then the line went deadly silent, all that could be heard was Molly's screams and shrieks for her uncle to answer her. (He never did and she followed his instructions, meeting with the attendant who's real name isn't Mike Ranger, not that she ever got the chance to find out what it really is and she was taken underground into an organization she didn't even know really existed out of James Bond films that her parents and uncle scoffed at and refused to watch.)

("Do you know who you really are? Who you're family really is?" Not-Mike-Ranger asks her.

"I'm a Hooper." Molly answers him in a quiet voice.

He gives her a look. It's a loaded look and she thinks she sees something akin to pity. Then again, she's sixteen and all that she's seen since her parent's deaths have been pity. "You're a legacy. You're parents and uncle were our best."

Molly shakes her head. "My dad was a lorry driver and he died in an accident. My…my mum…she worked in an office and she died in an accident and my uncle…my uncle…"

He lays a hand on her shoulder. "You're family were one of us."

Frustrated, she wipes at the tears burning her eyes. "And who is us? What is this?"

"The government's pit-bull." He says. He takes a deep breath, "the jobs that MI-6 can't do, can't handle or fucking spectacularly fail to accomplish, that's where we come in."

Molly is silent and then she laughs, thinking back to all the times her family refused to watch James Bond films. "Their deaths…"

He gives her a sympathetic smile. "Those were our greatest cover-ups. Everything worked out perfectly, that sort of shit, it never goes as smoothly as it did with your family."

She clenches her hands into fists at his insensitivity. "Except," she says, her voice hard, "for the fact that my entire family is fucking dead."

He stretches his arms and gestures to his surroundings, "and now you have a new one."

But I don't want a new one. Just my old one.)

"My name is Tom." He introduces himself after a moment of silence.

"Mary." The blonde one supplies.

"Janine."

Molly looks at them, eyes wary, because they look like they belong here. They do belong here, likely knowing who they were and what they were meant to be from the start and all Molly can think about is that she wants to go back to school and giggle with her only friend Meena and make plans to attend medical school. She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't belong here.

We never wanted this life for you.

"Molly." She sighs. "My name is Molly."

"So you didn't have a clue?" John asks, his voice disbelieving.

Molly gives him a sheepish grin. "Sorry, John. Haven't seen Sherlock since the wedding."

That is a lie. She's seen Sherlock plenty of times; she just made sure to never be noticed.

Mary is sitting next to John, her hand in his and a smile planted on her face. Tom is on the loveseat, legs sprawled out in front of him, eyeing Toby who purrs in the corner and Molly is standing, hands on her hip, innocent grin on her face and ignoring the unassuming glances that Tom and Mary throw her way.

She looks at John and wonders idly if Mary has told him yet. Has told him who she is. What she does. What she's meant to do. But then, he looks at her so lovingly that Molly knows she hasn't told him a fucking thing. Not that she can blame her. John, while he has a big heart, probably much larger than anyone deserves, will not take kindly to her (their) lies.

(Love, in their business, it never really works. She can still remember Janine's shrieks and sobs when her secret boyfriend of three years was seemingly in the wrong place at the wrong time and gunned down. They all knew it wasn't the wrong place at the wrong time, but rather someone who found out who was important to her and destroyed the only happiness she had.

After that, they all decided to not pursue any relationships, any emotional attachments.

And it worked. Until Molly met Sherlock and fell harder than she thought possible. It was easy for her though because Sherlock never saw her as anything other than his pathologist and she fit that role perfectly and she should have been grateful. She should have been relieved, except that she felt, all she feels, is empty. I don't count.

She never did. Not really.)

"It's a good thing though, isn't it?" Tom speaks up. "That he…finally has…someone?"

The thing about Tom is that his looks allow him to be both devastatingly handsome or awkward and she almost giggles at the fact that the latter is all he'll be known as to John and Sherlock and everyone in the second makeshift little family she found herself in.

"Yeah." John says, scratching his head. "It's fantastic. I've always said the man needed to get shagged-"

Molly chokes and Tom and Mary's eyes snap towards her. "I'll put the kettle on."

She scurries into the kitchen and busies herself with the kettle, leaning forward to grip the counter to alleviate the sudden pain exploding in her chest, for the second time in just as many days.

"Molly?" Mary calls out softly, entering the kitchen and coming to stand next to her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Molly hisses at the blonde, brown eyes wide and she looks at her.

"We…we didn't think you needed to know yet."

"We?" Molly asks, "we?" She glances into the sitting area where Tom and John are sitting and talking amongst themselves and Tom looks up, giving her a smile that disappears when he sees her furious eyes and expression. She turns back to Mary. "That's right, I forgot I was always the odd one out."

"You left us." Mary accuses, her voice rising slightly before lowering it, and trudging up long, not-so-forgotten memories that none of them have come to terms with. "You were the one who left us."

"Because I almost died. You weren't where you were supposed to be. You didn't have my six and I almost died."

"I said I was sorry. I have been atoning for that ever since it happened. I have never forgiven myself. I made a promise to let you get hurt again. Don't you remember? Molly, tell me you remember."

("Molly," she hears a distant voice call out in her haze of sleep and administered drugs. "Molly. God. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Molly. I tried…I wasn't…this will never happen again." It's only after the second sorry that Molly realizes it's Mary who's talking. "I will make sure you never get hurt like this again. At all. I'll…I'll kill anyone who hurts you. I swear it. I don't know what I'd do without you. You're…you're my heart. You're our heart in the family and I am so sorry. I shouldn't have put you in, you're not…you're not meant for this life, you're meant for so much more and I'm sorry, Molly. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Please."

We never wanted this life for you, Molly.)

Tears come unbidden to Molly's eyes and as the kettle whistles, she looks at Mary. "Yeah, and you've a spectactular job thus far."

Mary's face falls and for a moment, Molly feels like the most wretched person in the world. This, she thinks, this is what that life made me into. It made her, molded her into a person she hated and she's spent last decade trying to distant herself from that person, trying to become her own, only to get pulled back into it.

"Mary? Molly?" John says walking in. "Everything okay?"

"I'm not feeling well." Molly tells John, placing a hand on her stomach, not lying as she feels it churning and the hollow feeling in her chest. "Sorry to be bitch but can we do tea another time?"

"Oh, yeah. Course. Might even ply Sherlock and Janine out, yeah?"

"Sounds great." Tom speaks up, knowing that both Mary and Molly won't.

Tom and Molly show them to the door and they wave, smiling brightly as they watch Mary and John leave. As soon as the front door shuts, she turns around and stares emptily at Tom, shrugging away from him and holding up her hand when he opens his mouth. "I don't want to hear it." She tells him as she storms past him, to her room, slamming the door shut behind her and sinking against the door, down to the floor, head in her hands, breathing deeply.

We never wanted this life for you, Molly.

"You saved me." Janine says, hissing as Mary cleans out her wound.

"You still got shot." Molly points out, her hands and body trembling from excess adrenaline.

"I could be dead." Janine corrects, giving Molly a half smile. "But I'm not. Because you saved me."

Molly shrugs and accepts the blanket that Tom wraps around her shoulders. "We're...we're family."

Janine accepts the answer and turns her head back to Mary who tells her what she needs to do to keep her wound clean.

Molly glances at Tom who's staring at notes, absently twirling a pen with his fingers and she leans back against the couch, taking a deep breath.

(She didn't choose this life. She didn't choose this makeshift little family, but it's the only she has and maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay.

Sometimes, Molly Hooper is known to be wrong.)

Okay, so, here's the thing. This has kind of been on my mind for quite some time. I mean, ever since I saw the four of them on screen, I kept thinking, this idea would be fucking awesome. What if, everything was connected? What if Janine, Mary, Molly and Tom were all connected in one way or another and all the situations, all the events in the show had something to deal with them, or at the very least one of them? Then I started thinking, how the fuck can I make this plausible and well…let's be real…it's not too plausible but it's the spy world. It's the secret undershading of what the fuck happens in the background? They're not MI-6, but rather a separate entity.

There are a lot of gaps, a lot of things that need to be answered and in due time, all will be revealed, with characters we know, love and loathe coming into play. This will be from Molly's perspective, with flashbacks to past events and conversations. It will be a multi-fic. Also: while this is a Sherlolly story and Sherlolly will play an important part, I feel like this is mostly a story about finding yourself later on in life. It's about the friendship, the tear down, between these four friends and everything they went through in between. It's about Molly, coming to terms with her life and everything that has happened in it. So, this will be slow burn. This will encompass S1/S2/S3 as well as after. It's shaping up to be a longerish story, so you're going to have to bear with me and sometimes slow updates. I don't want to disappoint you guys! So yeah, hopefully, it was an interesting start and I hope you all enjoyed the beginning and future chapters that will subsequently follow it

This being said: HOLY FUCK HAVE I EVER MISSED YOU GUYS. Like seriously. I've been trying to write a Sherlolly fic since Crescendo and nothing seemed to flow properly, not really seemed to come together and then I got back into another fandom and that sort of took over my life and the FIFA started and that took over and likely will take over, for the next month, my life, but then one night, I was like, fuck, I really need to write this. So I did. And yeah…I LOVE YOU ALL SO SO SO MUCH. I'VE MISSED YOU ALL. I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY!

This also being said: I'm going on vacation on Tuesday and probably won't update before then, I'M SO SORRY! But when I come back and get a one-shot for another fandom written and done, I'm concentrating on this one, one hundred percent.

MAD LOVE AND RESPECT,

BB