Molly sat in the lunch room alone that day. Her friend Susan was busy with her work with the psych patients and skipped out on lunch-again. She was always busy.

Molly sighed audibly. Jim used to take her out to the park when Susan wasn't around. They'd hold hands and walk and he'd tease her and they'd laugh and he'd buy her food from a street vendor and sometimes he'd buy a flower too and dramatically get down on one knee and present it to her. She realized she missed her Jim, even if he really had been a psychopath out to mess around with Sherlock all along. She missed those walks in the park. She hated feeling lonely, despite the fact that she often was alone. Either at home or in the morgue with the cold, dead bodies. Always by herself. Sometimes she'd talk aloud when she was alone, engaging a cat or a corpse in pleasant conversation. They usually ignored her. The live humans didn't pay her much attention either.

She suddenly felt the urge to laugh at her pathetic life but it came out as more of a choking sob.

She winced. Looked down at her pasta salad. Poked at the cherry tomatoes. Ate the noodles but left the vegetables.

"Molly?" She looked up, heart fluttering for a second, until she saw it was just John Watson. Sherlock's flatmate. Friend. She groaned inwardly.

"Yeah, hi. Er-John."

He looked down at her, slightly condescendingly. Or at least that was the way she took it. She knew John was nice, but she couldn't get herself to like him. She envied him far too much. Anyone who got to spend that much time with Sherlock Holmes warranted her passive aggressive wrath.

"I just-Oh this is awkward. Sorry Molly, to bother you. Erm, Sherlock needs some...something to experiment on. He wanted to know if you-and I quote-'got anything fresh'." He sighed deeply and rubbed his face, embarrassed.

Anger flared in Molly's chest. Why couldn't the stupid man have asked himself? How much of a pushover did he think she was? Sending his flatmate to do the tedious job of chatting with Molly, oh how dull, John why can't you ask her? I'm much too busy to interact with someone as insipid as that poor, plain Molly-girl.

She slammed her palm down on the table picturing the dark haired man she had been so enamoured with speaking the script that was playing in her head.

John started, and then backed away slowly.

"Er-I'll take that as a no. I'm really sorry, Molly, he's been in a terrible mood lately. I'm sure he's hell when he comes to ask a favor."

"You can tell him that he can find his own dead bodies to experiment on! I'm done with being his pet!" She covered her mouth in surprise. She was shocked by her own behavior. The strange angry confidence was still pumping through her blood. "A-and you can tell him that that's not how y-you treat pets in the first place! A quick small treat after weeks of neglect won't cut it!"

John's eyes were wide. He was as surprised as she was.

"All right Molly, I understand, you really don't have to-"

"What an awful metaphor," Sherlock droned, coming up behind John. "Are house pets all you can think about, Molly?" He grinned in a way that made her want to punch him. "Oh, of course, that's all you have at home-"

"Sherlock!" John hissed at his flatmate.

The tall man ignored him and continued.

"And since you really have no where to go, and no one to talk to, why don't you go fetch me some limbs so John and I can be off." As if the words he was saying weren't bad enough, his expression and tone forced tears to her eyes. "We're doing something important, which is more than I can say for you."

She didn't move or speak. She just stood there, eyes brimming, cheeks burning, something stuck in her throat-maybe a curse meant to be thrown at the brazen detective, but never reached her lips. She wanted to hide. To curl up in a ball and die in a hole somewhere far, far away.

They left her there, petrified. Sherlock mumbled something about talking to another employee with connections to the morgue. She didn't hear anything after that other than water rushing past her ears. It was like she was drowning in her own thoughts.

The worst part was the he was right. She had no one. Nothing but house pets. Her two cats. That was it. Her sister, Tate, lived nearby, but like Susan, she was always busy. And she was married. Molly didn't care much for her brother-in-law. She held some resentment for her younger sister for getting married first. It just wasn't fair. Nothing was fair and she had no one.

She suddenly realized she was sobbing. In the middle of the cafeteria. Everyone was either looking at her or trying very hard not to look.

Molly took the rest of the day off. It started raining as she walked home. She was soaked when she reached her apartment. She let herself in and cried into a pillow. Finally she decided she needed to take a shower. There was no hot water. She remembered she still needed to have the water heater fixed. She gave up on the shower and went straight to dinner. Nothing in the fridge. She had been planning on going grocery shopping after work. She fell asleep on the couch, hungry and grungy.