The Angel side is Sherlock and Molly, the right-side up reading of the cards. It'll rotate with the Devil side, Moriarty, so you can just skip every other chapter if you're not keen on that paring.

None of the stories are related, the time frames are all scattered.

0: The Fool

She had been unprepared the first time she saw him. Tall, dark, and handsome; the clichéd, accurate description of the impossibly well-sculpted man that walked into her morgue. He called himself Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes when he introduced himself. She tripped out her name, Molly, she said meekly, intimidated by the sharp, icy eyes of the shrewd man. He flashed a smile at her—equally sharp, equally cold, predatory, powerful. He was the eagle; she was the mouse.

Molly choked her words out the next few times he entered her morgue, asking for body parts, dragging her up to the lab to run his tests, demanding his black coffee—black as his heart, she mused, every time he ignored her advances. Not that her advances were made clear, due to her nervousness. There was something about him that changed her, made her weak. Something damaging in those eyes, edged like a razor and forceful as a glacier. He was dangerous, oh yes, but not in a criminal sense. He was a danger to her mental health.

Nonetheless she fell. She fell so hard for the man with the keen sight and cutting tongue.

She convinced herself there was nothing wrong. Not when she stared, not when she found herself bending to his will, fetching his coffee, slowly being worn down to a doormat. Every time she turned around to tell him off, she caught sight of those eyes. Blue, fierce, and calming. She weakened instantly, dropped what she was doing instantly, crumbled instantly. She needed to break from his grasp, his hold, his magnetic field that trapped her in orbit around those jeweled eyes, the etched lips.

Over time, she grew strong. Grew to understand his patterns, his tactics, knew when he was using her for one thing or another. No slipped back into her vocabulary, and she occasionally slapped it at him, sometimes just to watch the shock spread like ripples across his crisp features, just to fade back into indifference a moment later. He never expected the No, and to catch him off guard gave her nothing but glee.

She built up her defenses after Christmas; strengthened all her walls, constructed the bastion, aimed the cannon, lit the fires, drew the bows. She garnished her face with war paint and mastered her march. She wouldn't let the great eagle carry her off to feed his hunger for knowledge, to cure his boredom. She pushed him from her inner sanctum, all thoughts of him, gone. Burned, flooded, slashed, and dragged out of her mind.

You're wrong, you know. You do count. You've always counted and I've always trusted you. You were right; I'm not okay.

The walls came down. She surrendered herself to the eagle, the vulture, the hawk. He carried her off in his talons, and she watched as he dove as graceful as a raptor in flight. He broke like a necklace string, spilling his red beads on the ground, scattering them on the pavement.

She knew it was faked; he only lived because she was unable to untie the red string on her finger that linked her to him.

She would always be his Fool.