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darnedchildSummary: Sherlock Holmes learns the shocking secrets of Molly Hooper's past. *Cue dramatic music and an evil laugh*
Rating: T
A/N - With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft - A modern retelling of Herbert West - Reanimator. Written for the 2017 Sherlolly Halloween fest.
Molly Hooper - (Assistant) Reanimator
Part Six - The Horror From the Shadows
“That was years ago. The more time passed, the easier it was to pretend it had all been a nightmare. But always, always in the back of my mind was the memory of what he’d done. What we had done. Like a mouldering pile of leaves that hid a festering corpse, just waiting to be discovered by some innocent child in the forest.”
That was oddly poetic, in a macabre sort of way, Sherlock thought.
“So much had changed since Louth, I’d practically become another person. For the first time since before my father got sick, I thought I actually belonged somewhere. I made friends, I excelled at my job, I . . . met you.” Molly closed her eyes and looked away, visibly embarrassed at her last admission.
He couldn’t let her continue to think her feelings were strictly one-sided, but now was not the time to get into declarations of feelings and intentions and the nonsense that most couples felt the need to define before they could be together. He tucked his fingers under her chin and drew her face back toward him. “No more of that, there’s no need to hide from me anymore.”
Her features softened and he saw the barest tilt of her lips as she almost smiled, then her eyes cut to the box on the desk and the fear returned to her face. As cold dread washed over him, he knew that her story wasn’t over.
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
The day Sherlock jumped off the roof of Barts was one of the most nerve-wracking and, frankly, terrifying days of Molly’s life. Even the usually infallible Mycroft Holmes had been disturbingly pale when he’d pulled her aside to confirm (for the third time) that she knew what was expected from her.
She had two jobs.
The first was the easiest of the two. She’d done most of her work during the long night before. Mycroft’s people would have tracked down the correct John Doe eventually; but time was of the essence and Molly was far more familiar with the ends and outs of the various hospital and morgue databases. She’d located the right file, Mycroft had dispatched a small team to liberate the corpse from where it had been tucked away in another hospital’s cold storage. Molly didn’t know how they did it, and she didn’t care to ask.
Once the double was smuggled in through the loading bay, she’d taken charge. Someone delivered a duplicate of Sherlock’s suit and coat. By the time she was done with the corpse, it would have fooled Sherlock himself . . . from a distance.
The second assignment had been much more distressing. Neither Sherlock nor Mycroft wanted her to be seen anywhere near the location of Sherlock’s probable ‘suicide’. They wanted no one to notice her, to even consider that she might have been involved. Which meant once events were set in motion, she had to wait and lurk in the basement morgue, as if she had no clue about the confrontation that was brewing on the roof.
Because of that, she didn’t hear about Jim’s death until Mycroft mentioned it in passing; telling her that the body recovered from the roof would be transported to another location that evening, and until then it would be in everyone’s best interest if no one else were to become aware of the ‘unplanned for complication’.
It was late afternoon before she felt it was safe enough to leave the faux-Sherlock alone and unguarded. Rather than heading toward the breakroom to get a cup of coffee to help keep her awake and functioning after her long and stressful night, she slipped down an empty hall toward the room where Jim’s body was stored.
Molly paused and steady herself with her hand against the cool metal door.
Jim Moriarty had been a horrible man, but he’d also spent a few hours cuddled up with her cat and Toby had liked him. He’d listened to her talk, really listened. In retrospect, he’d probably been gathering ammunition against Sherlock; but at the time, he had made her feel important and interesting.
Was she really ready to see him laying out on a slab?
The door was already swinging inward when she realized it should have been locked. There was no way Mycroft would have been distracted enough to let a detail like that slide. She quickly wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door and stopped its progress.
The normally bright overhead fluorescent flickered and cast shadows along the walls, making it even harder to see any of the room through the thumb’s width opening she had made.
Coming from inside was a trio of voices. One she did not recognize, but the other two? They made her heart stutter in paralyzing fear.
“What. Did. You do. To me?” Even with the stilted, unnatural speech pattern, Molly would have recognized Jim’s deceptively soft voice anywhere.
She wasn’t the only one who was scared, judging from the audible tremble coming from the unknown man. “Exactly what you told us to do, boss. You said that if anything went south, West should use his zombie juice and bring you back.”
Even before Jim could reply, she heard Herbert speak up. “I really wish you would stop calling it that.”
“Yeah, well I really wish you would fu-“
“ENOUGH!” That was most definitely Jim Moriarty. “I obviously. Changed my mind.” The earlier choppiness of his speech had begun to smooth out, as if he were becoming used to operating his voice and vocal cords again.
She could hear movement from inside the room. Suddenly Herbert came into her field of vision as he headed toward the worn leather bag sitting on a wheeled tray near the wall. Molly recognized the bag, she’d given it to him ages ago. Back when they were both still in Arkham, Massachusetts. He called over his shoulder as he began to pack up the things he’d had spread around the tray. “Then you should have thought to text that information to us before you got your brains scrambled. We’re not mind readers.”
She gasped. While she’d only seen the nicer, fake side of Jim in person, she had heard enough from Sherlock, John, and Greg to know that Herbert was treading on thin ground.
“Watch your mouth, West. You’re not as indispensable as you think you are,” from the unknown man again.
“I’m . . . hungry.” The other two men may not have heard Jim mutter to himself, but Molly did. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and the urge to run and hide was nearly overpowering.
Herbert turned with a sneer on his lips. The way his eyes tracked something, Molly knew that at least one of the other men was on the move. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“We know you didn’t come up with that shit on your own. You had help.”
Molly gasped. She saw Herbert stiffen, then his gaze darted toward the door she was hiding behind for just a split second before he purposely stared straight ahead.
The third man continued to talk. “When—not if—when you stop being useful, we’ll just have to track down your helper and give him your notes. I’m sure he’ll be able to figure it out from there.”
“You’ll never find him, Moran.” Herbert stressed the last word, and she knew that he was fully aware of who was lurking in the hall. He knew she was there and he was leading Jim and the other man as far away from her identity as he could. “He’s probably long dead. You know how the earlier trials ended. Halsey has been heavily restrained in Arkham Asylum, and he’s still managed to add a nurse or four to his body count over the years.”
“Now, now, Seb. Don’t rile up Dr West. However, you do make a good point about the replaceability of people.”
“Boss?” Seb asked. His angry tone had morphed back into fear.
“I’ve invested a lot of time and money into the Doctor’s research. He’s come a long way, but the process isn’t perfect yet. Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor?”
Herbert silently nodded.
“I’m here,” Jim continued. “I’m walking and talking, and clearly articulate even with a gaping hole in the back of my head. What can we do about that, West?”
“Unfortunately, some of the brain tissue is gone, but you seem to be functioning well enough without it. As you said, walking and talking.” Herbert quickly tossed out some options. “We could cover it, though. Adhere a plate or even part of another skull over the exit wound. A skin graft, perhaps. Add a hair piece.”
“See, Seb? He’s still useful. And so are you,” Jim purred. Even without seeing him, Molly knew something bad was coming.
“Thanks?” It seemed Seb was also aware that something was wrong.
“Useful, but replaceable. There are so many waiting in the wings, just itching to step up into your place at my side, dear Sebastian. And right now, I am so very, very hungry.”
Sebastian’s scream was cut off before it had a chance to really begin. Molly could hear the wet, horrifically obscene noises of something organic being ripped apart just on the other side of the door.
Herbert met her eyes and shook his head. A nonverbal warning not to interfere. He jerked his chin, indicating that she should leave, but she couldn’t seem to make her feet work. Something rolled across the floor to come to a rest at his feet.
The decapitated head of Sebastian Moran stared up at Herbert, eyes and mouth still open wide in shock.
“Give him some of your serum, Doctor. When I’m done with my meal, you can have this half, too. Let’s see what happens, shall we?”
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
“I tried to tell Mycroft, but I couldn’t get a hold of him for hours. And I didn’t-I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never told anyone about Herbert and the experiments before.” Molly stood up and began to pace. “But I was going to do it. Jim had to be stopped, and that wouldn’t happen if Mycroft’s people didn’t understand what they were up against.”
Sherlock watched her, tempted to reach out for her every time she came within touching distance.
“In the end, it didn’t matter. When I finally got him on the phone, he cut me off. Said he was already aware that Moriarty was missing. He’d seen the security footage, seen what I’d witnessed. I could tell that he didn’t, couldn’t really believe his own eyes. I think he thought it might have been a trick, but they were already gathering information on Herbert. He didn’t seem to realize how much of a part I’d played in all of it.”
Molly looked down at him and worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “He figured it out soon enough, though.”
Part 1 / Part Seven
Rating: T
A/N - With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft - A modern retelling of Herbert West - Reanimator. Written for the 2017 Sherlolly Halloween fest.
Molly Hooper - (Assistant) Reanimator
Part Six - The Horror From the Shadows
“That was years ago. The more time passed, the easier it was to pretend it had all been a nightmare. But always, always in the back of my mind was the memory of what he’d done. What we had done. Like a mouldering pile of leaves that hid a festering corpse, just waiting to be discovered by some innocent child in the forest.”
That was oddly poetic, in a macabre sort of way, Sherlock thought.
“So much had changed since Louth, I’d practically become another person. For the first time since before my father got sick, I thought I actually belonged somewhere. I made friends, I excelled at my job, I . . . met you.” Molly closed her eyes and looked away, visibly embarrassed at her last admission.
He couldn’t let her continue to think her feelings were strictly one-sided, but now was not the time to get into declarations of feelings and intentions and the nonsense that most couples felt the need to define before they could be together. He tucked his fingers under her chin and drew her face back toward him. “No more of that, there’s no need to hide from me anymore.”
Her features softened and he saw the barest tilt of her lips as she almost smiled, then her eyes cut to the box on the desk and the fear returned to her face. As cold dread washed over him, he knew that her story wasn’t over.
The day Sherlock jumped off the roof of Barts was one of the most nerve-wracking and, frankly, terrifying days of Molly’s life. Even the usually infallible Mycroft Holmes had been disturbingly pale when he’d pulled her aside to confirm (for the third time) that she knew what was expected from her.
She had two jobs.
The first was the easiest of the two. She’d done most of her work during the long night before. Mycroft’s people would have tracked down the correct John Doe eventually; but time was of the essence and Molly was far more familiar with the ends and outs of the various hospital and morgue databases. She’d located the right file, Mycroft had dispatched a small team to liberate the corpse from where it had been tucked away in another hospital’s cold storage. Molly didn’t know how they did it, and she didn’t care to ask.
Once the double was smuggled in through the loading bay, she’d taken charge. Someone delivered a duplicate of Sherlock’s suit and coat. By the time she was done with the corpse, it would have fooled Sherlock himself . . . from a distance.
The second assignment had been much more distressing. Neither Sherlock nor Mycroft wanted her to be seen anywhere near the location of Sherlock’s probable ‘suicide’. They wanted no one to notice her, to even consider that she might have been involved. Which meant once events were set in motion, she had to wait and lurk in the basement morgue, as if she had no clue about the confrontation that was brewing on the roof.
Because of that, she didn’t hear about Jim’s death until Mycroft mentioned it in passing; telling her that the body recovered from the roof would be transported to another location that evening, and until then it would be in everyone’s best interest if no one else were to become aware of the ‘unplanned for complication’.
It was late afternoon before she felt it was safe enough to leave the faux-Sherlock alone and unguarded. Rather than heading toward the breakroom to get a cup of coffee to help keep her awake and functioning after her long and stressful night, she slipped down an empty hall toward the room where Jim’s body was stored.
Molly paused and steady herself with her hand against the cool metal door.
Jim Moriarty had been a horrible man, but he’d also spent a few hours cuddled up with her cat and Toby had liked him. He’d listened to her talk, really listened. In retrospect, he’d probably been gathering ammunition against Sherlock; but at the time, he had made her feel important and interesting.
Was she really ready to see him laying out on a slab?
The door was already swinging inward when she realized it should have been locked. There was no way Mycroft would have been distracted enough to let a detail like that slide. She quickly wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door and stopped its progress.
The normally bright overhead fluorescent flickered and cast shadows along the walls, making it even harder to see any of the room through the thumb’s width opening she had made.
Coming from inside was a trio of voices. One she did not recognize, but the other two? They made her heart stutter in paralyzing fear.
“What. Did. You do. To me?” Even with the stilted, unnatural speech pattern, Molly would have recognized Jim’s deceptively soft voice anywhere.
She wasn’t the only one who was scared, judging from the audible tremble coming from the unknown man. “Exactly what you told us to do, boss. You said that if anything went south, West should use his zombie juice and bring you back.”
Even before Jim could reply, she heard Herbert speak up. “I really wish you would stop calling it that.”
“Yeah, well I really wish you would fu-“
“ENOUGH!” That was most definitely Jim Moriarty. “I obviously. Changed my mind.” The earlier choppiness of his speech had begun to smooth out, as if he were becoming used to operating his voice and vocal cords again.
She could hear movement from inside the room. Suddenly Herbert came into her field of vision as he headed toward the worn leather bag sitting on a wheeled tray near the wall. Molly recognized the bag, she’d given it to him ages ago. Back when they were both still in Arkham, Massachusetts. He called over his shoulder as he began to pack up the things he’d had spread around the tray. “Then you should have thought to text that information to us before you got your brains scrambled. We’re not mind readers.”
She gasped. While she’d only seen the nicer, fake side of Jim in person, she had heard enough from Sherlock, John, and Greg to know that Herbert was treading on thin ground.
“Watch your mouth, West. You’re not as indispensable as you think you are,” from the unknown man again.
“I’m . . . hungry.” The other two men may not have heard Jim mutter to himself, but Molly did. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and the urge to run and hide was nearly overpowering.
Herbert turned with a sneer on his lips. The way his eyes tracked something, Molly knew that at least one of the other men was on the move. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“We know you didn’t come up with that shit on your own. You had help.”
Molly gasped. She saw Herbert stiffen, then his gaze darted toward the door she was hiding behind for just a split second before he purposely stared straight ahead.
The third man continued to talk. “When—not if—when you stop being useful, we’ll just have to track down your helper and give him your notes. I’m sure he’ll be able to figure it out from there.”
“You’ll never find him, Moran.” Herbert stressed the last word, and she knew that he was fully aware of who was lurking in the hall. He knew she was there and he was leading Jim and the other man as far away from her identity as he could. “He’s probably long dead. You know how the earlier trials ended. Halsey has been heavily restrained in Arkham Asylum, and he’s still managed to add a nurse or four to his body count over the years.”
“Now, now, Seb. Don’t rile up Dr West. However, you do make a good point about the replaceability of people.”
“Boss?” Seb asked. His angry tone had morphed back into fear.
“I’ve invested a lot of time and money into the Doctor’s research. He’s come a long way, but the process isn’t perfect yet. Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor?”
Herbert silently nodded.
“I’m here,” Jim continued. “I’m walking and talking, and clearly articulate even with a gaping hole in the back of my head. What can we do about that, West?”
“Unfortunately, some of the brain tissue is gone, but you seem to be functioning well enough without it. As you said, walking and talking.” Herbert quickly tossed out some options. “We could cover it, though. Adhere a plate or even part of another skull over the exit wound. A skin graft, perhaps. Add a hair piece.”
“See, Seb? He’s still useful. And so are you,” Jim purred. Even without seeing him, Molly knew something bad was coming.
“Thanks?” It seemed Seb was also aware that something was wrong.
“Useful, but replaceable. There are so many waiting in the wings, just itching to step up into your place at my side, dear Sebastian. And right now, I am so very, very hungry.”
Sebastian’s scream was cut off before it had a chance to really begin. Molly could hear the wet, horrifically obscene noises of something organic being ripped apart just on the other side of the door.
Herbert met her eyes and shook his head. A nonverbal warning not to interfere. He jerked his chin, indicating that she should leave, but she couldn’t seem to make her feet work. Something rolled across the floor to come to a rest at his feet.
The decapitated head of Sebastian Moran stared up at Herbert, eyes and mouth still open wide in shock.
“Give him some of your serum, Doctor. When I’m done with my meal, you can have this half, too. Let’s see what happens, shall we?”
“I tried to tell Mycroft, but I couldn’t get a hold of him for hours. And I didn’t-I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never told anyone about Herbert and the experiments before.” Molly stood up and began to pace. “But I was going to do it. Jim had to be stopped, and that wouldn’t happen if Mycroft’s people didn’t understand what they were up against.”
Sherlock watched her, tempted to reach out for her every time she came within touching distance.
“In the end, it didn’t matter. When I finally got him on the phone, he cut me off. Said he was already aware that Moriarty was missing. He’d seen the security footage, seen what I’d witnessed. I could tell that he didn’t, couldn’t really believe his own eyes. I think he thought it might have been a trick, but they were already gathering information on Herbert. He didn’t seem to realize how much of a part I’d played in all of it.”
Molly looked down at him and worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “He figured it out soon enough, though.”
Part 1 / Part Seven