The Mind of Man
by Shu of the Wind

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

She hates her mum.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. Accuracy, he whispers in her head, everything is always in the details, and then she shoves him out because she doesn't want Sherlock Holmes in her head anymore, not after everything. She loves her mum. After all, it's thanks to her mum that she lives at all, because it had been her mum to refuse an abortion after her one-night stand in Sydney, Australia; it had been her mum who had picked her up from school and taped Band-Aids over scraped knees (because despite appearances, Molly had ended up with more scraped knees than any of the other children on the block); and it had been her mum who had worked for hours to keep them in a decent part of town while Molly studied and passed all of her major tests and gone to school to become the woman who cuts up dead bodies in the basement of St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the police.

She's fairly certain that her mother doesn't like the dead body bit, but even if she does, she never mentions it.

No, it's Mum calling her during her lunch breaks that she hates. It only happens once a month or so, and the conversations never last for more than half an hour (though it's a miracle she manages to cut them off that early), but they're easily the most difficult half-an-hour of the month, and she had once been the only pathologist that Sherlock Holmes would deign to work with. She doesn't say it often, but Molly Hooper rather thinks that she not only embodies patience, she patented the damn idea in the first place.

Because her mother wants grandchildren. And she's quite determined that Molly will give them to her.

She's halfway through her lunch break and running a few chemical tests on the bloated drowning victim currently lying on her slab when her phone rings, and for once, she's too caught up in her reports to remember that it's the seventeenth, and the seventeenth always means The Talk. Still, she has to steel herself to pick up the phone, like always, because she really doesn't like talking on the phone even when she's not working. She always drops the damn thing and usually it ends up in the loo. She's gone through three mobiles in the same number of months, and finally it's come to the point where she'd rather just do without.

Every time she considers scrapping them, though, she has to run a rape kit on a murder victim, and she remembers why she took those tae kwon do classes in the first place. Not to mention why mobile phones can be decent, helpful things when they're not falling into public lavatories.

"Morgue," she says, trying to pretend she's not speaking through a mouthful of salad sandwich. "May I help you?"

The squeal of noise that erupts through the phone nearly burns her eardrum out of her skull. "Molly! How are you, darling? We haven't talked in simply ages!"

There's another thing about talking to her mum: it stings. Lydia Hooper is completely deaf in one ear, so she always shouts down the line. Not to mention her tendency to emphasize every other word in a sentence. She's used to it, but now that she's been independent for a little over a decade, sometimes it puts her teeth on edge. Still, Molly doesn't have to fake her smile. "Mum. How are you?"

"I'm fine, darling, just absolutely perfect." She bites the T as it leaves her mouth. She doesn't ask about work. "I was wondering if you would have any time off in the next few weeks? I've met a few people that I'm absolutely dying for you to meet!"

July seventeenth. The Talk. Molly hangs her head and bites back a very long sigh. "I dunno, Mum. Work's been pants lately and I really think—"

Lydia doesn't hear her. "Nonsense, it'll do you good to get out of that wretched morgue! I know how you love your work, dear, but I really think that hiding inside with dead bodies all day, well, it just isn't really the thing, is it?"

The door opens. Greg Lestrade. Probably coming to check on the drowning victim. He blinks at her, noticing the phone, and mimes an apology, but she gestures forward with one hand before focusing on her mother again. Lydia hasn't stopped talking. "—sides, there're some absolutely lovely people coming to dine next Saturday, and I really think you'll like them!"

Lestrade stands in front of her desk, giving her a curious look. She doesn't think he's ever seen her on the phone. None of them have, not really. After all, other than the DIs, no one gets put through to her part of the morgue.

Except her mother. And except for Sherlock, but she hasn't heard from Sherlock in months, and to be honest, she hasn't expected to. It's easier not to think about what she's done when she doesn't have to listen to Sherlock muttering on about styles of bruising on twelve-year-old females with leukemia. "Mum, I have to go, there's someone—"

Mum? Lestrade mouths. She shakes her head, holds up one finger. She's trying quite hard not to look at him, because she's certain her ears are bright pink and that her mother's voice is blazingly audible to anyone within a three foot radius. It always is, after all.

"Oh, but Molly, you have to let me finish." Lydia takes a deep, dramatic breath. "If you remember Mrs. Lancaster, from down the block, well, her nephew just came in to town and he's really the sweetest boy, not too much older than you, and he's a doctor so bodies don't bother him at all—"

Molly bites back a moan, and nearly buries her face in her hands. But she doesn't, because there's a DI standing on the other side of her desk and it would be highly unprofessional to slam her head down onto her desk in frustration. "Mum—"

"He's only a few years older than you are, and I know how you like dark hair! Of course, if you could bring a date, that would be fine as well, absolutely wonderful; what happened to that boy you were telling me about a few months ago, Jim, wasn't it?"

Her blood seems to freeze inside her skull. All of a sudden, she wants to throw the phone across the room, but then she remembers that Lestrade is in the way. He's being quite patient, actually. Then again, he's always been that way. "He's no longer in the picture. Mum, I have to go."

"Of course you do, darling, but I just wanted to say—"

Molly hangs up. She's going to catch hell for it later, but she hangs up anyway, and seizes her files as though nothing's happened at all, and her ears are most definitely not a startling shade of pink. She refuses to believe it. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

"Something wrong?" he asks politely, but then he's always been pretty polite to everyone who works at St. Bart's, hasn't he? Usually he sends Anderson, and Anderson gives her very nasty looks when she forgets she's not talking to someone else with a doctorate and forgets to translate into English. At least, that's what he always says.

She hasn't seen Anderson much lately, though. She wonders if he's still working on cases with Lestrade or not. After all, it had taken an enormous fight with the administration to keep Lestrade on the force, and then John had had to come and kick the man in the pants to get him to stay there after….well. After everything. Lestrade's quieter than she remembers him being, and there are new lines on his face that she can't remember seeing before.

She still talks to John. They go out and get lunch sometimes, which is something she absolutely does not tell her mother about. Lydia would probably start planning a wedding if she did. Which would end up in all kinds of wrong. John is nearly her closest friend.

Of course, John has never met her mother.

Lestrade's still standing there, eyebrows lifted in a question. She snaps out of her head. "My mother can't take no for an answer, that's all," she says, and his mouth opens in a silent ah. "What did you want to see? I'm afraid the test results haven't come through yet for the drowned man, and I already sent the water from his lungs up to biology to see what they think about it, so—"

"Oh." His hands hang by his sides awkwardly. "What about the girl from Whitehall?"

She's back on steady ground again. "She's done. I can get you the report if you want?"

"You'll have to translate. I'm not very good at doctor."

Better than Anderson, she thinks, and Sergeant Donavan, but she's very careful to keep that inside her own head. Instead, she just smiles a bit and crosses back to her desk to grab the right file before leading the way into the morgue proper.

The girl from Whitehall – no ID yet, and running the DNA through the system will take the rest of the week at least – is cold and still on her metal cot, her eyes closed and the sheet pulled up to a modest position against her bare body. Molly is very good at sewing up her Y-incisions, and she can't help but scowl a bit when she spies a crooked stitch. The girl has very blonde hair, as though she belongs in the far north. Lestrade looks at her for a moment, and there's a flicker of emotion on his face that she can't quite read. Molly clears her throat and checks the file to make sure she's getting things right before she begins. "According to her teeth and the development of her bones, she's about fifteen or sixteen, and she's in quite good shape, considering where you found her."

Where you found her. On the street, dumped into a garbage can, her body folded so that she would be invisible to all passers-by. A few tendons had snapped because of that. Molly doesn't let herself think about it.

"She has dancer's feet," she adds, checking the files again.

"What do you mean?"

"Calluses. Her toenails are clipped down very short, and her toes are angled in a way that means she wore en pointe shoes a lot. So, ballet." She never has trouble talking when she's talking about her work. It's really the only time she can think of anything to say. "She has the weight for it too. Also, she's a virgin, if that means anything to you."

Lestrade gives her a very sharp look. "You're certain?"

"Absolutely certain." For a moment she's tempted to ask if he wants to check, but then she slaps that thought right out of her head. She wouldn't be surprised if her whole face is pink now. A doctor is always clinical, right down to the very last moment. "Has no one come forward with her name yet?"

"We've been getting loads of anonymous calls, but no one seems to know. Lots of different names pouring in. Anderson's checking the missing persons' database, but that always takes time, and since her fingerprints aren't in the digital system, we're going to have to go through the old index cards."

She winces. Hours and hours of peering at index cards of fingerprints that haven't been catalogued yet sounds like a direct trip to the chiropractor, but it's not her field of study. She just takes the fingerprints and puts them into the computer, not anything else. Molly glances up at the girl's face, and her heart suddenly tightens. She doesn't like dealing with children dying. She can remember her forensics teacher at medical school, an old stick named Agatha Carpenter, who had always been quite excited to have a child's body to show to her students, especially if they were in their teen years. "Halfway between child and adult, everything changing, hormones screaming, bones shifting and growing in strange ways—" The woman's eyes would glimmer. "It's a trick and a half to ferret out everything you need to know, loves. Fascinating."

She had never thought it fascinating. The first time they'd been brought a child's body for autopsy, Molly had burst into tears and run from the room. Carpenter hadn't looked at her for the rest of the term, and the other students had called her Weeping Mol. It was not something she liked to think about.

"You all right, Dr. Hooper?" asks Lestrade, and she blinks a few times, looking up at him. She can't force a smile, but she tries to anyway.

"I'm fine. Just distracted." She takes a breath and moves on. "She had a lot of heroin in her system, but she doesn't have any signs of being a long-term user, so it must have been a once-or-nothing thing. I don't think—"

"Molly," he says, and she jumps a bit, staring at him in surprise. She can't remember the last time he called her by her first name. "You're not all right. You look like you've clawed your way out of a tar pit."

She glances down at her clothes. It's automatic. After all, he is talking about tar pits. But she hasn't spilled anything on her sweater yet today, and when she looks up at him again, he's already backtracking. "I didn't mean – I meant you look anxious, that's all. And I shouldn't be prying," he adds, looking like he's kicking himself. "I don't mean to pry. I'm sorry."

"You're a detective," she says, a bit stiffer than usual. "It's normal. I'm used to…weird questions." She's also used to strange looks and cutting remarks and demands on her time, but she doesn't mention those. "I just…I should learn not to answer the phone on the seventeenth, that's all."

"The seventeenth?"

Molly looks back down at her report. "That's all I have on her, really. She doesn't seem to have anything else wrong with her, except that she overdosed." She closes the file and moves to shove the body back into its hole, but then her pen flies out of her hands and why can't she be normal and put together like her mother obviously wants her to be and why can't she even hold on to her blasted— "—goddamn pen!"

She bends down to get it, but Lestrade's there ahead of her. He even looks a bit startled, if a little amused, and she feels her neck go hot when he hands her the pen and says, "You're quite certain you're all right, Molly?"

She hesitates. She shouldn't be talking about it, not on the job, and most certainly not to Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade. But she can't help it. All at once the whole thing is pouring out of her, the conversation with her mother, and Lestrade listens quietly as she shoves the girl's body back where it belongs and locks the steel door behind it because she can't let any of them rot, and somehow by the time she's finished they're sitting in her office again, and she can't remember half of what she's said, but he seems to be fighting a smile.

She glowers at him. Sourly. "It's not funny."

"I guess not," he says, but he's still smiling, and she has to fight the urge to smack him with her clipboard. She's had so many violent impulses today that she should be worrying for her sanity. "I suppose you haven't told her about….well."

"I haven't told her that my last boyfriend turned out to be a homicidal maniac who was just using me to get to—" She cuts herself off before she says his name. "In order to manipulate all of us? No, I haven't. And I haven't told her he's the criminal mastermind behind pretty much everything I've worked on over the past six months either, because then I can promise you she'll lock me in the basement of her apartment building and I won't be coming back out for a decade."

He does smile this time, and she does hit him, but lightly. "It's not funny."

And it isn't funny, because as much as she doesn't like to admit it, Jim Moriarty hurt her, and as much as she doesn't like to admit it, Sherlock hurt her too. She hasn't ever mentioned Sherlock to her mother either. She doubts that Lydia Hooper even knows her daughter had anything to do with the greatest trash-news expose of the past century, otherwise she would have been grilled for absolutely every detail.

That hurts too, because even though she hasn't talked about it since it happened, and even though she'd been half in love with the man for nearly three years, Sherlock Holmes was her friend. A strange sort of friend, but a friend nevertheless, and now he's gone. Not dead, just…gone. Abruptly, she wants to cry.

"—go, are you?"

"Hm?" She needs to remember not to drift off when people are talking to her. Lestrade doesn't seem to mind though. If anything, his smile gets a bit bigger.

"Are you going to go to the dinner?"

"Oh, Lord, no." Then she bites her tongue, because this is Lestrade and she is never so flippant, not at work, not unless she's drunk more than she ought to and this is work so she shouldn't even be thinking about getting drunk and blast it. "I mean, I can probably catch a few reruns on telly with my cat. It's not like I want to meet Mrs. Lancaster's lovely doctoring godlike nephew."

To her surprise, Lestrade's eyebrows snap together, and there's an expression on his face that she can't quite read as he says, "Why not?"

"Why not?" Good God. She sounds like her mother. Molly lowers her voice and looks down, fiddling with the hem of her wool sweater. She has more wool sweaters than anyone should possibly own, according to her mother, but it's cold in the morgue and besides, she likes them. They're comforting. "I mean…I don't want…it's my mother. She means well, but…I mean."

Why doesn't she want to go? She doesn't want to be pushed into a relationship she doesn't really want, not by anyone. Logic tells her she won't meet another Jim Moriarty, but she's comfortable the way she is. She doesn't want her mother breathing down her neck every month. She doesn't want to be pushed at lovely doctoring types who aren't her type at all. She doesn't want to have to worry about talking with her mother anymore.

Finally, Molly just says, "Blind dates aren't my thing. Besides, people don't often like…" people like me. She makes a vague gesture at her frumpy clothes, her shoes, her plain hair. "Well, I'm not exactly likeable, am I?"

There's a slight pause where neither of them say anything. Awkward for some reason. Lestrade clears his throat, and straightens. "I should..."

"Oh, right." She offers him the file, and he waves it away. "Thank you. I mean, for listening."

"It's what friends are for, isn't it?" he says. She's never thought of Greg Lestrade as a friend before, and for the first time in a long while, she actually looks at him, really looks at him, this person who's come forward to call himself her friend. He looks a bit older than she remembers – the incident with Sherlock has aged them all in some ways, and there are new frown creases around his mouth that she can't remember being there before – but otherwise he's just…Lestrade. Silvering hair, intense dark eyes, good jaw. A nice smile, her mind adds, and she looks away before she makes herself blush. She turns to put her things back into her desk.

"Molly," he says at the doorway. She's barely turned around when he says, "You're wrong, you know. About you, I mean. You're not…" He struggles for a moment, and when Molly looks at him, she realizes, to her surprise, that there is a faint dusting of color high on his cheekbones. Then he takes a breath, and says it. "You, Dr. Molly Hooper, are one of the most…amazing, intelligent, beautiful women I've ever met, and any man you choose will be damn lucky to have you."

Molly's speechless. She's not even sure if she can breathe. Lestrade looks at her for a moment longer, and then he nods his head, a smile pulling at his lips, and leaves. His footsteps have long since faded away when she finally manages to sink into her chair, and she props her head in one hand, unable to even really think

"Oh," she says. Then again. "Oh."

And suddenly, irrationally, happily, she smiles.

Two days later, she calls her mother to inform her that she will be unable to attend the dinner party that Lydia has set up. After all, she has a date.