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Molly doesn't want the gift that comes with her perversion, the curse of life filling a room of the dead one night a year, bodies torn and broken and stitched together in y shapes, overlaid with the shimmering glamor of what once was and will never be again.
She had a dog once that dug itself out of the grave in her backyard, all bone beneath translucent wholeness. The fur was so soft to her touch but she'll never forget the cold. Sifting, silken snow beneath her fingertips.
The dead that rise around her are nothing but cold even when their voices whisper sweet things into her ears, grasping fingers gripping her shoulders to draw her in even as they freeze her out.
This is why Molly had a thing for Sherlock once; he was cold like the things that touch her, not too long ago. But one kiss and that image was shattered to pieces and when Molly tried picking up the shards hoping to fit it back together it all just melted away.
She wants to love the warm and fluid and mobile. She thought she had once, but now he's cold and gone too. How sad that she will love him more now than when he offered her coffee and corny texts two days prior.
Sherlock reminds her of dead things, or he did until John Watson came around and started melting that rigor mortis frost from his curls and fine bones, but that’s alright, Molly never would have come closer than attempted coffee and bright lipstick. That all she could offer him.
Molly is not meant for the living.
Molly is meant for the embrace of the young man shot through the heart by his wife, a comfort to him before his soul passes on. She is meant for the woman who swallowed poison over suffering the touch of her husband one more night. She is meant for the broken DI with just enough hope in his heart to take the light from everyone else with his last breath.
Molly's body is not her own.
She railed against her curse, tried to be a part of the living for a time. She had a boyfriend once that the corpses took when she tried to have his flesh in defiance one Halloween and when he entered her, newly gone from the living, cold as the river's touch she felt such pleasure she sobbed.
The dead have claimed her and she has not the strength or the will to fight them away.
She locks herself in the morgue once a year when the clock strikes the mark of sunset and with it the old magic of Halloween rushes in on the ticking hands’ heels. She could probably do this any other day of the year, but it's the day the dead rise that she cannot control it and so she doesn't bother to see if what she has is a power or a curse.
Today is no different. Today is completely different. Today she stands in the middle of the morgue with tears in her eyes wishing she could be anywhere but here. The first locker rattles to life.
She moves, feet bare against the cold ground, blood-heat long since drawn out and replaced with ice. She grips the handle, small hands shaking as she takes a breath to calm her heart and stop her tears. Then another. With a third she pull the steel locker open, keeps her eyes open with an effort as bare feet then white cloth then dark eyes then grey and dark hair all come into view. Scrapes mar colorless features and she knows when she pulls the sheet back black and pink puncture into chest and stomach.
“Molly?” The dark eyes blink, tan and unblemished skin shiver in and out of focus like a glamor and Molly chokes on a sob.
“Hi, Greg.”