Fic: Crossroads - Molly (1/7) (Sherlock BBC)

[keep_counting]

Title: Crossroads 1/7 - Molly
Characters/Pairings: Molly, Moriarty
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, selling of souls, a bit blood
Genre: Crossover/Drama/AU
Word-count: 1,176
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N: Crossover with Supernatural, though it is not necessary to have watched the show: I am merely using the mythology to fill a plot-bunny made by fueschgast and me: the wonderful banner is also made by her!
Summary: Summon a demon by the crossroad, and get all your hearts desires. For a prize, of course.


Part One //  Part Two // Part Three // Part Four // Part Five // ....

Molly

All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage.

~

There is an old ruin, a former castle or just a big house, standing like a dead pillar to the past, half-way hidden by trees and growing grass. If you walk past it, into the woods beyond, and walk and walk and walk, until you’re out on the other side, you’ll be on a field.

In the summer, it will be a mass of yellow, bright, small flowers dotting every available surface and trying to outshine the sun: not harsh enough to hurt, but enough to make everything seem that much brighter, especially after the thick cluster of trees blocking out the light in the forest: it will be like crawling from a quiet little hiding spot, and out into the open, brand new world.

In the winter, it will not shine like this. It will be a cold, barren empty land, the flowers withered, the grass dead and brown. Maybe a coating of snow and frost will lay over it, giving everything a ghostly sheer, the tall, scraggy trees reaching towards the sky as if begging the sun to come back and let the rays touch the ground – make it yellow and gold and alive again.

Beyond the field, there is a crossroad.

You know what they say about crossroads.

On this particular day, it’s autumn and there is a morose sense over the landscape, like everything is holding its breath in preparation for the coming cold. The inevitable death of every living thing surrounding this. As if even the trees knows that less visitors will come in this time: not like spring when everything is slowly blooming forwards.

Everything is slowly decaying now.

It’s in autumn that, had one walked past the old ruin, through the forest and reached the fields, there by the crossroad, they would have seen a young woman, desperately digging with her hands, right in the centre of it.

As it is, there is no one to see the girl, and she is probably very grateful for that. The darkness is slowly falling, the sun painting the sky a vivid orange, and her hands and nails are bleeding, dirt digging into the wounds, under her nails, itching and scratching and infecting.

She’s hardly noticing it, so intent is she on her work. She’s been at it for a while, because it’s already getting cold enough for the ground to turn harder than it usually would be and there has been no rain to soften it, to turn it into mud that she could push away with less effort. No, it’s hard and unyielding , and she’s still not stopping.

She doesn’t have to dig very far after all: it’s not a grave she’s digging, here with her own hands. Not in the literal sense after all.

She finally stops, hands shaking and reaches out for the small, metal-box she’s brought with her. It’s old and rusty, with a picture of a green fairy holding a bottle of Absinthe on the cover, peels of it long worn away, leaving the human-like creature with only one wing and no face but the smiling mouth. It looks sinister without the eyes there to convey its happiness, almost like it’s mocking her.

It’s getting colder. That’s the only reason her hands are shaking this much.

She picks up the box and drops it into the hole, then slowly starts filling it up with dirt again, her mind racing over the things she’s put in it, wondering if it was enough, if she’ll have to dig it up again and start over, if it’ll even work and what the hell has she been thinking, of course it won’t work. These things aren’t real.

She gets up on weak legs and looks down on her hands, feeling the pain for the first time as she rubs them together to get some of the dirt off: she only grinds it deeper into the cracks in her skin, and she hisses at the sudden flare of pain.

Someone chuckles behind her and she whirls around, heart in her throat, eyes wide.

“Hello, Molly Hooper.”

It worked.

Or at least, she can only assume that it worked, unless this man is her own personal stalker. She’s never seen him before in her life, or so she’s pretty sure at least. He’s short, though still taller than her, dark hair and a three-piece suit, fitting his frame as if he was born in it.

His eyes flare a deep red and she gasps in shock.

“You’re…”

He grins at her, white teeth flashing in the slowly descending darkness. “You can call me Jim, darling.”

Molly swallows heavily, nearing a step closer to the demon, who methodically tilts his head and studies her as intently as she does him, his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his suit. The minutes crawl by as they look at each other, the cold growing even more intense.

He smirks at her. “No rush.”

She blinks and realizes that she called him here, and of course she had a purpose with it.

“I’m…. I was just going to…”

“You wanted to strike a deal,” he finishes for her, grinning brightly and for a second, just a flash of a second, she imagines a skull instead of a proper face, skin peeled back to reveal bones and empty eye-sockets.

This thing, handsome a man as he makes, is not human.

She is suddenly so scared she can barely stand, but she remembers her father’s brave smile and stands tall – or as tall as a girl her size can stand.

“I want to save my father,” she says. “He’s sick, he’s dying and he’s… he’s only forty-three and he has cancer and…”

“Oh, blahblahblah,” the demon – Jim – interrupts. “Yes, of course you do. Mark Hooper, right? Slowly decaying before your eyes, sickness poisoning his every core…” he grins so wide his face is almost splitting, but then he suddenly frowns. “Oh, oh no stop, don’t cry,” he quickly says. “Oh, honestly… I hate it when they cry.”

“S-sorry,” Molly mumbles, drying her eyes and smudging dirt and blood over her cheeks, watching as Jim nods and sighs deeply.

“Yeah, yeah, alright. So, you want to save your daddy-dearest, yes?”

“Y-yes,” she gets out, something like hope fluttering in her chest. “That’s… you can do that, right?”

Jim raises an eyebrow. “I can do anything, sweetheart.” He hisses out the last word.

“Yeah?”

He doesn’t grin as much as bares his teeth this time. “Oh, yes.”

“Okay,” Molly says. “Then do it. Save my dad.”

In the blink of an eye he’s standing right in front of her, hand reaching down to grasp her wrist.

“Already done, darling,” he sing-songs and then his mouth presses down on her, and he tastes like ash and burning and then he is gone again, the crickets getting back to life around her as he leaves and the last rays of the sun dying away in the distance.