At the sound of the doorbell, Molly dropped her cup of tea. She watched helplessly as it fell to the ground and shattered into innumerable pieces. With a sigh, she let the boiling hot liquid cascade into the cracks between the tiles of her kitchen, deciding that she'd just have to rush to clean it up as soon as she checked who was at the door.

With this now on her mind, she put an extra burst of speed into her step as she approached the door. However, Molly did take a moment to herself to regroup before she opened it. She'd always felt just out of place when it came to socializing, and she needed to be prepared for anyone who was out her door. 

But as soon as she opened it up, she realized she had absolutely nothing to worry about. In fact, she should've realized who it was sooner.

"Will," she said, a small smile curling on her lips. 

"Molly," he replied. 

They curled their hands together as she started to lead him into the room, the engagement ring he'd given her gleaming in the light of her home. It hadn't been very long since they'd gotten engaged, but as they were attempting to keep it rather quiet, they had gone about their lives as if very little had changed.

"I hope you don't mind, but I need to clean up this mess," she said, releasing his fingers from her own. "I might've spilled tea all over the ground, and if the cats get to it..."

"I don't mind," Will replied. "As long as you're willing to talk afterwards."

"Talk? Yes. Of course. It's just a broken cup and some spilled tea. No use crying over spilled...tea," she said, already starting to question the words that were escaping out of her lips. Despite the level of intimacy she'd managed to achieve with Will, Molly still found herself getting flustered from time to time, unable to get out the message she truly wanted to say. 

Motivated by the idea of getting to speak to her fiance, she moved quickly. She hated the fact that she'd ruined a perfectly good cup for a perfectly stupid reason, but there was no time for her lament about it. From the very moment she'd seen Will, she'd understood that she needed to focus on him first and everything else later.

A few minutes later, Molly sat across from Will in her living room and placed a soft smile upon her lips. She'd been through enough in her life to know that even turning up her lips in the slightest could end up softening a situation - and it worked especially well when it came to tea.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"You just naturally assume that something's wrong at this point," Will said, letting out a breathy laugh. 

"I can tell. I've learned," Molly replied. 

"It's true, something is wrong," he admitted. "But it's a long story - probably not something you want to sit and listen to..."

"No, I want to listen," she protested, tilting forwards slightly and allowing her eyes to fill up with emphasis. "There's just one thing we need first."

"...and what would that be?"

"Before you start, we should have some tea."

"You're not going to break another cup, are you?"

"No, I wouldn't. Besides, I'd be using one of the special teacups. They're only for special occasions, and I believe this one is suffice."

"Me coming over and talking to you?"

"More or less," she replied, heaving her shoulders up into a shrug. "All I know is that when it comes to you and bad things, there are usually nightmares and difficulty getting to sleep connected. Then, of course, tea is very useful when it comes to, well, avoiding that."

"I didn't think it was that late."

"It's not. But if this story is as long as you're trying to convince me it is, then you might end up staying the night. And nightmares would not be a good thing - not as if they ever are, of course."

"Then tea is probably a good idea," he confirmed.

She gave a gleeful nod and then scurried back into the kitchen, rushing to make a new pot of tea as quickly as possible. This was part of Molly's attempt to make the atmosphere as positive as they could bear before anything truly began, knowing that Will wasn't about to tell her anything featuring many smiles.

Molly returned with two fancy teacups, one clasped within each hand. Each step was carefully calculated and slowly executed so that she could avoid another teacup disaster. Her two cats were beginning to prowl around the area, and this time around, she wouldn't be able to pick up a bunch of shards before they came to investigate.

She couldn't help but release a sigh of utter relief when she reached her seat across from Will and was able to pass over one of her cups. She'd been so sure she'd end up in another disaster again, despite all of her relentless effort to avoid it. 

"So," Molly began after taking a short sip of the tea. "Would you like to begin?"

"I...I don't know," Will admitted, resorting to staring down at the augmented reflection down in the teacup he'd just drank from. "I'm not sure I can."

"You know you can trust me, right?" Molly said, clearing her throat slightly. She had a nasty habit of letting her voice fade away when it came to her speaking about something that made her emotional, and now it was starting to make it difficult to talk in general. "I'm not going to judge you, not the way that I know Sherlock does."

"You haven't worked on a case with him, you don't know how bad he is."

"Oh, I've worked plenty with Sherlock," Molly corrected. "And I know just how bad he can be. But that's beside the point. I'm here for you."

Will took this moment to look over at Molly, her eyes gleaming as she stared right back at him. He was immediately reminded of the reason he'd wanted to marry her. She cared about him, and not anything else that surrounded him. He could get addicted to that sort of attention, and now she was only proving she could drive this even further.

Then, of course, there were a million other reasons he could list for why he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but those were beside the point. Molly could talk perfectly well when she allowed her words to roam freely, but she was also spectacular at listening. In this moment, she sat perfectly poised, ready for his words to meet her hears. 

"Abigail Hobbs," he began, realizing he'd have no better chance to do so. "Chances are, you don't have a clue who she is. But back home, she was the focus of many people. And I guess that's part of the reason she's gone now."

At this point, Will expected her to launch in with some comment that would start tilting the conversation in an entirely different direction. Instead, Molly remained with her lips pressed together, her eyes shimmering with interest at what he had to say. 

In that moment, he nearly ended up changing the topic himself, diving into an ocean full of reasons he was falling for her more and more each moment. Before he could end up saying a thing, however, he caught himself. She'd made it clear she was actually willing to listen, to hear his side of the story about Abigail Hobbs.

"Abigail didn't deserve any of what ended up coming to her. She didn't deserve to have her father hold a knife to her throat and then slit it. She didn't deserve to nearly die that way, gasping in pain until she finally fell unconscious. She just...she didn't deserve any of it. And that's only the beginning," he said, already finding himself starting to feel emotional over the entire situation.

Oh, he could picture it all ever so perfectly - he could still see the way her eyes began to glaze over as he brought his hands towards her throat, trying to stop the puddle of blood from expanding across the floor. From that very first moment they'd met eyes, Will couldn't help but feel so desperate to help. He wanted to help her. He wanted her to be alright. He cared, and that was the most dangerous thing of all.

"Why?" Molly asked, finally allowing her lips to part and the one question resonating throughout her home. She readjusted her grip on the teacup, but always managed to keep her eyes fixed upon Will. "Why would he do such a thing?"

"He didn't want to let her go - he wanted to treasure her and have her all to himself. He wanted power over her, but at the same time wanted to cherish her. I guess I can see where he's coming from, but..."

"I see," Molly quickly said. She wanted to stop Will before he ended up finding a way to blame himself for everything he'd witnessed happen to Abigail. 

"The thing about her father was that he'd been killing girls who looked like her for a while, and then using every last remnant to honor them. He...he ate them. Ate parts of them. And he would've done the same to Abigail, if he'd gotten away with it. But I stopped him."

"Thank God for it," Molly murmured. 

"But even when he was dead, he ended up haunting Abigail's every move. People believed that she was insane too, that she'd been the bait to lure in the other girls and allowed them to get killed. The truth had been muddled from the very beginning," Will continued.

Once again, Molly sat silently, waiting for him to continue. Ever since he'd begun speaking about Abigail, she'd managed to refrain from taking a sip of tea. Nevertheless, she wasn't absolutely motionless - ripples appeared in the cup from a slight quiver that had broken out through her entire body.  

"Then, of course, people wanted to twist her story even further. Freddie Lounds, writer for the National Tattler, got herself involved in it all. I've never seen a more twisted set of stories than the one's she's written. And yet, she tried to get Abigail to write a book about her experiences, about her father. Even about me."

"And I'm guessing she didn't have a single kind word to spare for you," Molly replied, allowing a tiny sigh to escape from her lips. "She sounds absolutely horrid - and I've heard of those sorts of people before. Sherlock's probably never mentioned it, but a woman named Kitty Riley helped destroy his name a few years back. I...I hate those kind of people."

It was evident Molly struggled with getting the final sentence out - she always strived to see the best in people, and thinking of her hating someone just seemed absurd. But as Will allowed himself to glance over her countenance, he realized that she truly did hate them. She just didn't hate them with a flaming passion - she instead became stormy eyed, a glint of tears simultaneously weakening and strengthening her.

Not wanting to end up being the one to push her over the edge, he remained silent for several more moments. This also allowed Will to regroup his thoughts back together, figure out how exactly he wished to present the rest of his tale and allow Molly to understand Abigail.

"She was young and bright, not unshakable but not completely fragile either. But then she was murdered, and it was pegged on me, because..."

"It doesn't matter," Molly replied softly. She'd sensed that he'd pushed himself to the breaking point - as soon as he managed to forge a path back to himself, Will ended up starting to panic. "I know you didn't do it. You wouldn't. And...if I'm going to be honest here, and I think I should be...I don't really think you could."

"But I know that the reason Abigail is gone right now is because she became close to me," Will said. 

Molly now couldn't stop herself from rushing in to halt his words, making sure that her voice would ring through his mind with some sort of truth. "Surely that can't be all of the reasons. Surely there's more to it than that. You can't go blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong."

"Abigail's death is not a little thing," Will replied, a slight hint of menace coming into his voice. He knew that Molly hadn't intended anything by using those words, but she ended up biting her lip and putting more thought into her wording before she allowed herself to speak again.

"From what I know, you're right. Abigail truly didn't deserve any of this, and I'm so sorry that she had to go through such horrors just to have it all ended once again. But it's not your fault that her father was a serial killer and that people paid attention to her after that."

"And it's also not the first time someone who got close to me ended up dead," Will said, his voice nearly toneless. "And I have this searing feeling like someone's lit a flame inside my stomach - she's not going to be the last."

He looked over towards Molly, wondering if she'd understood what he was attempting to say. Even now, he couldn't help but feel he was a danger to her. Just his presence near her ended up marking her as a target for anyone who might potentially want to hurt him. He'd made his decisions selfishly, wanting to have her beside him for the rest of his life - but there were so many horrid risks attached.

"It's not your fault," Molly said, reaffirming what she truly and utterly believed, but also feeling a slight shake trickle out into her voice. "Will...I'd rather know more about Abigail at the moment right now. Not about her death, about her life - maybe it's just me, but I think the latter is a bit more important."

"Well..." Will began, starting to think up something that wasn't related to Abigail's death. Now that he truly focused on it, he realized just how much of a struggle it was for him to find anything else - but then he finally stumbled upon it. "The strangest thing about Abigail Hobbs is how many people saw themselves as a parental figure and let that overcome them."

"And you were one of them," Molly continued, correctly predicting what he was going to say next.

"Yes, I was. I taught her how to fish, tried to care for her - but I obviously wasn't very successful. I didn't do much better than her real father."

"You did what you could."

"And it wasn't enough."

"No...don't say things like that. You would make a good father," Molly murmured. At first, she'd thought that Will hadn't picked up her words, but then he glanced over to her and the two spent a moment in absolute silence but certainly not stillness. There was a tenseness in the air, but instead of being awkward (which the two had certainly had experience with) it seemed to carry anticipation and positivity.

"You really think so?"

"I've been thinking about it more than I'd care to admit," Molly replied, her lips curling into that soft smile once again. "I mean, I've always...always wanted a big family."

A slight flush appeared on both of their cheeks - it didn't matter that they were planning to get married, the entire topic of living together and having a family just seemed to be a step out of their reach and that made it all the stranger.

"So..." Molly began awkwardly, trying to figure out a way to reignite the conversation. "Why, exactly, did you tell me all this about Abigail? Did you just want to get it all out?"

"I want people to know the truth about Abigail and her life," Will explained. "And people, except for you, don't want to listen to me right now. People think that I just might be...I might be responsible for her disappearance. Her death. And, honestly, I can't remember. I don't know if they're right or if they're wrong."

"Please, Will, don't start that again. I'll go pour another cuppa for you, yes? And one for me as well. Then we can...we can get back to that."

"Fine," he grumbled, although he did feel pleased that Molly was so dedicated to doing all of this for him. She stepped right over where the shattered cup from earlier had been and picked up her tea kettle to pour out a few new cups. Towards the end, she realized she had just enough to fill three cups - and she wasn't about to let a full cup sit inside the kettle. 

With a fair bit of careful maneuvering - something she felt mattered quite a bit after the teacup disaster from earlier - she managed to get all three cups to where she and Will were sitting and then reclaimed her seat.

"It seems like I've always got just one cup too many," Molly sighed. "You'd think after working in a morgue, I'd be able to handle the precise sort of thing. Do you think I should just pour it down the drain? Or do you want another cup?"

"There's just one cup too many," Will repeated, letting out a slight laugh. "It's kind of perfect, really."

"What?" 

"Abigail."

"Oh, yes, of course. Abigail," she repeated. "I should've known. She's with us in spirit, yes?"

"Exactly. The universe must've calculated that extra cup for you, knowing that we'd need it for Abigail."

"I just wish I could've known her," Molly said. 

"And I wish she could've known you."

"We would've been a family. The best family she'd ever had."

A/N FOR THE WATTPAD FANFICTION ONESHOT CONTEST. Yep. I did a thing. I just really wanted to write something about Abigail Hobbs as well as further explore the relationship between Molly and Will in their earlier stages. Did I mention this was somewhat physically painful to write? So many feels, you don't even know.