gleekilicious:
beyondthedistantstar:
Look at the way he looks at her - like for the first time, he actually notices that she’s there. Also, there is wonder in his eyes - wonder at how blind he has been before. For the first time, he sees her loyalty and her love and how easily she reads him and that she will always be there for him, no matter how he has treated her before. And he wonders how his scientific mind has missed something so obvious, something that an ordinary person would have seen long ago.
fucking love Molly.
This is wonderful, and it’s something more than that. There’s something else in that realisation. He’s not only seeing her properly, consciously, for the first time. He’s seeing the way she sees herself. Someone who doesn’t count.
It’s mostly accepted that growing up Sherlock didn’t have many friends and wasn’t well liked. His older brother likely overshadows him in some ways - Mycroft is often portrayed as being cleverer than Sherlock but lazier. Although these days he is very much made to feel like someone who counts, you have to consider the way we saw him treated at the beginning of the first series.
He was called a freak by Donovan, snarked at by Anderson, even Lestrade, while asking for his help, treated him mostly like a source of information rather than a person. He admitted that he didn’t know him any better than John did right at the beginning. You can imagine what Sherlock was treated like before, when he was too young to have the authority he has in the present. A young boy who felt something was off at a crime scene but was brushed off by the police, and oh, how that must have frustrated young Sherlock. Sherlock needs recognition. He thrives on it. Genius needs an audience.
And here’s Molly, standing there and saying she doesn’t count. And Sherlock, over this series, has really started to learn empathy like never before. He realises that Molly sees herself as someone who to him doesn’t count, who isn’t recognised, and you can see in his eyes something taken aback, almost sorry, because he realises that this statement is directed at him, and he’s the one who’s made someone feel like they don’t count.
He’s always brushed her aside, never quite taken her seriously, barely looked at her. But she’s always been there, a dependent part of his background, and if anything were to happen to her I think it would hurt. Apart from realising in this instant how much he’s taken for granted he’s realising just how badly he’s always treated her, and he almost looks like he wants to tell her, that no, she’s counts, she’s always counted, but he just doesn’t know how to say it.
To help explain, let me bring a Doctor Who quote in on this: “an ordinary man, that’s the most important thing in creation”.
Molly is a crucial part of the background, enabling Sherlock do half the work he does by giving him access to a lab and cadavers and blood samples and everything else. And she’s one of the only people who are nice to him, who genuinely likes him for who he is. And it’s only just now he’s realised how important she is to him, and that she doesn’t know that.
Which is why I loved even more how he went to her and just simply asked her for her help, and told her she counted. He could have charmed her again, if he’d wanted to. But this time he just asked her for help, and that was all he’d ever needed to do. He never needed to manipulate Molly into doing what he wanted. All he ever had to do was ask. It was incredibly touching, seeing Sherlock simply be honest with her, say something nice to her and mean it. And the way Molly, so kind, with her gigantic heart, looked so terrified but asked him what he needed - no gloating, not a trace of smugness that Sherlock had come to her for help - that is one of the many things which marks her different from some pathetic fangirl. She just cares that much about him.