Author's note on Update 11/7/18 My one year anniversary at this site.

This remains one of my favourite stories for Sherlock and Molly, despite it being a dream. That is why I keep updating it and improving it! Latest improvements have been made to the complete story (which was quite a big task!). I removed the italics I had added for the dream sections, (too confusing to read, and I try to make it clear what parts are the dream anyway). My initial revisions months ago were to remove the excessive detective/pathologist references at the advice of another writer. As I have developed my writing skill, now I have also revised the complete story with extra visual imagery and characterization. I hope my readers will read and enjoy the improvement in my writing as it has matured over the past year. People who give a chapter-by-chapter analysis are the rare diamonds in this world!

Please note that this story begins with my "real" characters from my major story A Journey to Love, Faith and Marriage.

Thanks also to simplyshelbs16, whose one-shot using the premise of Sherlock and Molly meeting during their university days prompted me to think about what could have happened if that had really occurred, and how their story could have developed as a result.

Molly and Sherlock had been having a discussion earlier that evening about their uni days. She and Sherlock had actually attended the same university but he had graduated with his postgraduate degree the year before she started. If not for the fact that he had taken his A-levels while still in secondary school, and also that she had ended up entering university at the regular age, instead of a year early as she was on target to do, before her dad got sick, she would have probably seen him around campus. As it was, she had heard the stories about the alumnus, especially from her friend Meena who was a year older than she was.

Meena had ended up failing her first year and was forced to repeat it. That first year she had seen Sherlock on campus every now and then. She was a bit of a social butterfly, who cared more about going out with friends than studying. When Molly ended up sharing a room with her, they had become friends. They were polar opposites, the older girl being loud and Molly being quiet. However, Molly had found herself helping the other girl in her studying and a bond had formed. It was Meena who had told Molly about the arrogant, but handsome guy who had been on campus the year before Molly started there.

The other girl started working at Bart's before Molly. The future pathologist had gone on to many more years of study to earn a doctorate in pathology. She and Meena had kept in touch over the years. Just before Molly started to work at Bart's, Meena had told her how "that superior Sherlock Holmes" from her first year at uni was now a common fixture at Bart's. Apparently he was now a "consulting detective," whatever that meant.

The moment Mike Stamford introduced her to Sherlock, Molly was smitten. They had begun to work together occasionally when he needed to examine the body of a murder victim and she had performed the post-mortem. She was much too intimidated by the handsome sleuth to talk to him about anything unrelated to work, and she tended to stammer when he asked her a question, which was highly embarrassing.

It had taken her six months to gather up enough nerve to ask him out for coffee. An oblivious Sherlock had misunderstood, thinking she was offering to get him a coffee, and her hopes had been crushed.

It was all long in the past now. So much had happened through the years, but it was the events at Sherrinford that had led to Sherlock's emotional breakthrough and realisation that he loved Molly, even as she loved him.

Molly looked contentedly at the heart shaped diamond on her ring finger. Not for the first time, she wondered if things might have taken a different turn, if Sherlock had still been at the university when she started there.

Molly snuggled closer to her fiancé. His arm was looped around her as usual, a hand gently cupping her breast. Yes, she mused, it would be interesting to know what might have happened if they had met back then. Sherlock's rhythmic breathing soothed her, and she allowed herself to drift into sleep. At around the one hour mark after Molly went to sleep, she entered REM sleep and began to dream.

…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/…/

And the dream begins.

She'd seen him around campus before, of course. Nobody could miss that purposeful stride, that dark curly hair and impossibly handsome, yet aloof face.

Sherlock Holmes. He was only twenty, and yet he was already rather famous, as well as infamous on campus. He was famous for being the youngest person at the university to have completed the four year undergraduate MSci(Hons) course in Chemistry, before returning to study Forensic Medical Sciences. He was known as being aloof, although whether this was because he was shunned by his classmates who were jealous of his superior knowledge in doing a postgraduate course at a younger age than anyone else, or his superior manner to others, she did not know.

All she knew was that people gossiped about him, about the fact that he never went out socially, keeping mostly to himself. There were a couple of Molly's friends who had woefully told her that they had tried to strike up a conversation with the handsome man, and had been rebuffed. He was simply not interested.

So yeah, he was famous in that way. He was also infamous, because he had apparently been conducting some experiment which caused a small explosion one day, and one whole wing of the university had been evacuated as a result. That had happened before Molly's time, but she had it on good authority that there had been discussion of expelling him because of it. However, due to his brilliance, he was given another chance, and was careful to not upset the professors in any way after that.

Every time Molly happened to see Sherlock striding from one class to another, she felt her heart skip a beat. She wanted to touch that beautiful curly hair, run her fingers through it.

One time she had actually bumped into him as she was heading towards a class and dropped her books.

"Sorry," she had muttered, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment, expecting him to just nod and head off to wherever he was presumably heading.

Instead, he had stooped down to help pick up her books and handed them to her with a, "My fault, I should have been watching where I was going." She had been treated to a brief glimpse of incredible blue-green eyes, a face with impossibly high, aristocratic looking cheekbones, and full, sensual lips that looked as if they were made to be kissed. The man was drop-dead gorgeous. After he had left her, still standing there open-mouthed, her heart beating unaccountably fast, Molly had not been able to stop thinking about him. Molly was a green seventeen year old who was the youngest girl on campus, having completed her first year of A-Levels while still in secondary school, and would never have presumed to speak to him.

Their paths hadn't crossed again, but Molly could still recall that one encounter. She hadn't even told her friend Meena about it. Meena was one of the girls who had been rebuffed by Sherlock, so she had a rather low opinion of him.

She had even made a scathing comment once to Molly. "That Sherlock Holmes. He's just so superior. Do you see the way he struts around campus as if he owns the place? It's no wonder he has no friends."

Because she actually looked for glimpses of the young man, Molly noticed him in various places - outside, eating a sandwich by himself at lunchtime with his nose in a book, in the library, reading there as well. He was always reading. Sometimes he would leave books on the table in the library when he had finished. The future pathologist would venture to the table and glance at what he had been reading. She was a little surprised that it wasn't always science or chemistry books, sometimes it was books about crime-solving, or books on unsolved crimes. Apparently Sherlock had an interest in more than just chemistry and forensics. He had an interest in crime. Either he was planning on using his superior knowledge in the future for good, or perhaps he was planning on becoming a master criminal.

Either way, she couldn't help feeling compelled to learn what she could about him, asking casual questions from various people. There wasn't a whole lot of information to be gleaned though, and people tended to consider him somewhat of a sociopath. Molly didn't think he was really one though. He had certainly not acted that way when he had picked up her books and said it was his fault. He'd seemed rather - nice.

On one occasion, when she had seen Sherlock in the university library, she had almost approached him. He was reading a book about forensic science and she was tempted to try and engage him in conversation, but she had chickened out at the last minute and hurried out of the library instead. Why would someone like him want to talk with a mousy, brown-haired girl like her?

She was nothing special. A man like Sherlock Holmes would need to have a stunning model hanging off his arm, who would complement his own gorgeous appearance.

So she kept these things, these silly feelings, to herself, harbouring them deep in her heart, knowing she was just a foolish, romantic girl. Fairytales and happy endings weren't real. But she believed them anyway - or at least wanted to.

Molly had watched Meena get in and out of several relationships in their first year at uni. Her friend had taken a year off after doing her A-Levels, before starting uni, so she was already nineteen. She griped to the younger girl about the guys wanting sex after going out only a few times. Meena didn't really have a problem with that, if it was she who was initiating it, but she didn't like it when the guy made the first move. After watching her friend go through several partners and a pregnancy scare, Molly was extremely glad to not be sexually active. The whole idea of it alarmed her somewhat. The thought of giving herself to a man that way, of exposing the most secret part of herself, frightened her.

Molly had had a few fellow students ask her out, but every time, after two or three occasions of going out together, she just wasn't feeling it. There were no sparks, none of the chemistry she longed for. Awkward attempts to kiss her had resulted in bumped noses and just felt uncomfortable. If she was to be with someone, she wanted more than physical attraction, she wanted an emotional connection as well. Maybe she was expecting too much, had standards that were too high. It was probably all those ridiculous historical romance novels by Barbara Cartland she had read, that cluttered her head with thoughts of true love and soulmates.

Meena had once laughed at her when she saw Molly with her nose in one of those books. "God, Molly, you need to just get out of here and have a good shag. I guarantee it's better than those silly romantic fictions you persist in reading."

Molly had merely sniffed at her friend and retorted, "At least this way I don't have to worry about getting pregnant." That had shut Meena up, because her pregnancy scare had only happened a month earlier. Two girls had already dropped out of their course due to unexpected pregnancies. One had returned after an apparent miscarriage, but there were rumours that she had had an abortion, and that had hurt Molly's heart. I would never do that to my baby if I got pregnant, even if it was accidental, she had thought to herself. Then her thoughts had unaccountably turned towards Sherlock Holmes. What would it be like to have his baby, I wonder? she had thought to herself, and had immediately been shocked and embarrassed at the wayward thought, even as she felt a curious clenching sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Several months passed. The end of the school year approached, final exams were over and Molly had been happy to discover she had passed all of them with flying colours, top of her class in almost every subject. She had heard whispers around campus that Sherlock Holmes would be graduating soon, top of his class, of course. Her heart sank a little at the thought of not seeing him around campus anymore. She had come to look forward to those occasional glimpses, treasuring them in her heart. By now, on several occasions, Molly had been tempted to walk towards him during one of his solitary lunches, but she always got scared at the last minute, feeling very insecure. He might only be three years older than her, but he was more like five years ahead of her intellectually, so she would probably end up stammering to him, unable to hold a decent conversation.

One evening Meena insisted on going out to celebrate getting through the year.

"Come on, Molly. You've been legal for a couple of months now and you haven't even gone out for a drink yet," said the older girl, crossing her arms and glaring at Molly.

Molly pursed her lips. "Meena, you know I'm really not into social gatherings."

"Aw, come on," Meena wheedled, "there's this cool new nightclub that just opened up close to campus. Everyone's talking about it."

Her friend wouldn't stop bugging her about it, so finally, Moly gave in. Upon Meena's insistence, she had been forced into a rather short black dress that "showed off her curves," as her friend put it, not that Molly's figure was anywhere near the size of her friend's voluptuous chest. She had finally been talked into wearing the dress , but its straps were so skinny she couldn't even wear a bra with it, not that she really needed to wear one anyway. The dress had been an impulse buy that Molly had never been game to wear on any of her few dates, because it was a little more revealing than what she was used to wearing. She much preferred her blouses and the multi-coloured jumpers her mum knitted for her every year. She liked them because her dad always loved seeing her wear them.

So it was that Molly found herself at the same nightclub on the same night as Sherlock Holmes was there as well.

Author's Note: If you follow my other stories, you will find this dream somewhat different as it explores Molly in a new way. It will take you through the canon from the series all the way to TFP. It brings into focus the internal struggle the engaged Molly from A Journey to Love, Faith and Marriage is experiencing with her wants and desires, as she dreams a scenario where her younger self makes an impulsive decision. This dream is addressed in Journey as well, and the resulting conversation is very interesting!

For this story I researched the British schooling system (getting help from some wonderful British readers too) and used Queen Mary University, citing actual courses to make sure it is as realistic as possible. I always try to research and keep things authentic. If you see any errors, please let me know.

Updated for corrections and better flow 6/26/18

Whether you are reading this for the first time or re-reading it, I'd love to hear from you.