Under her feet, the ocean roils, strings of white foam curling across its surface.
The sky is clear blue, the great golden eye of the sun leering at the earth.
A few clouds scuttle across its surface.
Quartz~speckled sand brushes her feet, delicate and golden .
But the beach isn't important.
She is.
Her name is Molly Hooper.
She is (not) a mousy, skinny pathologist with a crush on a great detective.
She is also the woman who will bring to the British Government its knees.
It's 3:54 pm when the government collapses.
In the end, it's quick~ a bright flash of orange and lemon, and heat splashes across the ground, obliterating it all, because of the actions of one tiny woman.
Wait. Stop.
Let's back up a bit.
No one would say she wasn't a smart girl. In fact, it was the very opposite.
"Molly, god, you're so smart!" her friends would say.
"Hell, Molly, you'll get into whatever school you want if you're like this," her boyfriend said. (He was nice. Shame, that. )
And most memorably: "Molly, your test scores are in the 100th percentile. Is there anything you'd like to say about this?"
Actually, it was cute~ they were flitting around her head, butterflies with a purpose but without knowledge, determined to find the source of her intelligence.
Molly Hooper was a sexual woman in the sense that she fucked with their minds.
"Molly, dear, is that blood on your shirt? Are you holding a kni~"
They would faint, frantically punching 999, but Molly knew that she could never, ever, be caught. So she would inject them with bleach, or whatever household poison happened to be nearest, and watch them writhe until they stopped.
She would step back, go pick flowers, strew them around their bodies like a makeshift funeral.
She'd wait, strip off her clothes and put theirs on, throwing them in a bag and traipsing through London back to her flat.
So when Sherlock Holmes, detective extraordinaire, met her, it was a very dangerous thing indeed.
She worked with her right~hand man, Moran, carefully engineering the two bottles of pills. Both weren't toxic: it was in the water.
She was going to bribe the cabbie, offering him a thousand pounds for each victim he killed. (Of course, he was going to be killed, too, but he didn't need to know that).
Molly slid across the silver slab~ that IT technician, Jim, was here again. He was cute, too, in a feminine sense, if you were into that sort of thing.
"So, Molls, what do you say to the Fox? Sixish?"
"Sure," she replied. She'd try to slip her four victims drugs before that.
"Great! How's work? Must get lonely here, with those corpses." He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
She laughed. "Oh, it's no big deal. They're easier to deal with, anyway."
He smiled, getting to his feet. "Bye, then," he said before slipping out the door.
Molly peered at the curve of his ass as it left the door.
He really was cute.
Everything went to plan.
The cabbie gave them the pill, forced them to drink it with water, and they died.
He earned the money.
And then, there was a mistake.
The woman in pink~ she was smart, Molly thought in admiration. Incredibly smart. Such a shame, really, she chose that cab driver. She and Molly could have been friends.
There was no other way to put it~ Sherlock Holmes trusted her.
The great detective didn't see through the veneer of disguises she put on, even his overdramatic coat or his Pentium~20 brain couldn't scratch it, much less peel it back. She was proud of that, really very proud.
They hung in a balance; the slightest move tipping them either up or down; Molly would commit a crime, Sherlock would solve it, and they would be at equilibrium again.
So it was time, she thought, to tip the scales in her favor.
She had a phone made; an exact replica of the one the woman in pink had carried; put the Greenwich Pips onto it, and made sure to break in and leave Carl Power's shoes in the basement of 221C.
Covering the first victim neatly in explosives, she called him.
Waited until he rang, and gave her the answer~clostridium botulinum~ before cancelling the order.
She fled the scene.
She did the same for the second and third one (she really did feel sorry for that child she'd strapped a bomb on).
Until John Watson was kidnapped by her contacts, and she knew she'd have to hire someone to play Moriarty.
In the end, she chose Rich Brook, a German actor, who'd been the Storyteller on children's television. She was only hoping that Sherlock didn't know about him.
Molly gave him a small microphone through which she could tell him what to say, and what to do, so his acting wouldn't seem awkward at all~ after all, they'd only had five hours to prepare.
Rich Brook, under Molly's command, forced John into a parka laden with explosives, and she and her right hand man, Moran, positioned themselves with laser rifles, prepared to shoot if the soldier attempted anything.
And then, because she'd given Brook her phone, he picked it up, and it was all over.
Sherlock wouldn't die.
John wouldn't die.
Damn it.
Truth be told, Molly hadn't been planning his downfall at all.
But then, she had stolen the painting from the museum, and accidentally caused Sherlock to be named the Hero of the Reichenbach.
Then she had stolen the crown jewels.
It wasn't a hard task, just daylight robbery and having associates in the right places~ she just gave the commands, and Rich Brook played Moriarty.
The vault clicked open, Pentonville's inmates were unlocked, and the glass protecting the crown jewels was smashed.
Ha.
The papers ran the headlines for weeks afterward~ 'Trial of the Century', they said. 'Caught Red-handed.'
It was then that Molly realized that if she wanted to get rid of Sherlock, it had to be now.
It was all in place already, the pieces were falling together like parts of a puzzle~ of course.
She'd make him fall in every way imaginable.
Molly hired that German actor again, paid him a tidy sum to keep quiet, while she found out about Kitty Riley, a budding journalist who desperately needed money.
She made sure to make the girl dress like someone else; someone who was bad and stupid and not faithful.
Oh, I have him fooled, she thought gleefully.
She changed Moran's appearance; made it look like he was Sherlock; made him practice a baritone so on a quick glance, he'd easily pass for the detective.
After that, it was easy to tell him to kidnap the two children, Claudette and Max, feed them mercury slathered chocolates in a warehouse near Addlestone.
She told the assassins to save Sherlock from everything; she needed him alive for this last part. Hired three gunmen to shoot at his friends.
Upon seeing Moran, the girl screamed, and the idea was implanted in their brains, a sprout that grew with every second and thrived off of distrust. After all, Sherlock was unnaturally smart. What if it hadn't been real, any of it?
What if Sherlock Holmes had been a fake all along?
Donovan and Anderson went to Lestrade, told him their suspicions about Holmes, and got him arrested.
Molly was a mastermind.
No one ever, ever suspected her.
So, Molly thought as Sherlock padded into the lab after hours, he's finally realized he's going to die.
Good.
"You were wrong, you know."
She faked surprise and whirled around.
"I do need something."
Sensing an opportunity, she asked: "What do you need?"
He paused.
"You."
Molly kept her expression calm as he outlined his plans. Occasionally, she made an interjection, telling him to substitute anesthetics for plant~based drugs, and animal blood for fake, but otherwise, the pathology room at Saint Bart's stayed quiet.
Of course, nothing was in his favor, and he hadn't realized that yet.
Good, Molly thought. Good.
If there was one downside to her plan, it was the grief she'd be causing John Watson.
"Well, off you pop!" Brook said.
Sherlock stepped on the ledge.
"Will you give me," he stopped, and it was a credit to his ability to withhold his emotions that he didn't stutter, "a moment of privacy? Please?"
"Of course," the actor said.
Molly grinned; this was playing out perfectly~ for all his cleverness, Sherlock didn't know anything.
Then it all began to fall apart.
"You're not like me. You're ordinary; you're on the side of the angels," Brook had said.
Sherlock had grabbed his lapels and forcefully pulled him up, telling him how he might be on the side of the angels, but he wasn't one of them.
Brook had looked into the detective's eyes and said, "No, you're not like me at all. Thank you. Bless you, Sherlock Holmes," before putting a gun into his mouth.
He toppled over the edge of the building.
If her plan had begun to fall apart at that point, it all went to hell afterwards.
Molly sprang out of her seat, grabbed a pistol, and made her way to the rooftop, bracing herself for an inevitable fight.
"Sherlock," she stated, "Step onto the ledge. Go kill yourself." She wrapped her fingers around the trigger more securely.
He turned around.
"Molly?"
It was there in that one word~ not love, not passion, but fear, and anger, too, at being duped so easily by a woman he hadn't ever truly respected.
"Tell me why I should. Give me one reason, just one reason why I should do anything for you, Molly Hooper."
She smirked.
Because I outwitted you.
"Because your friends will die if you don't."
It was true, really, although she'd just put it in as a backup plan. If Sherlock had forced Brook to jump off the building, then at least he'd be able to choke out a few words about John dying, and hopefully, that would be enough to stop him.
And there, that was the final straw.
"Everyone? John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade?"
She waved her hand. "Everyone. Three assassins, three victims, three bullets. My gunmen have an order to shoot if they don't see you fall from this building."
"And there's nothing I can do, no recall code?"
"No," she replied.
"I trust, then, that all our plans last night were futile and you really planned to kill me all along. Molly Hooper. I should've paid more attention to you."
She grinned at that.
"Any last words?"
He hesitated. "Tell John…I~I love him. I've always loved him and I always will, no matter what happens- but you won't tell him, will you."
"It was just a formality."
"Can I make a phone call, then? Leave a note?"
She smiled benignly, as if she wasn't murdering one of London's finest minds.
"Of course."
He called John.
How ordinary, she thought. If she'd been him, she'd have taken that chance to pull out a gun and shoot.
But the idea either hadn't crossed his mind, or he was planning something different.
She stood closer to the edge and watched as John arrived in a cab, breathless and flustered.
"Sherlock?" She could see his lips forming the word.
"Stay where you are, John."
"No, I'm coming in. Where are you?"
They were sweet, Molly thought. Sweet, mindless, humble beings trying to live an exciting life, and no matter what Sherlock said, she'd always be smarter than him.
Molly stepped closer to the ledge, watching them talk.
"Stay where you are," Sherlock barked, eyes glistening. "Now look up."
She'd never thought she'd see the day Sherlock Holmes cried.
"Sherlo~no. No. This isn't real."
Sherlock managed a smile. "John, I~I need to say something. It's my note. That's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?"
"Stop this. Just stop this. Don't, just don't," John replied, voice cracking.
"It was all an act. A magic trick, if you will. None of it was real." He paused. "But I'm going to die very soon, John, and I need you to know something. Look behind me."
She could see John edge over, peer over Sherlock's shoulder to see her standing behind him.
"Oh God," he managed.
That had been his plan, she realized. Not shooting her, but shaming her, humiliating her as she had done him.
"Good-bye, John," he said, spreading his arms and falling off the ledge.
It took him exactly four seconds to hit the ground.
Molly counted.
The body hit the asphalt with a sickening crunch.
"SHERLOCK!"
John pushed at the passerby clustered around the detective's body. "Let me through, I'm a doct~"
His voice trailed off.
"No," he whispered in disbelief. "No."
Molly Hooper walked away from the building.
She didn't really want to hurt John.
He was such a nice man.
She thought of the flaw in her plan seconds after Sherlock killed himself.
Mycroft.
His CCTV. It would all be on tape, everything Molly had done, from telling Sherlock about the gunmen to forcing him to kill himself.
Damn it.
Her job would be gone and she'd have to spend the rest of her life in some cruel, inhospitable jail being tortured by Mycroft.
Fuck, Molly thought.
Fuck.
It was clear, really, what she had to do.
The Holmes' blood would be on her hands.
She made sure to disable every CCTV within a three mile range.
Waited in the shadows.
Anthea drove to Baker Street, probably to pick up John, Molly thought.
She pierced the window and the bullet plunged into the driver's heart.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Molly smiled. A crack shot, Sherlock had said at the first case he and John had shared.
He'd be proud of her.
She dressed up as Anthea, did her makeup, took the car to a repairman and paid him a hefty sum to keep quiet.
Constructing a makeshift bomb with a timer, she dropped it into Anthea's purse and drove back to Mycroft, telling him that John wasn't at Baker Street and he'd turned his phone off.
Mycroft sighed.
Molly smiled to herself.
He left the room; she fished a gun out of her bag and shot the cameras, taking care to put a silencer on the weapon so he wouldn't hear it.
Gingerly, she picked out the bomb and planted it in the room.
Set the timer for five minutes.
Ran like hell.
We're back at the point we began, where Molly ran away from the ruins of the British Government.
We know that all it took was a lot of guns and coercion.
We also know that fire washed along the building, killing Mycroft and his coworkers in a bright, almost blinding burst of orange and yellow.
After that, Molly took a train to the south coast of India, with its sparkling waters and golden sand.
It tickled her feet, got into everything: her shoes, her clothing.
To anyone else, she'd have looked like an ordinary tourist, lounging on the beach, but dear reader, both you and I know who she is.
Molly Hooper is not a girl with a crush on a great detective.
She isn't sweet, kind, or trustworthy.
Molly Hooper is the girl who killed England's greatest minds and lived.
The clouds grow thicker and darker, foreboding a storm, and the ocean roils ominously.
Someone pads along behind her, wind tousling his soft blond hair.
He pulls out a gun.
"Molly Hooper. I've missed you so," he says.
The girl whips around, a stone gripped in her hand; lips curling around words that she will never have the chance to say.
He clicks the safety off.
The stone drops to the ground.
fin