A weird plotbnny I had milling about in my head. Spoilers for the first season.
Disclaimer- Sherlock, its characters, its settings, and plotlines, are not mine.
Two And A Half Pounds
In a world where she is just slightly more imbalanced, Molly Hooper makes for a very bad killer, a very boring one. She meets her boyfriend in the Fox at six, just like they'd discussed in the presence of Sherlock Holmes, and, with mascara making long black streaks down her cheeks that are swollen from eating too much comfort food, she shoots Jim Moriarty in the face.
The last expression he is able to make before his head is a bloody ball of pulp is a large mask of surprise.
Molly Hooper sits down and asks the petrified waitor for mozzarella sticks, preferably with a side of tzatziki. Her small handheld gun is laid carefully down by Jim's blood-splattered plate, safety on.
"After all, we wouldn't want to hurt anyone, would we?" Molly murmurs, to nobody in particular.
Nobody seems to think of calling the police on this quiet and plain girl until one of the patrons, finally coming to his senses, pulls out his cell phone. Molly doesn't seem to care in the slightest. The waitor miraculously comes back with mozzarella sticks. In five more minutes, the police are here, among them Anderson.
"Oh, hell," he says to the distraught mortuary worker, "I know you, don't I?"
Molly doesn't seem to hear him. She is instead staring at the body of her ex-boyfriend in horrified fascination, reminded vaguely of that Monty Python sketch with the dead parrot. She supposes that by John Cleese's pontifications, this is an ex-ex-boyfriend...
"Is everyone all right?" asks another officer quickly and efficiently. "Nobody is hurt?" he reiterates when he is greeted by silence. "All right. Miss, you're under arrest for murder. You don't have to say anything, but understand that..."
Molly doesn't quite hear his speech. She feels as though there should be someone here to witness the most important thing that she's ever done.
"Where's Sherlock Holmes? You know, Sherlock Holmes?" she whispers in a fractured tone as the handcuffs are placed on her slim wrists. "I want to see Sherlock Holmes."
"She wants to see him, should we..."
"No."
Sherlock waits an uneventful three hours at the swimming pool, after which he ascertains that the elusive Moriarty is simply not coming. Disappointed and yet relieved, for some reason, he catches a taxi back to 221B Baker Street.
"Where the hell have you been?" John asks, obviously beside himself. "Lestrade was by at least five times since I came home, God knows how long you've been gone before that..."
"What's wrong? What happened?" Sherlock mutters, and looks around. In retrospect, it would be the perfect ruse to get Sherlock out of the flat in order to leave John at his most vulnerable. Not that John is vulnerable, or in need of protection or anything like that.
"Molly killed her boyfriend. Jim, from IT."
"...Who?"
"You remember him. You saw him only yesterday. And then you outed him as gay."
"Oh, I must have deleted him," Sherlock shrugs. "So, why has Lestrade been around?"
"He thought you might want to know that the sweet girl who helped you is in a spot."
"Well, what does he expect me to do? Wave my magic wand and make her innocent?"
"Right, I forgot you don't care."
And in this world where there was no bombing at the recreational centre, and where there was no stripping in darkened swimming pools, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson didn't quite mesh like they should have.