Author's Note: Thank you for your kind words, lovely guest reviewers!
Sherlock wasted no time, shedding off his belstaff and scarf to dive in after the woman who was drowning—or so he thought. He didn't have a good look at her until they reached land.
"Mary!?" he questioned, his brows furrowing. "Great, now I'm hallucinating."
"Sherlock," she laughed, "I promise you're not. I'm your guardian angel—well, yours, John's and Rosie's."
"Right," he rolled his eyes. "Angels don't exist."
"Oh, Sherlock, you and I both know that isn't true," she replied. "Didn't you once tell Moriarty that you're on the side of the angels?" Now, he was listening. "I'm here to help you."
"I don't need help, Mary," he sighed.
"Oh, really? So you're saying you wouldn't have ended your life had I not jumped in ahead of you?" she asked. "I know when you're fibbing, Sherlock."
"Alright, fine!" he exclaimed. "So what if I would have? Your death is on my hands, Mary, regardless of it being your choice to take that bullet for me. If I hadn't instigated Norbury, you'd still be alive."
"You can't think like that, Sherlock," she told him. "My death is not on your hands. John was wrong to blame you. I took that bullet for you because that whole situation was my mess. I brought that danger to your lives, and if my death brought it to justice and kept you alive, then it wasn't for nothing."
"If you never met me, you'd still be alive, Mary. If I didn't exist, everyone would be better off, don't you deny it,"
"You may be clever, but you don't know a damn thing about how this world would be without you," she scolded him. Mary knew where this was going.
"I wish I had never been born," he spoke solemnly.
"Well, alright then," she shrugged. "You've never been born."
"Don't toy with me, Mary," he replied.
"I'm not. Go and see for yourself how everyone's lives would have fared without you," she encouraged. "Who would you like to see first?" Sherlock only grunted in response. "Alright, I'll be a little selfish…let's see John, shall we?" The two of them appeared at Bart's, leaving Sherlock to be clueless for once. They watched from afar as John entered his office, cane in hand with his psychosomatic limp.
"For God's sake, he has the mustache again," Sherlock complained.
"That's not even the worst of it," Mary couldn't help but giggle. "Because you never met John, he went back to a dull routine. Never cured that limp of his either. He never met me because you never faked your death…you weren't there to fake it. And so—"
"He never met you and Rosie was never born," Sherlock finished. He couldn't think of a world robbed of Rosie's presence.
"Did you have an appointment?" John asked suddenly, approaching them. "Sonogram, perhaps?"
"Oh, goodness no!" Mary replied.
"John, don't you know who I am?" Sherlock asked.
"Can't say that I do, sorry," he answered. "So, you're not here for an appointment?" They both shook their heads and John turned to walk away.
"He doesn't know me at all." Sherlock now knew that his wish had been granted, but now he wasn't so sure it was clever of him. "So, where are you? At the surgery?" She never answered, but instead they appeared in a cemetery. It was cold and foggy, but the chills did not come from the temperature when he looked down to see the gravestone in front of them.
Here Lies
Rosamund Mary Morstan
"Dead," she told him. "Either way, with or without you, I'm dead. I shot Magnussen and Norbury hunted me down. See? It wasn't your fault." Sherlock finally saw the light being shed on that subject. Mary's death truly wasn't his fault.
"No, it wasn't," he realized. "I'm sorry, Mary."
"There's nothing to be sorry for," she replied. "It was my past that caught up to me. I wasn't about to let you die because of the mistakes I made. With or without your instigation, I died. It's what was meant to be, Sherlock."
"I see that now," he confirmed.
"We should visit Greg next," Mary suggested. "What say you?"
"Let me guess, many murders went unsolved because he didn't have me to consult with?" Sherlock asked with snark.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it…come along," she told him.