Title: Turn Left
Characters: various
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000 (five 200-word droubbles)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers in part 5 for a picture of Season 2 filming, though to anyone with an ounce of imagination and knowledge of ACD canon (of which I have both, and had already considered this scenario long before that picture was posted), it's not a huge leap of logic. Speculation regarding the Reichenbach episodes. BUT BE WARNED, IF YOU WANT NO S2 SPOILERS THEN SKIP PART 5.
Summary: Written for the sherlockbbc_fic meme prompt: Any character in the show is able to go back in time to one precise moment in the past. They can change this moment however they wish. To take back cruel words. To turn left instead of right. To study for that one exam. To snog senseless that boy from the corner shop. Anything, from the mundane to the exceptional. How does this one disturbance in time change the present? I'll take anything: be as cracky/angsty/sexy/drama-y/adventure-y as you want!
A/N:Yes, title is from the episode that began my favorite Who story arc.
1. Mike Stamford
Mike thinks Sherlock would get along bloody well with John Watson, and says so as he's trying to convince a skeptical John that the man isn't as mad as he sounds. Well, Sherlock is as mad as he sounds, but it's a good sort of mad and not a should-I-be-worried-he's-going-to-kill-me-and-use-the-body-for-science sort of mad. John is unconvinced that a borderline psycho would make a good flatmate, but at any rate Mike would like to see the two give it a go, at least.
They find Sherlock in the lab, doing what he does best; being dramatic and imposing and totally ignoring poor little Molly. John is a bit disinterested, more like he's humoring him, but Mike gives him a nudge as if to say well go on then, and John sighs.
"Mike, can I borrow your phone? Mine's got no signal, and I need to send a text," Sherlock states without looking up.
He sighs, retrieves the phone from his pocket. "Sure, here."
Sherlock glances up, eyes flickering over them, deducing, concluding, and turns back to his work. "Not interested," he drawls, fingers tapping away, and Mike knows it's hopeless.
Good luck finding a better potential flatmate, though, he thinks unhappily.
-00-
2. Mrs. Hudson
She didn't regret marrying her husband, despite how that turned out; because without him there would have been no meeting Sherlock Holmes, and such a unique and bizarre and frightening and altogether wonderful young man he was. She'd never had children of her own (which was a bit good, probably, given the psychopath her husband had turned out to be), and while he was a bit of an ugly duckling the dear boy was the closest thing she had. So no, she didn't regret marrying her Alfred years ago.
But now, looking at the havoc Sherlock has blithely wreaked in her hall closet, broom closet, lounge, and pantry (God knows how he got in, but he did, and John is not meeting her eyes which means he knew about it and didn't put Sherlock on the Respect for Private Property leash), in his search for that horrid skull which she had hidden last week, she does wish just a bit that she had hidden it somewhere easier to find.
And if those boys think she doesn't notice that two pieces of her cherry pie are mysteriously gone, then they are both more foolish than she would give them credit for.
-00-
3. John Watson
John Watson is a soldier, and a doctor, and altogether a sensible man. He knows better than to waste unproductive time with might-have-beens, and instead focuses his attention upon life. If he could redo a portion of his life, then most would think he would change being invalided out of Afghanistan.
He dreams of it, sometimes; dreams that he ducks just a bit lower over the broken body he's trying to salvage, dreams that he is able to outrun a bullet like an American superhero, that he serves his term and returns to England to live a normal life. But he does not wish for that in daylight, because if not for his bad shoulder, he would never have met a man who showed him a completely different battlefield.
No, he wishes to change an entirely different moment, and surprisingly gets his chance one morning, months after tenanting Baker Street. Sherlock has by now destroyed half his clothing, set the flat afire, broken every tea mug in the house, and blown up the microwave.
When Mycroft reiterates, "I would be willing to…monetarily compensate you, in exchange for information about my brother's state of health," John answers with a resounding yes.
-00-
4. Sarah Sawyer
Sarah's a Doctor Who fan, just like John, and they've spent several pleasant evenings watching Series One and Four reruns (she likes the Ninth Doctor, John likes Donna Noble), discussing the shows' principles and how they'd love to be able to go back and change history for the better of a suffering world. Sarah's always held fast to the principle of the series, that Time is sacred, and you can't change the past without changing the future.
But what she wouldn't give, to be able to change one thing.
Oh, it's nothing major, nothing earth-shattering or empire-crumbling, and nothing so selfish as altering their first date (other than the near-death thing, it was rather the most exciting story she could ever have). It's not even that she'd like to save a patient who died, though there is that – but the principle remains: life is sacred and the cessation of it is also sacred.
No, she would only change one thing if she were permitted it by the laws which govern such things; she would go back six months, and stop herself from ever agreeing to hire or befriend John Watson.
Not because she doesn't love him – but because she does.
-00-
5. Sebastian Moran
He knew it, he knew the minute the little demon-in-a-granny-knitted-jumper had snapped a hostage situation back on Moriarty so many months before that the man wasn't to be trusted as far as Moran could throw him. A grudging respect had been born that night, soldier and second-in-command against the same, and that was the only reason Moran hadn't put a bullet in John's brain the night Sherlock and Moriarty finally met head-to-head on the rooftops of London.
But Jim is dead, and Sherlock's whereabouts have been sealed tighter than a drum by someone-who-will-not-be-named in the political hierarchy (Moran thinks he's dead, because who could survive a fall like that and Jim's skull was shattered on impact, but they've released no body for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson has been acting anything but heartbroken), and the world has all gone to hell.
Now, he stares down the barrel of a Browning L9A1 to the steady hand and eyes beyond. It is the look of a man who has killed before, and for less reason than a dying – dead? – friend and commanding officer.
He should have shot John Watson the moment the man stepped out of the changing stall at the pool.