Thanks Araminta18 for the review on Case 13! I'm glad you're liking it, hope to hear from all of you soon about this one!
Heaven keep us apart
Sherlock did not believe in God. He believed that at one point or another in a person's life, they died and were put in a special room and set fire to. After that, those remaining around them cried for them to be brought back and did terrible things in the hopes of just such an occurrence until realizing the futility of such actions—and then they too waited to die. He believed that until one died—be that by horrific accident, the failure of a bodily system, or intentionally inflicted, grievous wounds to the body—one should wake up every morning and try not to be bored.
And, in the very few times that Sherlock Holmes was desperate, he did not cry out for God to save him. There was little point to such an irrational endeavor.
Today was one such instance. He was desperately trying to curb the urge to verbally accost Molly for her cries out to what amounted to an invisible friend as she moaned and sweated and shrieked. But she was giving birth to his daughter, and he decided he could allow her a few misguided ramblings to an Iron Age folktale. In fact, he was finding, he could allow Molly Holmes quite a lot. She had asked to get married eight days ago, and yesterday they had signed the papers.
John was on holiday, so, with Mycroft presiding, they'd married with Mrs. Hudson and Gregory Lestrade as their witnesses. Sherlock hadn't wanted to turn to his brother for such a favor, but the fact remained that Mycroft Holmes was probably the only public official whom Sherlock could trust not to invoke religion during the short ceremony. And in a way, reaching out to Mycroft subtly cemented the tentative friendship they were forming over the last few months—Sherlock had managed to shock his brother into realizing that he was no longer a strung out twenty-something ne'er-do-well, but rather a thirty-something man with a career and responsibilities.
When she'd asked, last week, Molly had mentioned that she'd been raised Catholic, her eyebrows raised in a manner she apparently hoped was significant. It wasn't, because Sherlock could read nothing from it. At least, there was nothing he wanted to read from it at the time. Now he thought back on the event and he wondered if he had missed something about Molly Hooper all these years—perhaps a quietly kept personal religious belief is what had gotten her through her years as a pathologist? The horror of death was less for her, because she believed it to be transitive?
Sherlock put it out of his mind. Molly's beliefs on the nature of death could be explored and corrected later, at the moment he knew he ought to be more concerned with the nature of life as his wife gave birth. He knew that getting married meant something dear to Molly, although he failed to see the importance of a legal agreement being evidence of love. Sherlock was much more of the opinion that the fact that Molly was the mother of his child was a much more convincing motivator towards fidelity and respect in their relationship—and he could back that claim up with a dozen different people. The very idea that marriage would somehow evince more good rather than not good behavior was ludicrous.
That was why he'd called Mycroft to preside. Because Sherlock had had no need for religious moralizing to chastise him into confining his attentions to Molly, and he did not want to start their legal marriage with ridiculous superstitious trappings. The only thing that their marriage certificate did was allow Molly some bragging rights among those she knew—she was married, and had to go home to cook supper for her husband, and being able to say those things would make Molly happy.
If it occurred to Sherlock how often he went through with doing something because it made Molly happy, he chose not to examine the full foundations of why.
Review?