"Look, I know he's a bit of a berk, but trust me, Mom...lly, he's the man you fall in love with and marry during your gap year!"
Molly gaped at the earnest young man who claimed to be her son from the future. "Are you mad? I'm not even taking a gap year, I'm going straight to Uni!"
His eyes widened in an expression of pure alarm. "No, no! You have to take that trip to Scotland or it'll all be ruined!" More quietly he added, "We won't exist."
"If he's from London why don't I just skip Scotland and meet up with him here?" Molly argued back. Not that she believed any of this of course. She was just...humoring the local loonies. Yes, that was all. "Maybe after I've finished my studies, got a job at a good hospital like St. Bart's -"
"No!" That was the young man's twin sister, the one who looked an awful lot like her own Aunt Eleanor, or would if her Aunt was sixteen instead of just this side of sixty. "It has to be in Scotland! If you meet him after you're both older, not only will we never be born, but it'll take you ages before you even admit you love each other! And that'll only be because someone forces you into it! Thanks for THAT gaffe, Auntie Eurus," she muttered as a baffling aside to an already baffling conversation.
"Look, just because you know an awful lot about me and supposedly about this Sherlock bloke you claim is your future father and my future husband, doesn't mean you're actually our kids from the future," Molly argued, wondering how she'd let herself get drawn into this mad, mad conversation in the first place. Why she hadn't just dismissed the twins as either pranksters or loonies and gone on her way?
Why hadn't she? Was it because of the family resemblance she thought she spied in the girl? Was it because of the way the boy sounded just like her father when he used to passionately argue sports and politics with her Uncle Seamus?
Or was it because of those cat-like blue-green eyes they claimed were inherited from this mysterious man they so desperately wanted her to meet? In Scotland?
Or maybe it was because of all the little details they knew about her, about her life, things they couldn't possibly have learned without speaking to her or members of her family. And even Uncle Seamus wouldn't go along with a mad prank like this one had to be...
"You'll tell him he looks sad," the girl suddenly said. "The way you always said Granddad looked sad when he thought no one was looking. He'll be rotten, he'll deduce the hell out of you, but you'll see that he's struggling to stay clean after getting out of rehab, and you'll just…click."
Molly felt as if every particle of oxygen had just been whooshed from her lungs. "How, how can you - not even my mum knows that I saw how sad Dad looked, that last year…how can you know that?" she cried out.
The girl took her hand and gave her a sad smile. "Because you told us," she said simply.
Six months later Molly found herself on a train to Glasgow, not sure if she was going to meet her destiny or not, but somehow looking forward to seeing those blue-green eyes on this mysterious "Sherlock Holmes" and judging for herself if he was, indeed, the man she was going to marry.
A/N: Coming soon, Part 2: How I Met Your Mother