A/N: Just a weird little ficlet inspired by the idea that Sherlock wouldn't exactly react well if things had gone pear-shaped at Sherrinford - but we know Molly will always do her best to save him. Rated K+.
Molly Hooper stood in the middle of an endless, dark plane, her desperate plea to any and all Beings that might exist, against all odds, having been heard - and answered.
Sherlock Holmes was a shattered man, destroyed by his mad sister's twisted tests. His best friend was dead, dead by his own hands because he had seen no other way to save - so he believed - hundreds of other lives.
He'd been wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong. And it had broken him.
And now, she just might have the chance to save him.
The Entity she faced finally spoke. "If I do this, change his past the way you so passionately begged Us to, Sherlock Holmes will be utterly changed. He will no longer be the traumatized man you know." Molly started to speak, but the Entity gave the impression of raising a hand to silence her, without so much as twitching a finger. She closed her mouth, heart pounding, and waited.
"He will live the life he was meant to live. He will never become the Sherlock Holmes you know, the man you fell in love with, the man you've devoted yourself to. He will never become 'the world's only consulting detective'. He will not fall into drug abuse and be rescued by a perceptive NSY detective who sees past the junkie and into the keen deductive mind behind the defiant façade. He will never be introduced to Mike Stamford, will never have worked with you at St. Bart's. He will," the Entity concluded, "never have met you there at all."
Molly swallowed, then raised her chin. When she spoke, her voice was steady. "That's fine. If he gets the life he was meant to have, then I don't care what it costs me. I love him." Her voice broke, just a little, then steadied again. "I love him," she repeated. "I want him to be happy."
The Entity once again gave the impression of movement, of a nod showing neither approval nor disapproval.
Then it vanished, and Molly Hooper's world returned, utterly altered. Without quite knowing why, she rushed to her laptop and looked up Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and Hat Detective and Reichenbach and every other way she could think of and found nothing.
She did, however, find information pertaining to a Professor William Sherlock Scott Holmes of the University of Cambridge. The picture was of him, smiling and comfortable looking in a tweed suit, and she wept even as she smiled. She didn't bother to read past the brief blurb on the search engine, describing him as a chemistry professor at the prestigious university, married with three children…
That was enough. He was alive, he appeared to be happy, and that was all she needed to know.
She closed her eyes as she rested her hand on the keyboard. The sound of footsteps behind her startled her; she started to turn when a curious voice, that of a young child, asked, "Mummy, why are you looking at Daddy on the computer? He's in the kitchen, silly!"
As Molly completed her turn, her expression turned to one of joy, then puzzlement as she wondered why, indeed, she had had the browser open to her husband's university bio. "Sometimes I just like to look at his picture, John," she finally said, reaching out so her five-year-old son could clamber into her lap. She ruffled the mop of auburn curls atop his head and kissed his upturned nose, so like her own beneath his father's eyes. "Just like I like to look at pictures of you and your sisters when you're at school."
Then she kissed his nose again, closed the laptop, and carried him, giggling, into the kitchen in order to see what exactly her husband had prepared for dinner this time.
As they left the room, she glanced back, brow wrinkled. Why had she opened up that browser, anyway? Such concerns - and even the memory of those concerns - vanished when she reached the kitchen and saw Will at the stovetop, John's twin sister Martha busy with violin practice, and little red-haired Mikey banging away at the tray of her high chair, babbling her baby demands for dinner.
Molly Hooper-Holmes smiled broadly at her husband as he turned to greet her with that well-loved smile of his own, met his kiss with one of her own, and sighed contentedly at the wonderful chaos of the life they'd created together.