This author thought she could do this without an author's note and discovered that the temptation was too strong.

Hi! I'm new and as for my name, I could never resist a pun. This is just something that I've been wanting to write for a long time; Sherlock characters in an Orphan Black AU. For those who haven't watched Orphan Black, don't worry this will be easy to follow, and yes I'm mixing things up in order to suit my spin better AND to prevent spoilers. This is actually quite exciting. Hopefully, I shall update on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

I do not own Sherlock, Orphan Black, or the works of Charles Darwin (from which the title is derived) don't sue me, all you'll get is my dog.

Felix's hands shook as he took the blood stained clothes and personal effects from the sympathetic morgue attendant (he was cute, definitely his type). He signed off on them, his signature veering slightly, only straying to take a peek at them when he was sitting on a bus, already well on its way to Brixton. A dress, a pair of shoes, a bag with her wallet, phone, and a few files from work. When this was done, he leaned back in his seat, dialing the number scrawled down hastily by his friend before she left—before she died. A man with an Irish lilt Felix only knew too well answered.

"Hello?"

"You bloody bastard, she actually did it. M-Molly's dead." It was then that he broke down, crying as James Moriarty hung up, getting strange looks from the others on the train as he tried to conceal it.

No one knew precisely what caused Molly Hooper to throw herself in front of an oncoming train in the tubestation.

John thought it was because she did exhibit signs of depression beforehand.

Her coworkers (primarily the nurses and interns) thought it was because of her failed engagement.

Mike Stamford thought it was because Moriarty had returned only twenty-four hours ago and she couldn't handle it.

Sherlock…Sherlock didn't know precisely what he thought (incredibly rare, he was aware) as he stood there, staring at the mangled body of Molly Hooper, the sheet taken down enough to show her face, but without sacrificing modesty. Lestrade had already made the identification and her friend had already been by to pick up the clothes and other personal items. Sherlock didn't know why he was there—how he got there required a trip in his mind palace to figure it out, it was all completely without thought—except to see that Molly Hooper really and truly was dead. Somehow, Sherlock was having trouble computing this knowledge, when something so straightforward was usually meant with instantaneous processing. It was definitely her face, though marred with new cuts from being thrown on the tracks; it was definitely her body structure, though maimed by impact. Unless Molly had a twin—doubtful as she was an only child with a loving family, deceased as well—then there was no doubt that Molly Hooper, Sherlock's pathologist and trusted friend, was lying on the cold slab before him.

Molly was dead and the last thing he said to her was much more than a bit not good.

12 Hours Before

Molly Hooper sat in her best friend's flat again, drinking red wine while Felix painted her, completely in shades of red. What had he called it? A monochrome, yes that was it, Molly wasn't an artist, so she didn't have that firm grasp on all the terms for everything. Then again, she doubted that Felix could name every single bone and muscle in the hand, let alone the entire body. He didn't even know what ligaments were. She smiled. She missed having evenings like this. But between her shifts and Felix's less dignified day job, she couldn't get to the flat above a chop shop as much as she would have liked. There was nothing quite like watching the tattooed and pierced out newcomers raising eyebrows at the little woman in the sunshine yellow jumper dashing up the stairs on her way to a gay male prostitute's residence. It was sad, but her friendship—they were almost like siblings—was the only lasting relationship she could lay claim to. Everyone else came and went, but Felix never left her.

"Molly, if you don't tell me what's causing that silly frown right this instant, I'm going to become very cross with you." Felix sat beside her, flicking her nose with a paint coated finger.

She shook her head, trying to focus on what she was there for, rubbing the red from her nose before she forgot about it and made an absolute fool of herself. It wasn't to be sad and it wasn't to reminisce. It was to try to figure out what to do, "Felix…do you remember that detective I told you about?"

"Sherlock Holmes? Easy on the eyes? Complete bastard? Has a slower resurrection than Jesus, but a little more permanent?" Felix ticked it off as if he were on a game show, having obviously not seen how upset Molly really was.

"Yeah…."

"What about him?"

She hadn't told her of her involvement in Sherlock's seeming miraculous return and she supposed that this wasn't exactly a brilliant time to bring it up, "An—an enemy of his is back." She shuddered, remembering that man, that horrible, horrible man that blew up old ladies and—no past, that definitely won't be happening again.

"Moriarty, the psycho Irishman and your—"

"Don't finish that." Molly snapped, dropping the glass and covering her face as it shattered, "S-sorry."

The glass went ignored, "What's wrong, Molly?"

"I—I sort of talked to him—to J—I mean Moriarty. He…he uh knows that…I am a friend of Sherlock's…an actual proper friend." Felix didn't need to know about it after all.

"WHAT?! What did he say, what does he want with you?"

"I—I have to—to kill myself."

"Absolutely—absolutely not—that's fucking mad, do you understand? You—"

"He says if I don't—he's going to kill you and he's going to blow up an office building…that's so many people Felix…so many people. I'm your only connection to Sherlock Holmes so if I'm gone he'll lose interest and—"

"Molly! NO!" Molly decided that the rest of their discussion would be on the streets, exchanged in whispers, wary of strangers, no matter how harmless they appeared. For if Moriarty knew her dear friend Felix, he would no doubt be above placing a few bugs in his flat.

Two hours after

It was child's play getting into Molly's flat—he almost considered reminding Molly to get better locks before he realized that she never would be able to—and after the note, he knew he could only try to figure out the puzzle Moriarty wanted him to solve—that is, without Moriarty knowing that Molly gave him an edge. Even now, James Moriarty underestimated Molly Hooper. To think, he probably thought that in getting rid of her, he was getting rid of one of Sherlock's advantages…which was true to an extent. However, Sherlock was also angry, oh incredibly angry, a rage that he never felt before at the thought of Molly…stiff…unmoving….FOCUS.

He found her laptop and used the password she had written (clever, unexpected) to get into her computer, opening one of the video files on her laptop.

Suddenly Molly was there—well not really, but it was a sort of relief to watch her twisting her hair nervously about her fingertip before speaking, adjusting the camera to make sure it was right.

"So…uhm…hi…I suppose. I'm sorry; I don't really know how to make these. I suppose not having much experience making suicide notes is a good thing…heh." Molly gave a short abrupt laugh, "Well uhm I suppose not much is funny to whoever's watching this, I've never been good at making jokes. I just—well Sherlock it's probably you watching this! Hi!" She ran a hand through her hair—nerves, exhaustion, stress, pain, fear—"I'd like you to know that…I'm not everything you think I am…I have never been. I—I don't need you. And Felix, dear? You'll be fine without me. So…that's it…goodbye."

The clip ended and left Sherlock clueless.

10 hours before.

Molly shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as she looked up at the cameras around her, sure that someone—Mycroft most likely, would see the horrifying events that would come to pass—that is unless she did it out of sight of the cameras. Doubtful, as Mycroft Holmes seemed to have eyes everywhere. Moriarty emerged, sitting on the park bench next to her, two coffees in hand. She ignored his offer, instead opting to look away and try to focus.

"You will do it of course…stupid sentimental woman." His voice took on a mocking tone.

Molly resisted the urge to imitate him, "How?"

"How did I know—"

"No, how will I die?" Molly bit back the insult that she drew close to actually saying, but she was pretty sure he knew she was about to call him an idiot.

He smirked, gesturing towards the camera he had his back to and the children playing on the swings "Well that's the glory of it; you get to choose, Molly Hooper. You get to choose exactly how you die, as long as there's no one there to watch."

"Why not?"

"I don't want anyone to describe to Sherlock your facial expressions as being more akin to fear rather than pain—and it has to be pain, Molly Hooper." Moriarty gave a giggle. Molly in turn resisted the urge to shudder.

"What about cameras?"

"My boys will black them out ahead of time. Don't even think about trying to get away. If your body is not on a slab when Felix comes by, then the deal's off." He sneered, "I'll be checking too."

"Fifteen million pounds—"

"He will suddenly receive a combination of cash, new accounts, grants, an unusually large life insurance claim from you, and a large sum from a patron of the arts." Moriarty cut her off, "Don't worry, everything is in place, Miss Hooper."

"The only reason I'm bothering to think you're telling the truth is that you actually followed through with the cabby's family."

"The money will insure that Felix's involvement will cease to exist after this. I'm assuming he'll probably run off somewhere people don't know him and start up under a different name or something. He'll forget you in no time. That's the thing about those street tramps, Molly Hooper; they just don't got the loyalty." He giggled, poking her nose, "So what are you going to do?"

1 Hour After

The first thing Sherlock did was tear through Molly's locker, looking for any possibility, as it was oddly untouched by her friend—Felix—why would she have been friends with a man like him? He filed the information under 'suspicious' and continued wrecking her locker, finding nothing of consequence except—except a note written clearly in Molly's gentle script, calmly with a time and date—four minutes after he had blown up at her—and he found himself slowly opening it.

Moriarty is back and I don't blame you xMolly

Laptop password: rT24drstb613sA

This note did nothing to quell the—guilt, yes precisely, it was guilt gnawing at him as he examined her room in his mind palace, a room with an off white door and only the label 'Molly' on it and he found himself unable to move as John pried the crumpled note from his grasp and read it, his eyes widening.

"Do you think she—"

"She wouldn't have thrown herself in front of a train of her own volition." Sherlock growled, "She knew the likelihood of cameras in the lockers was low, knew I would go through here, and this—this is her real note."

6 Hours Before

Molly paced back and forth while on her shift, despite the fact that she had plenty of things she could have been doing, all she could think about was death and dying and money and what it meant to really truly be dead. She also, oddly enough, wondered who would take care of her cat. Felix was allergic and would probably abandon ship in the coming months but—but that wasn't the concern now, was it? She was going to die, she was really going to die, and she, for her life of her could not figure out a way out. There was no way out, nothing short of a miracle could save her.

3 Hours Before.

Molly's teeth were chattering in her mouth and her hands were shaking so much that she dropped a petri dish, much to Sherlock's displeasure. He had been in a foul mood since his four minute banishment and return. She knew that he was antsy, wondering if this was really Moriarty—confirmed, Molly should mention that at some point—and when he would strike next. Molly stared blankly at the shattered dish, feeling the air in the room suddenly become very stifling.

"Molly, I had assumed you weren't completely useless, but judging by your current state, you're upset by something and it's affecting your work."

"W-would it kill you to ask?" She mumbled.

"I didn't catch that."

"Would. It. Kill. You. To. Ask. Me. What's. Wrong. Like. A. Normal. Person?" Molly annunciated every word carefully for the consulting detective.

"Frankly, I don't care what's wrong; I just wish you could actually be competent for once."

At least she now knew that her cat would be in the safe hands of her neighbor. She addressed that in a video she made, leaving it on her desktop. A woman like Molly would leave a note after all. That was different though. While she pretended to sulk in the locker room, she scrawled a note and threw it into her locker beneath one of her spare lab coats. Hopefully her real note would not be intercepted.

2 Hours Before

Molly paced back and forth along the train platform, trying to get a little warmed up. It was only a couple minutes before the next train would come racing down the tracks and she was utterly terrified. Beside her, she had placed her bag where it could easily be found, knowing that an identification would be easily made. As promised, when Molly looked up at the cameras surrounding her, they were all manually blacked out. How convenient. No one would see her contemplating life before the midnight train before she threw herself in front of it. But that was when she saw her.

Another woman, down past a payphone and a few columns, paced in front of the map, tearing at her hair, stomping out of her elegant—Christian Louboutin, pretty and easily identifiable, but impractical and way out of Molly's self-imposed budget—shoes. Molly found herself gravitating towards this woman, somehow coming to the conclusion that she was planning on doing precisely the same thing. It was just her luck to have another jumper trying to butt in on her (albeit forced) suicide. The time ticked down in her head as she drew closer about to put a hand on her shoulder to calm the woman when unexpectedly, she turned around and Molly saw—herself. It was a woman with a face exactly like hers, down to the nose, and hair that was colored a bit darker and quite a bit neater, but it was the same grain. The copy's lined and puffy eyes were dull and unhappy, barely registering Molly, and oddly enough she wasn't surprised to see a woman with a face exactly like her own.

Molly opened her mouth to speak, but the train came, and she could only watch as her doppelganger flung herself in front of it. Everything screeched to a stop as the doppelganger's body was tossed to the front of the tracks like a rag doll. For a moment, Molly stood there stunned. But then she remembered her predicament, her missed opportunity, the covered cameras and…oh.

Present

Molly Hooper stood before a hotel she had never seen before and was greeted by a doorman who she apparently had a long conversation with about London's pollution.

One Minute After

Most genius plans took time to develop; some years of careful planning, but every once in a while, a person could be struck with a most extraordinary idea that simply worked. Molly didn't have much time to marvel on the plan as she rushed to take off her flats, grab the doppelganger's purse and shoes and ran into the lady's room. There, Molly took down her hair and tossed her coat into the bin, throwing a wad of paper towels over it. In a stall, she applied lipstick she found in the woman's purse carefully—bright red, a shade Molly only dared to have on once—and some eyeliner, heavier than she would have made it. Her shirt was plain and green and wholly unimaginative—a very un Molly like gift from a well-meaning Felix. Quickly she rifled through the purse some more discovering its contents.

More makeup than Molly had owned in the past year.

Two cell phones, one of which was a burner—suspicious, but useful.

Seven hundred in cash—useful

A wallet with an ID—who was Elizabeth Childs and why did she look exactly like her?—A question for later—

A passport—She was Canadian?

A hotel key card—tourist, no a couple notes and texts from her boyfriend, he was there for work and she was along for the ride.

A couple voicemails, he was worried—the other mobile had three missed calls—not her problem not yet.

…Felix! Wait! The clothes—if Sherlock or Moriarty saw the clothes then this would be for nothing. She slipped on the shoes and undid a couple buttons on her shirt before emerging. The woman who came out of the stall looked very little like the woman who came in. Molly suddenly looked quite a bit like this Elizabeth Childs, the heels holding her to a new height, the lipstick making her mouth look much larger, and the eyeliner making her eyes less buggish. She shuddered and proceeded to walk out of the loo with head slightly bent; focusing on her phone as she was walking in order to avoid any cameras that might not have been blacked out—at least she could say that dealing with Sherlock had been a proper education.

Present

Unbeknownst to her mourning friends, Molly Hooper sat in her hotel room—No Elizabeth Childs did, not Molly Hooper, Molly Hooper was dead. Luckily her iPad (passwords to everything in notes on phone, Elizabeth Childs made Molly Hooper look like a genius) had loads of videos of Elizabeth—Beth—Molly corrected herself—and presumably her boyfriend talking to each other—his name was Paul he worked at a firm, Molly could do this, just to get out of the country mainly, the money would help, even without the money she could skate by as Beth until hopefully—until Sherlock beat Moriarty. Molly could only hope that Sherlock learned his lesson about playing with his food.

Until then, Molly had a few things to do in the few hours she had before Paul returned and they went to Canada—together. This was an odd thought. Molly never went travelling with a boyfriend before…then again, she never took a suicide victim's identity and ran with it. All of this was a learning experience.

"You're damn right." Beth on the screen said as she was practicing for her marathon—marathon? The woman did marathons? Shit, Molly might actually have to get into shape.

"You're d-damn, you're damn—" She practiced it as she colored her hair a shade darker (what sort of obsessive woman brings a dye kit with her on a trip? She probably didn't trust London's salons…fair point) "You're damn—you're damn right. You're damn right!" Molly declared almost gleefully, moving on to every other phrase that Beth Childs uttered.

Everything was going fine until—disaster.

"Look Beth." Paul's voice came through the speaker, as Molly tried to pack her scrambled brains into one place and simply keep from outright panicking, "The meeting's gonna go on for longer than expected a couple days longer, since we're having a hard time coming to an agreement—"

"Ah damn." Molly had no idea what this meant. Did this mean they would have to linger longer than she would want to? Long enough for Moriarty to figure her out?

It seemed to be an appropriate response, "Yeah and I know you're kinda bored here, so I think you should go ahead and go home."

"Oh okay."

"Love you."

"Yeah, you too." Molly replied distractedly, her accent almost slipping as she hung up the phone, her mind already rushing ahead to everything else she had to do before she hopped on that morning flight. The pink mobile that she previously ignored rang. Molly ignored it and called Felix's mobile from the burner "Felix. Felix it's me—"

"Oh thank—"

"Shut up and listen to me. Get my clothes before Sherlock Holmes comes. He'll know right away they're not mine. The pathologist will cut them away from my body. Get them and burn them. Collect your money, wait a week, go to somewhere random and then go to Toronto Canada. Tell no one. Act distraught but distracted by the money."

"Yes, Wendi, I've got the next shipment in." Felix's voice lifted and was suddenly quite flirty, indicating another presence, "Sorry, love, gotta trot." He hung up, and Molly hoped and prayed that first off, the signal would be difficult to trace, and secondly no one would bother to try and intercept that message even if they could.

Molly paced back and forth, waiting for her hair to dry as she packed up her clothing. She could do this; she had to. It was only until Moriarty was really and truly defeated. Then she could come back. Did Sherlock experience such fear and anxiety at the prospect of not returning for a long time? Probably not. Very little phased him and when it did, it didn't leak through to the surface all at once…although she had seen him once before when he was very distressed…Molly thought that she might be having a taste of how that felt. She took in one final shuddering breath as she walked into the airport terminal as Beth Childs, a woman dressed with class and taste that Molly Hooper didn't possess. She wasn't Molly Hooper anymore.

Ha! First chapter of my first ever official fanfiction! Done!