Special note: Please take a look at the cover image I have uploaded that my talented reader, Elizabeth Robello, did for me. A larger image can be found on my Tumblr page. Her images always make my stories feel more real and believable. If you view the larger image on Tumblr you will even see that the television screen is displaying the Teletubbies!

As always, thank you, Elizabeth!


Sherlock sat next to Molly and settled an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. He pressed play on the remote control.

She was surprised when the disc didn't immediately begin with footage from that day, instead, an image of Mycroft appeared.

"Sherlock, Molly, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you I have had this footage in my possession since shortly after the events of Sherrinford. I did not wish to share it with you until I could be certain your life as a couple was settled enough that it would not be too traumatic. It is approaching three years and I have seen how your life together with your two daughters is one of peace and contentment. Therefore, my plan is to give you this disc on the third anniversary of what I know Sherlock calls his emotional breakthrough. I have seen for myself that is an accurate description of what happened."

He paused, and Molly could see he was struggling to come up with what to say next.

Finally he said, "I want you to know, brother mine, you are one of the bravest men I have ever known and I am proud to call you my brother. Molly, your are a remarkable woman and it is my honour to call you sister. I wish the two of you many more years of domestic bliss together with your daughters and whatever other offspring you might choose to have. And now, you may proceed."

The screen changed to a much grainier picture. Molly watched Sherlock pacing a room and John getting up from a bed, heard a little girl's voice and then saw the lights turn red.

A moment later she heard a familiar voice that had existed only in her memory for several years "Hello. My name's Jim Moriarty. Welcome to the final problem."

Molly glanced at Sherlock whose expression was tense. She listened for another minute, then reached for the remote and paused the DVD. "Wow, if I didn't know your sister was imitating the voice of a little girl, I would have been fooled as well," she said. It was remarkable to be listening to that voice and the whole conversation that had convinced Sherlock, Mycroft and John that there was a plane in imminent danger of crashing.

Sherlock looked at her. "I remember feeling angry at the time that my sister was using an innocent child to further her own ends. The whole set-up with the Moriarty recordings was so elaborate that if I hadn't experienced it for myself I would not have believed it possible."

Molly reached up to brush at one of Sherlock's curls on his forehead. "You were certainly keeping your calm there despite the circumstances."

She hit the button to resume playback and then watched the scene unfold with the governor and the security camera then displaying an image of the woman behind Eurus, bound and gagged.

Of course, Sherlock had explained everything that had happened, but it was still a shock to see the way Eurus had so coldly demanded that either Mycroft or John shoot the governor. Watching John bail at the last minute and then seeing the governor turn the gun on himself was hard enough, but the completely casual way Eurus turned and shot his wife because the conditions had not been met made Molly's blood run cold. She had never really considered how ruthless Eurus had been.

Noticing Molly's expression, Sherlock squeezed her shoulder. "Do you need a moment?"

"No, I'm okay." Molly bit her lip and continued to watch as Sherlock onscreen picked up the gun, checked the clip and said, "There's only one bullet left."

She head Eurus's response. "You will only need one." A pause. "But you will need it." A chill swept through Molly and she clutched at Sherlock's free hand as she heard the hiss of a door slide open through which the men had to enter.

"I hate the visual effects, the way she made everything turn red and all those comments by Moriarty. It's like some horror film."

She felt Sherlock's lips on her hair before he said, "It was all part of her game to keep us off-balance."

Molly listened as Sherlock spoke in an encouraging voice to who he thought was the little girl. His voice was pitched higher than usual, in the way people typically talk to young children and she couldn't help thinking it showed Sherlock's true ability to connect with the young, even though he was not aware of it.

She listened and watched as the three men discussed the mystery of the Garrideb brothers and the way Sherlock was able to deduce who was guilty of murder.

Eurus's cold voice was telling Sherlock, "Condemn him. Condemn him in the knowledge of what will happen to the man you name."

Molly glanced at her husband, to see he was squeezing his eyes shut, obviously reliving the moment when he had been forced to condemn a man to death. She knew that would have been difficult.

"I condemn Alex Garrideb."

Even though she knew what was coming, Molly gasped when she saw the innocent men's ropes being released so they would fall to their deaths, then the same happening to the guilty party when John asked Eurus why she had done what she had done. Eurus's voice was so emotionless and again, Molly saw how truly disturbed her sister-in-law had been.

"It's coming, Molly. Be ready."

Molly turned her head to see a haunted look on Sherlock's face and knew what was about to happen. It was the test which involved her.

She saw the coffin, heard the conversation with the little girl and the men discussing what needed to be done, another quick chat with the girl followed by Eurus cutting the connection and saying "Coffin. Problem: someone is about to die. It will be, as I understand it, a tragedy. So many days not lived, so many words unsaid, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera."

Molly listened and thought Eurus had indeed been accurate. If she had died, she would have not told Sherlock she loved him, but she knew Sherlock had a different perception of what Eurus had meant. He had explained the conversation and how he believed it to have meant that Eurus was trying to force him into realising he had left so much unsaid, they had so many days not lived - together. Sherlock had told Molly that Eurus had confirmed this when he had questioned her about it, that the "I love you" was not supposed to be someone who loved him, but to bring attention to the one he loved.

Apparently though, Sherlock at the time had not immediately understood this to be the case. Molly listened to the rapid-fire deductions Sherlock made about the coffin, John's quip of "Lonely night on Google?" that made her smile briefly, and then Mycroft's interruption of Sherlock's monologue.

She watched as Mycroft showed the lid of the coffin to Sherlock with the plaque that said "I love you".

Molly saw as Mycroft's words, ending with, "So, who loves you? I'm assuming It's not a long list," resulted in an expression change by Sherlock and it was obvious he had just come to the realisation that the coffin was meant for herself.

Then she listened to Jon's assumption about the coffin being meant for Irene Adler and Sherlock's quick dismissal. She heard the slow words, "Unmarried, practical about death," that came from his lips and the way John finally came to the right conclusion as Sherlock said, "Molly Hooper."

Sherlock paused the playback just after Eurus said, "I'm calling her on your phone, Sherlock."

He turned to Molly and she saw tears in his eyes. "I was so afraid for you, sweetheart. As soon as I realised the coffin was meant for you I thought you were going to die. My sister had showed no compassion up to that point. I had no reason to suspect she would treat you any differently."

Molly leaned forward to press her lips against his briefly before saying, "I can see now how much you downplayed what happened. Do you want to turn this off? Is it still too hard to watch?"

"No, I want you to see me, to know the desperation I felt for you even before I acknowledged the reason for it, that I loved you more than life itself."

Molly's eyes, which had been filling with tears, overflowed down her cheeks at that and she felt Sherlock move his arm from around her shoulder so he could cradle her face gently with both hands. He kissed her again, the DVD temporarily forgotten as they expressed their emotions through the touch of their lips until a sudden wail came from the bouncer. So much for Christina staying asleep while they watched the DVD.

Molly rose from the sofa and picked up Christina, bringing her back to the sofa.

"Are you hungry again already, poppet?" asked Sherlock, bending to kiss his daughter's forehead.

'Molly smiled wryly. Christina was one of those babies who refused anything aside from Mummy's milk. Molly sometimes felt like her milk production must be lacking as Christina seemed to want to feed so often during the day, but she appeared to be growing well, as evidenced by Mycroft's earlier comment, so she supposed she had enough. It could be tiring though to feel a bit like a milking machine.

Molly lifted her blouse and unhooked her maternity bra while Sherlock hit the stop button on the player. The rest of the DVD could wait.

Fifteen minutes later, fed, burped and changed, Molly took the baby upstairs and put her into her cot in the room beside the master bedroom. Victoria's room was at the other end of the passage. There had been some discussion over whether to put the cot for Christina into Victoria's bedroom as well when she transitioned from the Moses basket a month earlier, but Sherlock and Molly had decided it would be better if the one child was not waking the other. So they were in separate rooms and two baby monitors kept vigil over their movements.

Molly laid the thankfully-sleeping-once-again Christina gently into the cot and hoped there would be no more interruptions for some time.

As soon as she arrived back in the front room, she saw Sherlock had made them cups of tea.

"Should we finish watching while we drink our tea?" Sherlock asked.

Molly picked up her cup and took a careful sip. "Might as well. I feel like we stopped almost at the climax of the whole thing."

Sherlock's lips quirked and he took as sip of his own tea. "I suppose a life -altering realisation could be considered a climax."

He turned on the Blu-ray player again and hit the skip button a few times until he got to the spot where he had paused playback earlier.

Molly heard Eurus's caution about Sherlock not being allowed to tell her what was going on, saw Sherlock's short nod. It looked like he was staring right at the security camera although Molly assumed he was looking at the view screen of herself. Mycroft had obviously had his team splice together several security feeds so that at times the screen image displayed Sherlock and at other times, her. The sound of the phone ringing began and Molly looked at herself getting her tea, glancing at the phone and ignoring it. She really hadn't been feeling good that day and she had still been a little upset over Sherlock not being in contact since before the Baker Street explosion.

Molly's lips curved upwards with Sherlock's surprise and pique at her not answering the phone, and his response to John's comment that he never answered his own phone. "Yes, but it's me calling." Sherlock knew her too well. She remembered wondering at the time how Sherlock had known she was even there, why he had made another attempt at calling her.

Molly set down her tea cup and watched the conversation, seeing her own eyes moisten at Sherlock's insistence that she say those three words, watching Sherlock's anxiety and desperation grow.

Sherlock threaded his fingers through hers. And then finally she saw for herself the expression on Sherlock's face when he had looked directly at the image of her, the way realisation had dawned in his eyes after he forced the words out for the first time, the absolute knowledge of the truth when he had expressed them again. It was utterly profound.

Molly let out a little sob, she couldn't help it. She and Sherlock had tried doing a "re-creation" of the phone call when she had been pregnant with Victoria but they had been unable to finish it, the hurt and anguish was still too present. This sob though, was a sob of joy.

Sherlock only had time to pause the playback once again as Molly flung herself against him and kissed him all over his face, understanding the final confirmation that those moments had truly been life-altering ones as Sherlock had said.

His arms went around her and their lips met in a fierce, passionate kiss that seemed to go on forever. They were both panting a little by the end of it and Sherlock stroked her hair. "Let's hurry up and watch the last bit and then we can go to bed."

Molly nodded and rested her head against Sherlock's shoulder as he pressed the button once again to resume the playback.

She saw Sherlock's anguish as he tore apart that coffin that had been meant for her.

This time she hit the pause button. "How on earth did you manage to tear apart a wooden coffin with your bare hands? It's like you were super-human or something, with the strength of Samson. I never really thought about it before."

Sherlock's lips quirked. "Not quite Samson, I'm afraid, my love. Actually, while the coffin looked like a real one, it was merely a façade with a thin, wood veneer over cheap materials that I didn't immediately deduce because I was too concerned with what the coffin mean. I hadn't intended to actually smash the coffin, was just going to bang on it in frustration. Then, when it completely broke apart so easily, I decided to finish the job. It disintegrated quite easily in the end."

"That explains why you didn't have any splinters or other visible signs from doing it." She kissed his cheek. "The fact that you felt so much anguish about what happened, it was another sign of how much you cared about hurting me." She hit the button to resume playing expecting the video was about to end.

She had completely forgotten that test was not the last one. Her mouth dropped open as Mycroft tried to bait Sherlock into shooting him, witnessed Sherlock's ability to see through his ruse. She then watched as Sherlock turned the gun on himself to begin the countdown to his own death, because he could not kill either John or Mycroft. She saw him pull out the tranquiliser dart from where it had hit his neck and collapse. And then the screen went black. That was finally the end of the footage. She knew what had happened beyond that had been at Musgrave Hall. There had probably been further footage of Sherlock and John being removed, along with Mycroft, that Mycroft had not bothered to share.

Molly took Sherlock's hand. "I forgot you almost killed yourself." Her voice was hushed and again she fought back tears, thinking of how things could have been different. It was yet more evidence of the grace of God to have brought Sherlock through it so they would finally have an opportunity for a new life together.

Sherlock looked at her, squeezing her hand reassuringly. "Remember what I told you Eurus said to me when Mycroft and I saw her a couple weeks before our wedding, when we were looking for her to confirm what we had learned about Moran being her secret contact and helping with everything she did? She expected me to do that, that is why the tranquiliser darts were ready. Despite her seeming anger and fear about my decision, it was all part of her plan to get me to Musgrave Hall for the final showdown to restore my memory about Victor. She'd already succeeded in restoring my emotions."

Molly nodded. "And she could easily have killed Mycroft at that point yet she didn't. Your sister really didn't know what she was doing, but she did care about you in spite of herself. I'm so glad that she has changed so much over the past three years. That anti-psychosis medicine has done wonders for her."

"It has. I forgot to tell you that when Mycroft was here over Easter, he told me he is looking into transferring her from Sherrinford to a facility that specialises in helping people with conditions like hers. She will never be able to lead a normal life, but she could lead a life that has more meaning than a jail cell. If she is transferred to this facility, she could even potentially meet her nieces, if you felt comfortable with it." He looked at her a little uncertainly.

"I don't think she would ever wish to hurt a member of her family again. She has also made a lot of progress in learning about the Bible and the values within it, the teaching about love and the other fruits of the spirit."

Sherlock dropped Molly's hand to pick up his tea cup and drain it. "I'm glad we are on the same page. Now, finish your tea. I'd like to spend so quality alone time with you while our daughters are sleeping."

Molly picked up her own cup and drank the now tepid tea while Sherlock turned off the television screen. She set down the cup, stood, and held out her hand to him.

He rose and their lips met in a fiery kiss that left them both longing for more than just kisses. "Well, happy third anniversary, darling," she said.

He looked into her eyes with the exact soft expression that had adorned his face on the video footage she had just seen, his voice reverent as he said, "I love you."

"I love you too, always."

Then, picking up a video monitor each that displayed an image of a sleeping little Holmes, and linking their free hands, they headed upstairs to enjoy a hopefully uninterrupted celebration of the love they had acknowledged to one another out loud three years earlier.


Author's note: I had to think about whether I wanted to take the time away from my other WIP's in order to do a story for the third anniversary of the airing of TFP on January 15th. In the end I found something I had been wanting to write about but had never gotten to do - Sherlock and Molly getting to view the security camera footage of that day at Sherrinford. I thought three years was probably a good amount of time to have elapsed.

So, I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse once again into the future of my characters and their two daughters. I know it can be confusing because I set my storyline kind of "in the future" from when the episodes aired (after all, I did not watch the show until the summer of 2017). I just liked the idea of doing "real-time stories" for them. This one then, is actually set in the future - May 20th of this year which is three years after my timeline of the events at Sherrinford.

You might find the conversation surrounding the coffin smashing is unusual; I've read several stories that talk about Sherlock having splinters afterwards etc, but there's no sign of it in the show that he was injured, so I decided to go with what I could see and make my own interpretation that the coffin wasn't solid and broke apart easily. What is your head canon on that?

Some of the conversation, as is usual for me, refers back to events that occurred in my initial post-TFP story. I will always promote A Journey to Love, Faith and Marriage because it is the jumping off point for all my Journey stories and I think the reader will have a richer experience if they have taken the time to read that particular story, long as it is. It provides context for everything else I have written for these characters in the "real" world.

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