A/N: A little fic to mark one year since His Last Vow aired.

There are numerous possible outcomes to that evening in Magnussen's office. There is the world where everything works out all right (well, reasonably), where they never discover that Mary was there that night, the one to murder Magnussen. This is the world where Sherlock was never shot, where everything continues on interminably, and mysterious deaths of people who may or may not have proved to be trouble for Sherlock and John pass unnoticed, aside from the occasional eye raising occasion where things seem almost too coincidental. (Mycroft, of course, knows the truth, but he keeps quiet, having an agreement with Mary codename A.G.R.A. whereby she'll protect his brother and he won't tell her secret.)

Then there are the other worlds, the ones where things do not work out so brilliantly. Sometimes, Sherlock lives, eventually. And sometimes, he and John end up together in the end, intimate nights spent together, each protecting the other. Others, revenge is wreaked after all, Sherlock – or John – left dead by some means or other so that there can be no recovery and happiness.

Sometimes, he dies from the bullet wound. There is the world where his heart has stopped already by the time that John finds him sprawled on the floor of Magnussen's office, body lifeless yet John tries to revive him anyway, tries to bring him back and keep him in the world of the living, no matter how futile he knows that to be. (He has seen bullet wounds like that before, ones which proved fatal and ones which didn't, and he prays fervently that this is the latter.) Not even the paramedics can resuscitate him, and afterwards it's all that John can do to keep from falling apart with the agony of it all. (Mary's child, it transpires, is David's. John has no problem in divorcing her before Mycroft takes her to trial. Months later he hears that she died quietly in prison, and feels no guilt over it.)

Then, there is the world where Sherlock dies in 221B, result of a fatal haemorrhage after bursting the stitches in his vena cava. This is where John blames himself the most, because he should have seen it, should have deduced. He's treated internal haemorrhages before, knows the signs and symptoms intimately, but when it comes to Sherlock he's so angry over everything with Mary that he simply fails to see, and so Sherlock dies, life draining out of him as he sits in his chair, passing into unconscious before death takes him. (John catches him when he slumps in his chair, checks the thready pulse and shallow breathing, administers CPR when he goes into cardiac arrest before the ambulance arrives. And yet, none of it is enough.)

In some worlds, it is a hospital-acquired infection which takes Sherlock in the end – post-operative pneumonia, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus or a host of other things. And that's if he survives both surgeries, which doesn't always happen.

Then there is The World, the one where he gets shot and survives, though even there it is close, and for a long time looks as if he won't pull through. (There are other worlds which don't bear thinking about – worlds where he survives the shooting and the infections and is killed on the mission.) Mary's deception is revealed, Magnussen is taken care of, and Sherlock is spared his Eastern-European exile. Eventually, as was bound to happen after Mary has left the picture, the two boys come to their senses and realise what they should have seen long before.

(And that world is rightfully considered a miracle.)