Authors note: I'm afraid none of the characters from the show actually appear in this chapter, and Sherlock himself won't show up for a while. Forgive me! It's a slow build up, but it'll be worth it.

Maybe,

I hope it will be anyway.

Enjoy!

Chapter One – Psychopathy

Psychopath. A psychopath, the modern day demon. Often when we read of serial killers, child molesters, etc. the scum of our society, the sickest of them are psychopaths. The media portrays them as monsters, psychiatrists describe them as such. But you want to know the truth? What a psychopath really is? Well, for once, the media's right.

No remorse, no empathy, no concept of consequences, impulsive, no control, all traits of a psychopath. And I hear what you're saying, 'I thought they were cold, calculating, and always had control?' Well, some do.

The men.

The female psychopath, however, is an entirely different creature. While you may describe the male as emotionally cold, the female by contrast is hot. Red hot. Although the two sexes share the fact that they have no empathy or remorse, the female rather than feeling no emotions what so ever, is ruled by them. Love, lust, anger, and hate. She is also impulsive, or at least, seems that way. She can decide in a split second that she's going to kill someone, and in that time frame we'd assume, thinking like a normal person, that she'd not thought it through.

Well, you'd be wrong.

In that second she's thought through every eventuality and possible consequence, and how to get around it.

No remorse, no empathy, and why would she receive justice for her actions? She was right, of course. On the off chance she was caught, why should she receive consequences, when her actions where correct? 'Oh, he had to die. He didn't tie his shoelaces right.' 'She had to die, she was flirting with my boyfriend.' 'He had to die, his crying was interrupting my sleep…'

Psychopath. Not a word you would in the least associate with Abigail Smith. Abigail, or Abbie as her friends (well, people whom she spoke to,) knew her, was a sweet, rather quiet girl who worked in the local police station as a receptionist. Yes, no one would suspect that underneath her perfect smile and cheerful demeanour that Abbie was boiling. She watched them, criminals, murders, coming in to the station after their arrests. And they made her angry. Not for the reason that they made the public angry, for their disgusting, despicable disregard for human life. No, they made Abbie angry because they were sloppy. They were stupid, they were idiots. Abbie loved to look through their cases and rewrite in her head how she would have done it. She took a long time, deliberating, planning on who, how and when she would commit her first murder. When talking to her therapist she let on none of this, of course. She had been diagnosed as psychopathic when she was just three, when she had burned down her family home, nearly killing her mother, father and three brothers. When she was questioned on why she did it, she had responded simply with 'because they had to go.' She was taken into care after that, bounced around a few foster homes, always freaking out her new family with how calmly she could talk about trying to kill her parents, and about how she would kill them, given the chance. Eventually Abbie became a ward of the state. Which suited her just fine. They gave her an apartment of her own in Wirral, with regular visits from social workers to make sure she was ok, a word to the neighbours to watch out for her. She was 12 by this point, and needed no supervision. It didn't take much for the neighbours to leave her alone, after the Rutherford's kitten was found in their blender, having been made into a lumpy, boney soup after Mrs Rutherford insistently and relentlessly tried to get Abbie to come over for dinner, play with her children, be a 'normal' little girl, the neighbours got the message.

After the kitten incident however Abbie was required to go weekly to a new therapist, one with 'special training' who could 'deal better with psychopathy.' This therapist was Mr Ballmer, and Abbie thought he was an idiot. He truly believed that he was the only one to which Abbie confided everything, all she had to do was bat her pretty green eyes at him and he'd melt. 'Expert on psychopathy my ass,' Abbie thought, she was 16 when she'd watched him tear up over her heart-wrenching confession that her father had beat her and her brothers, and she never meant to hurt them but she just wanted it to stop. This was all bullshit of course, 'they had to go' because Abbie wanted to be on her own. She didn't like sharing her toys, her space with anyone. She especially didn't like sharing her parent's attention with her brothers, they were worthless, were so stupid and ordinary and plain, why were her parents bothering with them? So, she figured she'd get new ones. A new family. But none of them worked out either, there were always other children in the house, others to steal her spotlight, so she couldn't stay there. At least living as an emancipated minor, she had the attention of the state. And how she'd loved playing that.

She knew that they were watching her, she could tell in a crowd who had been sent to watch her, and could sense when she was being followed. She loved it, to play games with them, to watch them panic when she'd seem to lead a child away from its parents, or when she was a little older seduce a guy at a bar and make to take him home. She'd never actually done anything, she'd always abandon the child just before it was out of its parent's sight, or get the taxi driver to take her potential bed partner/victim home. But watching the agents go into panic mode was fun.

Well, it was enough anyway.

After her 'confession' to her therapist he released a book, 'Breaking Psychopathy, by Charles Ballmer.' About how through 'therapy and meditation' he had cured a psychopath.

Bullshit.

But it was important for him to think that he had.

It was Abbie's 22nd birthday. She didn't usually celebrate birthdays, she didn't see much point. But today was different. She went to the hair dressers and had a wash, cut and blow dry. Nothing drastic, just a little trim to her naturally curly waist-length brown locks. She then went to the chemists and picked up a bottle of Tylenol, for her 'bad headache.' And then off to the off licence, to pick up a nice bottle of wine.

You see, tonight Abbie had a date. A Mr Oliver Carter, who worked the check-out at the local Tesco's, had invited her over for dinner.

So Abbie brought home the wine, uncorked it, and added nitroglycerin. This, when consumed, would give Mr Carter a headache. She then took out the bottle of Tylenol, and with a scalpel cut open all-bar-one of the capsules, and added cyanide to them.

Not a lot of cyanide, certainly not enough to show up on a drugs test, but enough to react with the alcohol and nitroglycerin in Mr Carter's system.

He would die of a heart attack, and Abbie in no way could be indicted for it.

To combat her own headache from drinking the wine she had the one safe Tylenol capsule in her skirt pocket. She would offer a capsule from the bottle to Oliver Carter, and in less than 5 minutes, he would be dead. She would then call an ambulance in hysterics, and they would get there just too late.

And if any of them did suspect foul play, she had many 'friends' down at the police station. 'Abbie? Sweet little Abbie? The receptionist? Oh no, definitely not. No way could she do that!'

With the testimony of the police force and lack of physical evidence, there was no chance of her going away for this.

So, having sealed the Tylenol capsules and re-corked the wine, Abbie got into her little mini cooper and drove to Oliver Carter's house. He greeted her enthusiastically, she returned the nervous grin he gave her, oh lord how stupid people could be, so easily fooled by a smile. The evening went rather pleasantly, the food was good. They drank the wine he provided first, well, he had most of it. Abbie had found this very agreeable, the more intoxicated he was, the less likely he was notice anything out of the ordinary. Like her taking the un-poisoned Tylenol capsule out of her pocket, rather than the bottle.

After dinner he uncorked the spiked wine, show time.

After they'd finished half their glasses the headaches hit, she smiled very sweetly at him, passing him the already open bottle of Tylenol, her own pill already in hand. He thanked her as he took the bottle, and was about to put the capsule in his mouth when –

"I wouldn't take that if I were you."