A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing chapter 1 of this twisted saga. As always, thanks to moonmama for the arduous task of betaing this beast, and to Adi Who Is Also Mou for inspiring me to write it in the first place! This chapter has warnings for violence - remember, folks, Alt!Sherlock is Not Nice...and Molly is about to discover how Not Nice he really is...

Chapter 2: Welcome To My Nightmare

She'd fainted. Not unexpected, since he'd deliberately left off explaining that he was about to cut her free (all in the interests of science, of course; no matter how sharp a left turn his life had taken since his childhood ambitions to be the world's greatest chemist, he still retained a fascination with experimentation), but certainly an interesting response to stress. No, not stress; to the pure, unadulterated terror he'd seen in her eyes, the panic, the pleas she hadn't allowed to escape her lips.

That was the most interesting part, that remnant of self-control she'd retained in spite of her obvious bewilderment and fear. He'd seen the scream building behind her eyes as he'd made his way deliberately to her side, but she hadn't allowed it to escape.

While she sat with her head slumped on her shoulders, auburn hair partially obscuring her face, Sherlock sliced her right hand free and allowed the nylon rope fragments to drop to the floor. As he did so he noticed that she was still bleeding; in his haste to be out of the flat and (no doubt) off to the nearest gambling den, Watson hadn't bothered with so much as a sticking-plaster on the inside of her arm.

He could care less about her comfort, but the imported hardwood flooring was a bitch to clean. Expensive, too, and he had no interest in either dealing with such trivialities himself or waiting for his housekeeper to take care of it after she returned from the week-long holiday he'd granted her to visit her alcoholic brother and his sniveling wife (and their three teenaged brats, on whom Mrs. Hudson, an otherwise unsentimental woman, inexplicably doted) in Leeds.

Although it was a nuisance, he took the time to locate some cotton batting and medical tape in the kitchen emergency kit, applied it carelessly to his prisoner's arm, then cut her ankles free.

Only her left hand remained tied to the arm of the chair; after a moment's reflection, he decided to leave it. It wouldn't do to have her dislodging the IV, after all, if she woke up thrashing or decided to try and make a break for it. Yes, she could potentially free herself during a moment of distraction on his part (Hah! Small chance of that...) but her reaction to partial freedom was precisely the reason he was undoing her bonds in the first place. She should still be groggy and susceptible but experience told him everyone reacted to the drug cocktail differently, and if she was here deliberately, as some sort of decoy or distraction, he doubted she would willingly subject herself to further – and far more serious – attempts at interrogation.

Either way she would give something away to his careful observation of her. It was, he concluded, well worth the risk that she would (unlikely in the extreme) turn out to be some sort of martial arts master capable of taking him out whilst still tied to a chair.

She regained consciousness within minutes, while he carefully monitored the dose of truth-serum – his own formula, carefully balanced with a sedative also of his own devising and one of his more successful commercial ventures – dripping into her system.

He heard the subtle changes in her breathing that signaled the return of consciousness, felt her disoriented eyes upon him as they fluttered open, and deliberately ignored her as he made a minute adjustment to the flow. Dr. Watson (no major vices other than the oh-so-convenient gambling addiction, a competent doctor although an indifferent phlebotomist, with a sister who drank and was rather overbearing, all facts that could be extremely useful in the future) had done an adequate job adjusting the dosage, but Sherlock Holmes never entirely relied on anyone else's expertise if he could help it.

By the time he returned his attention to Molly, she was shaking. Good. He'd allowed Dr. Watson to do take his samples without further questioning to give her a chance to try and adjust to what was happening to her, but that interval was over.

He'd also used it to give himself time to ponder what little – but very, very interesting – information he'd gleaned so far.

She recognized him. Not so unlikely; he was something of a celebrity, after all, in his own right (for his alleged crimes, which he delighted in flaunting before the authorities who sought –unsuccessfully – to convict him) and because of his relationship to his rather more famous (although still infamous in certain circles) brother. But it was more than that, a mere recognition of celebrity; she thought she knew him, well enough to call him by his first name, a liberty he decided to tolerate, at least for the moment, for the sheer novelty of hearing it from the lips of someone other than a detested family member.

Even more interesting was the fact that she also thought she knew John Watson. She'd believed the man, whom he'd never met before this evening, lived here – interesting, that. She'd recognized them both immediately upon wakening, and had seemed to recognize Moran – or at least thought she did – and been surprised to find he wasn't who she'd been expecting to see.

The question was, then, who had she expected to see? And yes, expected was the right word to use. She'd focused on the three men in front of her as if it was the most natural thing in the world; she hadn't seen them as a threatening trio of strangers looming over her in a strange place.

She'd recognized the flat as well, which was among the more interesting – and disturbing – things he'd learned about her so far. It would certainly require further investigation.

But not just yet, not until he appeased his curiosity as to who she'd expected the third man to be. "You recognized me, you recognized Watson, and you thought you recognized Moran," he began without preamble. "Who did you think he was?"

She stared up at him, her eyes darting downward as he gave the riding crop an idle twitch. She bit her lip nervously and shied away; good. She was already intimidated and well on her way to being properly trained to respond to his nonverbal cues; he would be sure to keep the crop on hand during all future encounters with her.

"G-greg," she finally managed to stammer as her eyes once again met his. Smart girl, she knew better than to break eye contact for more than a brief period of time. And she apparently understood the futility of attempting any kind of an escape, beyond the surreptitious testing of her remaining bonds (which he'd anticipated, of course). He watched impassively as she winced and stretched out her legs, flexing her right wrist at the same time to try and ease the cramping that had no doubt set in. "I – I thought he was Greg. Lestrade," she added, as if suddenly realizing he might need more information than just a first name.

His eyes narrowed at the revelation – he certainly would never have anticipated that. "Greg Lestrade," he repeated disbelievingly. "The Scotland Yard inspector. You thought he would be in my flat…why?"

"Be-because you're friends, he was at the party," she replied, still stammering but speaking slower this time. Good. He continued to monitor her reactions carefully, noting the slight relaxation of her body as the increased dosage made its way through her system, the dilating of her pupils and deepening of her breathing. He wanted her acquiescent but not so far gone as to return to the giggling idiot she'd been when she first regained consciousness.

By the end of the three-hour interrogation, she was nearly unconscious again, her entire body trembling and sweat-covered, with a spectacular set of bruises on her thighs from the three times he'd felt she needed "encouraging." There was a smaller bruise decorating the inside of her left arm around his make-shift bandage from Dr. Watson's indifferent abilities with the needle, and tears streaked her cheeks. All in all, a most satisfactory outcome for an evening's work.

During those three hours other things occurred, of course. His "loving" brother had contacted him via message, a testy note stating that anything Sherlock had to say could bloody well wait until after the holidays (not unexpected but extremely vexing; still, it would be a real pleasure to see Mycroft's reaction when he realized how urgent – and potentially vital to the security of the British Empire – Sherlock's message had actually been).

He'd also met with Wiggins from IT (Molly having once again slipped into unconsciousness for the duration of that visit) and his assistant, Jamie something-or-other Sherlock hadn't bothered to memorize and never would unless the underling managed to impress him enough to rise higher in the organization's hierarchy. They had been dispatched on separate missions, Wiggins to review the flat's surveillance data, Jamie to perform the necessary scans to prove (or disprove, as it turned out) the presence of any kind of electronic equipment that might have been used to create the illusion of a woman hovering in mid-air during an indoor electrical storm and then being spat out onto the floor like a discarded packet of crisps.

The younger man (Irish mother, English father, only child, gay, nothing else about him currently worth deducing) had had the common sense not to so much as raise an eyebrow as Sherlock detailed his duties to him, had simply nodded quietly and gone about his business. He was due to return in the early hours of the morning and conduct a more thorough search of the interior of the flat, but only after Sherlock was finished with his current project.

By the end of the third hour of her interrogation, he'd discovered a great many things about his unexpected guest, some from her and some from a computer search based on the full name she gave him when he demanded it from her.

She claimed to be Dr. Molly Elizabeth Kathleen Hooper, age 32, born in Derbyshire 6 June 1979 to John and Patricia Hooper, now deceased. She claimed one brother, Kevin Matthew Joseph, aged 27, currently residing in Australia, unmarried, working as an investment counselor in Melbourne. No other living relatives. Pathologist at St. Bart's Hospital for the past six years, straight out of medical school (graduated with honors from Edinburgh). Licensed driver, non-smoker, social drinker. Owner of a three-year-old marmalade tom named Toby, first-time visitor to 221B Baker Street at the invitation of Dr. John Watson, flatmate and close friend to the man she harbored a rather large crush on – Sherlock Holmes.

Consulting Detective.

His lip curled at the thought of using his vast intellect for something so mundane and boring as assisting law enforcement. Really, the idea that he would stoop to helping DI Lestrade – who was currently proving to be a frustratingly difficult man to bribe, blackmail or otherwise compromise into submission the way so many of his counterparts at New Scotland Yard had been, but his people would keep digging, searching for whatever vice or weakness the man was bound to be hiding – whilst simultaneously wheedling corpses and body parts to experiment on from this woman…ludicrous, that's what it was.

Absolutely ludicrous.

And yet…

She believed it. Every word she spoke appeared to be the truth as she knew it. She didn't recall how she'd arrived here, still insisted she'd taken a cab, that she'd been invited to a party, but he was willing to set that aside for a more intensive interrogation once his suspicions had been confirmed.

Later. Eager as he was to learn more, as an experienced interrogator he recognized when it was time to end his questioning and allow the subject time to recover. Dr. Hooper was clearly exhausted, and although the drugs took the edge off her terror, it was equally clear that her ability to string together a coherent sentence was rapidly deteriorating. He would resume his questioning in the daylight hours.

It would be a fresh start in more ways than one; before he removed the IV drip, he opened the tap to its fullest, allowing her system to be overwhelmed by the drug cocktail for the briefest of seconds. It would ensure amnesia, wipe her memories clear, give him a second chance to assess her in the clear light of day and with no conscious memories of her interrogation clouding her reactions.

She went limp as he carefully removed the needle from the back of her hand and cut away the final set of bonds before lifting her in his arms and once again carrying her to his bedroom. She could sleep there for the night, as he had no intention of using either of the beds in the flat – or in any of his other homes or work spaces – anytime soon.

There was nothing, short of a drug overdose such as he'd so carefully administered to her or a blow to the head, that could slow his brain down enough for him to sleep at the moment.

Whenever you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

It was his mantra, along with never give a sucker an even break and only a fool trusts others.

Although it was still possible that Molly Hooper had been transported to his flat from some nearby location, his current theory was that she came from much further away.

From another, alternate reality, to be precise. Another London, another Earth, where there was another Sherlock Holmes. One where he was some soft-brained consulting detective. It fit the facts, and some promising physics research at Oxford he'd read about recently would seem to back up his current theory as to Dr. Hooper's extraordinary origins. He would put Wiggins and Jamie on it as soon as they completed their current duties.

It was still possible that his tentative conclusion was incorrect, that she was here as part of some elaborate hoax or deception by an enemy, or that his original theory that she was here due to some kind of experimental form of transportation malfunctioning would prove to be correct, but he felt the confidence of a correct deduction and that certainty was something he never questioned.

Certainty or not, however, he would still need to do some research of his own, to ensure that Wiggins and his assistant were looking in the correct locations.

He grinned as he carefully laid his "guest" on the duvet and stepped back to regard her unconscious form, reveling in the mystery she represented.

All in all, he couldn't recall when he'd spent a more delightful Christmas Eve.

oOo

Molly woke up, disoriented and aching, for the second time in twenty-four hours, although she wasn't to realize it was the second time she'd awakened until much later.

Whether she remembered or not, it didn't take her nearly as long to recover the second time round, especially once she realized she was lying on top of the duvet of a strange bed, in a room she'd never seen before.

Oh God, how much had she had to drink at that party last night? She frowned, blinking as she surveyed the room before returning her attention to herself. Taking stock, as it were. She was relieved to find that she was still fully dressed – including her knickers – then worried all over again as she noticed she was wearing only one of her stockings and that her shoes were nowhere to be found.

It was even more of a relief to realize she was completely alone. Nor was there any sign that someone else had shared the bed with her – no indented pillow, no discarded clothing, no lingering scent of cologne – but even though that made her feel fractionally better, the fact that she'd apparently passed out in a strange bedroom was enough to make the bile rise in her throat.

She sat up cautiously and swung her legs over the side of the bed, resting with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands on the mattress as she waited for her head to stop spinning. God, she normally only had a glass or two of wine; had Sherlock been experimenting with the alcohol? She wouldn't put it past him to do something like that, but she doubted John would let his flat-mate get away with such a thing.

Sherlock. Why did the thought of him send a cold shiver down her spine? She didn't honestly think he'd dosed her wine with something sinister, did she? No, of course not. She'd just taken too much to drink, and the most likely explanation for waking up here was that either John or Mrs. Hudson had put her to bed to sleep it off rather than bundle her into a cab and hope she made her way home safely.

Which meant this was either John's or Sherlock's bedroom – probably Sherlock's, judging by the framed periodic table of the elements decorating one wall and the human skull sitting on the edge of the dressing-table. She just couldn't picture John Watson keeping so gruesome a souvenir – not to mention the fact it looked suspiciously like one that had gone missing from cold storage a year ago, now that she was giving it a proper look.

Her critical examination of the questionable skull was cut short when she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and winced at the image presented there. Skin paler than normal where it wasn't blotchy, eyes red and baggy, her hair a witch's snarl around her face, with the silly little silver bow she'd pinned there all squashed and shapeless but still firmly in place – God, she looked deader than the skull. She moved her legs and let out a stifled yelp of pain; why did her thighs hurt so much, and her arm, and her left ankle, and the back of her hand and head…

She froze, eyes widened in shock as she looked down at herself. She'd been too bleary to notice before, but her left leg, the bare one, clearly showed the angry red marks of scratches on her shin and ankle. She'd been scratched by enough cats in her life to recognize the type of injury she'd sustained, but there was no cat outside of a zoo in London that could have done that much damage to her.

Someone – some person – had scratched her. And someone had done something just as painful to the tops of her thighs; she saw more dried blood and several bruises there, painful to the touch when she prodded gingerly at them. Moving her arm revealed another mystery; someone had put a make-shift bandage on the inside of her right elbow, as if she'd had blood drawn…and there, on the back of her left hand, was the tell-tale sign of bruising where an IV had been placed and removed.

She reached up gingerly to prod at the back of her head, gently investigating the sore spot she found there, feeling the lump that had been raised – how? Had she been in an accident of some sort? "What happened last night?" she asked aloud, thoroughly bewildered and not expecting an answer.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she received one.

"Evidence would suggest that you were somehow dragged from your world and dropped into mine."

She recognized the deep baritone of his voice before she turned her head to confirm that yes, it was Sherlock who'd spoken. He was lounging in the doorway, studying her, raking his eyes from her disheveled head to her half-stocking-clad feet, missing nothing in between. Looking as put together as always in dark blue shirt and gray trousers that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe, the git.

So. Unfair.

"Did I – was there some kind of accident?" she asked, swallowing hard, trying to will her heartbeat back down to its normal rate, ignoring the cold sweat and goose bumps that had broken out over her flesh at the sound of his voice.

You always say such terrible things…

Unbidden, the words echoed through her mind; had she said that to him, last night? Was that why she found herself reacting to him with an otherwise inexplicable sense of…dread? Had he said something to her at the party, hurt her feelings or verbally cut her down or…

The party. She was still in her dress, so the party had been last night. Which meant it was Christmas Day, and he was apparently stuck babysitting her unconscious form when he probably had family celebrations – or, more likely, experiments – to get to. She pushed herself up and away from the bed, determined not to be any more of a burden than she clearly had already been…

…and cried out in pain as her legs gave way, buckling beneath her, nearly sending her crashing to the floor.

Thank God for Sherlock and his uncanny reflexes. He was across the room and catching her in his arms before she'd finished crying out, setting her back on the edge of the bed and crouching down in front of her with a critical look on his face. "God, Sherlock, what happened last night?" she blurted out, face burning but determined to get some kind of an answer before doing anything as patently stupid as trying to stand up again.

"I already told you, Dr. Hooper. Due to some currently unidentified phenomena, you were somehow removed from your own universe and quite literally dropped into mine." His voice was cold, his hair – Good God, what had happened to his hair, who had butchered those lovely curls and left behind nothing but this sleek, dark smoothness?

"I don't, I don't understand," she said, forcing herself to pay attention to what he was saying and not how he looked (gorgeous, intimidating, cold, the usual but something more, something she didn't want to identify). "Is this – a joke?"

He huffed impatiently and rose to his feet, grasping her by one arm and yanking her upright. She cried out as her legs continued to cramp, as his fingers dug cruelly into her upper arm, then bit her lip and did her best to stifle further expressions of pain based solely on the icy fury that had arisen in his eyes and threatened to unleash itself on her.

She was, for the first time in her life, properly terrified of a man who'd only ever intimidated her before – with the force of his intellect, the cutting edge of his tongue, and yes, his incredible good looks. But she'd never, ever felt actual fear for her physical well-being when confronted by him.

She certainly felt it now. She felt it as he dragged her out of the bedroom and down a short hall; she felt it as they entered the flat's sitting room; and she most certainly felt it when he threw her roughly onto the elegant leather sofa that dominated the area in front of the white marble fireplace. That feature caused her to do a brief double-take; marble? Hadn't his fireplace been dark brick or stone, before?

Then he started explaining things to her, coldly and precisely, and Molly felt her terror rising with every word.

He'd been speaking quite literally when he told her she was in a different world than the one she'd woken up to yesterday morning.

It was still London, England. It was still Christmas, 2011.

Nothing else was the same.

For one thing, she, Molly Hooper, didn't exist. Well, she did, but only as a long-dead corpse.

In this world, Molly Hooper had died at the tender age of twelve, victim of a house fire started when her father had fallen into a drunken stupor whilst smoking. He'd died, his only daughter had died (no Kevin here, he'd never existed); even their dog Toby had died. Molly's mother had already been dead for a year at the time, the victim of a mugging on her way home from the second job she'd been holding down in order to keep her house from being repossessed for unpaid taxes after her husband had lost his third job in six months.

Molly had been shown evidence to back up these incredible claims; newspaper articles, death certificates, employment records, everything looking very official, and she was forced to believe what she was shown because not even Sherlock – and she finally remembered how he'd verbally torn her to shreds the night before, deducing her to devastating effect at the party he clearly had no interest in attending, just before…something…happened – not even Sherlock could possibly be so cruel as to pull such an elaborate, horrifying prank. Not even in the name of proving or disproving a hypothesis.

She still couldn't remember what had happened after that agonizing moment of humiliation, whatever it was that had flung her from there to here, to this strange world where other people she knew still existed, but in new, twisted forms she barely recognized.

Sherlock Holmes was a criminal. He'd told her so, bluntly, not allowing her reeling consciousness time to recover from the unsettling notion of her own non-existence in this world. John Watson was a surgeon with mounting gambling debts who was desperate to get himself out from under – and yet unable to resist the lure of the cards. Mrs. Hudson was Sherlock's housekeeper, not his landlady – and he'd let out a sardonic bark of laughter when she'd timidly told him who the older woman was in her own world.

Only two people seemed to be the same: Greg Lestrade was still a Detective Inspector, still an honest man, much to this Sherlock's obvious disgust and annoyance, and her old boss, Mike Stamford, was still head of Pathology at St. Bart's. It was something to cling to.

"Someone went to a great deal of trouble to bring you here, Dr. Hooper," Sherlock said once he'd fully convinced her of the truth of what she'd at first believed to be an insane theory. "Someone, somewhere, opened up a portal between our two worlds, extracted you, and deposited you here. I doubt very much the intent was to drop you so precipitously into my sitting room, but here you are and here you will remain until I have determined who is behind this."

He punctuated his words with a twitch of the riding crop he held in one hand, and she cringed away from him without fully understanding why.

He seemed to take a great deal of satisfaction in her reaction, his lips curling up into a dark smile that did nothing to crack the icy coldness in his eyes.

Molly harbored deep suspicions about that riding crop. The bruises on her thighs were long and narrow, and some part of her reacted quite viscerally to the sight of it in his hands, even though he'd made no move toward her with it.

Still, the threat was clear. So far, since waking up this horrid Christmas morning, she'd managed to avoid doing or saying anything that would provoke his wrath, but if she did…

She closed her eyes and swallowed. Hard.

She opened them again when he began speaking, one arm resting casually on the mantel, the other idly tapping the riding crop against his leg. "The majority of your injuries – the bruising on your heels and the back of your head, the needle marks and bruising on your arms, the welts on your upper thighs – are either the result of the manner in which you arrived in my flat, Dr. Watson's medical attentions, or, well..." He glanced down at the riding crop with a sly grin, confirming Molly's earlier suspicions. God, he'd done that to her, he'd hit her – why?

Before she could ask – if she could even work up the nerve to do so – he went on. "However, the scratches on your left leg are somewhat of a mystery. You denied knowing how you received them when I interrogated you last night; has your memory returned since then?"

He paused this time, not for effect or intimidation, but clearly expecting some kind of a response from her. She shook her head, then said "No" and shook her head a second time. "I have no idea...I have a cat but he's not big enough to scratch me that badly..."

She was babbling, and cut herself off before he could do so. He didn't even need to twitch the blasted riding crop, but she could tell by the satisfied smirk on his face that he was pleased that she'd stopped herself before he was required to do it for her.

"Those scratches, Dr. Hooper, were clearly made by a human hand. Male, with a span not merely close to mine – " he raised his free hand, fingers spread in demonstration, "but identical to my own. Is it possible that you and the Sherlock Holmes from your world were..." He fell silent, but his raised eyebrow and deepening smirk made his insinuation quite clear.

Molly felt herself flushing as she shook her head. "N-no, we never, he would never, it wasn't like that," she protested, lowering her eyes to where her hands were nervously clutching one another in her lap. "If he did grab me...maybe he was trying to...to keep me from being taken away?" she hazarded. "You said I fell from the ceiling level, so maybe something...whatever it was...he was trying to stop it," she finished, falling silent abruptly. God, Molly, can't you get out a single sentence in this man's presence – on any world – without sounding like a complete idiot?

When she darted a glance upward, to gauge his reaction to her rambling, semi-incoherent attempt at an explanation, she was stunned to see what looked very much like a combination of surprise and approval in his eyes. "Well, Dr. Hooper, perhaps you aren't as hopelessly ordinary as I thought," he drawled, eyes raking her from head to foot as if he was properly seeing her for the first time.

She lowered her head again, feeling the flush that had started to fade rising back up to redden her skin once again. As it did so she found herself becoming intensely aware of every ache, every bruise and pain in her body.

Including, unfortunately, a rather insistent sensation of pressure on her bladder. "I need to – can I use your bathroom?" she asked timidly when it seemed Sherlock had nothing further to add.

He nodded and watched as she managed to pull herself to her feet without assistance this time, although she winced as she padded down the hall toward the bathroom.

As she did so she pondered her situation as best she could when her head still felt as if it were stuffed with cotton batting and her mind was still trying to absorb the new – and increasingly unpleasant – reality she found herself in. It was clear that she was not free to do as she wished, to leave this flat and this version of Sherlock far behind. In fact, if she tried anything of the sort she knew without any doubt that she would be punished for it. The guards Sherlock had indicated made that abundantly cleared.

After she reached the bathroom she closed the door but didn't dare lock it, then took care of easing her discomfort. Afterward she forced herself to look at her reflection in the mirror as she washed her hands and face and wished desperately for a tooth-brush.

"Left-hand drawer." She flinched at the sound of his voice on the other side of the door, hardly recognizing her reflection as she automatically opened the drawer and found an unopened travel kit containing a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, unscented deodorant and a comb. There was also a container of band-aids, which she applied to the scratches on her leg after disinfecting them with the peroxide she found in the medicine cabinet.

She heard Sherlock pacing as she hurried through her ablutions, feeling only marginally better with clean face and teeth and somewhat less tangled hair. She'd wrestled the bow free, tossing it and the hairpins into the small bin beneath the sink, then turned and made herself open the door.

He was waiting at the end of the short hall, hands behind his back, gazing down at his shoes (black leather, highly polished, enormously expensive-looking) when she stepped out of the bathroom. He didn't bother looking up, just turned and reentered the sitting room.

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw he was still holding the riding crop. Didn't he ever put the damned thing down? What did he think she was going to do, attack him? Wrestle him to the floor, hit him over the head with a piece of crockery?

Even if she did manage any of those things (the crockery being the most likely, if she could get her hands on some), how was she supposed to get past his guards? Where was she supposed to go if she did manage to get past them? If what Sherlock told her was true – and she believed him, every word, feeling the truth deep in her gut – then she didn't really exist, had nowhere to go.

No, she was well and truly trapped in this on-going nightmare.

And about to discover just how horrific a nightmare it could be.

He beckoned to her imperiously, and she moved closer, stopping only a few feet away from him.

"Remove your clothing."

Molly gaped at Sherlock as he spoke, his expression unreadable. She wasn't entirely sure she'd heard him correctly. "Wh – what?" she stuttered as she continued to stare at him from just inside the hall entrance.

His expression darkened. She'd heard that saying before, read it in books, but never actually seen such a thing on another living person's face. Until now.

His lips tightened, his eyes narrowed, a flush rose on his cheeks, and he paced right up to her, stopping only inches away. When she made to stumble away from him, to give herself some breathing room, he grabbed her roughly by the arm, forcing her to remain in place. "I do not like to repeat myself, Dr. Hooper," he said between clenched teeth, shaking her for emphasis. "Remove. Your. Clothing."

Then he let her go, stepped back, and continued to watch her as she stood there like an idiot, gaping at him. Terror rooted her to the spot; why did he want her to…what was he going to…

She screamed as he raised his hand and brought the riding crop down on her shoulder. Hard. Bruisingly hard.

She continued to scream as he proceeded to beat her to within an inch of her life, methodically, mercilessly, until her exposed skin was a bruised, bloody mess, one eye swollen shut, her lips cracked and bleeding, her throat raw from screaming. When she finally collapsed to the floor, he dropped the riding crop, knelt by her side, and proceeded to remove her clothing himself, showing no signs of emotion as he did so.

When he finished, she watched through her one good eye, naked and curled into herself, tears dribbling down her cheek, as he folded the dress, piled the rest of her clothing and other belongings on top of it and placed it in a brown paper bag. She continued to watch as he disappeared from view, then reemerged with the silver bow and hairpins in his hand and dropped them on top of the rest of her belongings before taking the bag to the door of the flat and exiting without a single glance backwards.

She listened dully as he walked to the edge of the landing and called for Moran to come up. She could hear him giving instructions, not bothering to lower his voice, clearly not caring whether she heard him or not. "Have these brought to the lab in Brixton for analysis. And tell Anderson none of his usual half-assed work, or this time I will inform his wife of his infidelity with the young lady from over the chippy where he habitually buys lunch."

She heard Moran murmur some kind of response, then closed her good eye, unable to bear the sight of Sherlock striding back into the flat. She heard the door click shut, heard his footsteps approaching, and cringed away from his hands when he reached for her.

He ignored her feeble struggles and whimpers of pain, lifting her in his arms without a word and carrying her to his bedroom. He deposited her on top of the duvet before ordering her to look at him.

She did as he commanded, terrified of the consequences if she didn't obey. He was gazing down at her with that same dispassionate expression on his face that he'd worn when he beat her. "I hope I have made myself perfectly clear, Dr. Hooper, on the subject of repeating myself."

She nodded, but he seemed to expect something more, so she croaked out: "Yes, perfectly clear."

"That was a warning. Question me, disobey, make me repeat myself when I have told you to do something, and the next time I won't hold back. Broken bones can be mended, after all."

Then he turned and left, closing the door behind him. Molly heard the sound of a key turning in the lock but still waited tensely for something else to happen.

Nothing did. He left her there, and eventually she cried herself to an exhausted, pain-haunted sleep.