Chapter 2: Ruby

Ruby's POV

I woke up in some hospital room somewhere-it wasn't like any hospital room I'd ever been in before. My head still hurt but it wasn't as bad as before. I turned my head and found an ice pack had been put there but the ice had long ago turned to water. Taking it off, I put it on a tray nearby.

I could tell that it was dark outside through the little window, but was it just hours after my attack and subsequent fleeing or was it night again and I had slept away the entire day? What the hell was this tube thing doing under my nose? I wanted to remove it but the doctor would not like that.

Thankfully I could tell that I had escaped relatively unscathed. The scoundrel had not chased me very far which I was particularly grateful for.

The door opened up and I turned my head, seeing a brown haired and brown eyed guy wearing a dark suit walk into the room.

"Hi," he sang out carelessly, sauntering over to me. "I'm Jim."

"Ruby,"

"Pretty name," he was kind of cute but I refrained from making any comment on that like I would normally. "how do you feel now?"

"My head hurts but that's all," I was honest. "why do I have this?" the tube underneath my nose was beginning to itch me.

"Don't touch it," Jim put his hand on mine and directed it away. "your hands are so cold."

"I'm always cold," I told him frankly. "so when does the doctor come in?"

"I am your doctor," a crooked grin and I couldn't tell if he was teasing or not. "I wanted to retest your pulse ox levels before I turned in."

"Say what?" a black rectangle thingy was put on one of my fingers and beeped.

"Your blood oxygen saturation rate or how much air you're getting into your blood," Jim explained as he unclipped my finger and read it. "much better! It was 85 and you'd be in the hospital because of that. Now it's 97%."

"Good, I guess." Jim released me from the tubing and turned the canister off.

"Now I have a question,"

"Shoot." he encouraged.

"Did he follow me?"

"Who's he?"

"That rat bastard I call an ex boyfriend! He did this to me after a night out drinking with his pals."

"I didn't see anyone else when I found you." he sounded genuinely confused so I chose to let that go.

"You've saved me, Jim and I thank you so much."

"It's nothing." Jim had a great poker face. I couldn't tell anything about him from it at all.

"Well, I need to get a place to stay. He'll have kicked me out and sold off all of my things by now." my blood boiled with rage at that drunken oaf!

Jim could tell what was going on behind my eyes-I wasn't a particularly hard person to read like he was. He put a hand on my arm to steady me a bit, then ended up taking my pulse.

"There's no need for you to get excited about it," he told me mildly. "why don't I take you to a guest room tonight and you can get some much needed sleep?"

"This isn't a hospital?"

"No. This is a hospital room designed by the former owner of this house for hospice care." Jim told me as he assisted me to sit up. He draped a robe over my shoulders so my modesty was intact and made me take his hand as I stood up.

He snatched a syringe from a nearby tray, deposited it in his pocket, then moved back over to me, making sure I wasn't wobbly. Jim took my hand again, ushered me out the door, then down the hall towards a room. Steering me in the proper direction, he opened up a door on my right, then gestured to me.

"Oh my gosh." it was beautiful! The room was painted in pale green, there was a fireplace, opposite that was a big four poster bed with pale purple linen. The four poster bed had tieback curtains, white with purple violets. In front of the fireplace there was a small space rug and two armchairs in a light blue color.

An adjacent door in the corner revealed a tiled black and white bathroom with gold painted fixtures. It was bigger than most bathrooms with a luxurious bathtub I could not wait to try out.

Jim smiled mechanically as I looked over the room, then pointed me towards the bed. There was a gray lounger at the foot of the bed so I could stretch out and read if I wanted to.

"We will discuss your living arrangements tomorrow," he said as I got into the bed and lay back. "are you comfortable enough? How's your head pain?"

"Not too bad." Jim loomed over me as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

"I want to check your heart again."

"Uh, OK." he listened to my ticker but had such a mysterious grin on his face. Most people would say he was happy that my heart didn't have any odd noises to it but something about that smile made me uncomfortable.

"Your heart sounds fine to me. Do you want anything for your pain?"

"Why wouldn't my heart sound fine? I'll take some medicine with sedatives in it preferably."

Again that mysterious smirk on his face. Jim pulled out the syringe, checked the dose, then told me to extend an arm. When I did, he found a suitable vein to inject, gave the requisite dose, then remained by my side to watch as the drugs started to affect me.

Jim put a bandage over the injection site, disposed of the syringe, then observed my eyes closing. He tucked my arm back under the covers, got very close to my ear and whispered a "Sleep tight."

If I could have, I would have told him that we were veritable strangers and getting too close to my personal space would have earned him a punch to the arm. I heard him get up from my bed and sounds which had been him striking up a fire in the fireplace.

MORIARTY

Moriarty made sure that his guest was out cold from the drugs he'd given her, stoked up a fire, put the fire screen in front of it, then left the room. He'd banked the fire so it would burn until midnight and then go out.

All in all it was a profitable day. Some corporation one of his cohorts was holding hostage paid up their ransom and he benefited tremendously from the amount he'd been given. A few of his spies had been put in major drug corporations and were giving him crucial information about insider dealings and whatnot. Jim knew the more accurate the picture his spies gave him, the more information he could threaten to blackmail the companies with.

Blackmail was a specialty to him but he did it all. Forcing Sherlock to solve all those crimes within a small window of time was amusing to say the least. He'd seen the detective struggle and spin his wheels in momentary frustration but Jim knew Sherlock would get it in the end.

It was odd to have such faith in your enemy, but Jim was no mere enemy. He was determined to be the greatest foe Sherlock ever had. The criminal took off his shoes, tossed his clothes in the laundry, then got into an old t-shirt and pajama pants.

It was more than odd for him to have a house guest. He'd never had one before and now that he'd met her, he found her interesting. Not as interesting as Sherlock, but interesting nonetheless. She had a mysterious background and all he knew was that her ex boyfriend beat her.

When the time was right, he would offer her a deal. Jim smirked to himself as he got into bed. Suppose her ex suddenly met with some sort of "accident" or something equally as tragic? Some of his past cases had been wealthy women with designs of revenge on their ex spouses or boyfriends.

They could learn something from Irene Adler who had a huge stock of items in her phone from sessions with clients. She didn't want anything yet but as Jim had determined, it was a power play designed to have the establishment feel threatened and worried.

There would be time enough to offer his guest a deal. Ruby first had to face a hard truth. He wouldn't be the one to tell her, though the symptoms would reach her soon.