**A/N: This is where the warnings come into play—violence and some non-consensual sexual situations ahead**

29 December 2014
Location Unknown
Late Morning

The creak of footsteps on worn wood floors announced his return before the key in the lock and the whine of the rusty metal hinge on which the lid of the trunk rested sounded loudly in her ears. Molly had spent so long in the steamer trunk, deprived of light and with only the barest of muffled sounds reaching her ears, but while her limbs ached and her bonds rubbed her skin raw, it was the blindingly bright light that caused her the most grief as Jim Moriarty hauled her up out of the trunk and to her feet.

"Whoa! Careful there," he said as Molly's weak and cramped legs gave out under her own weight, sending her toppling into Moriarty's side. He supported her with a hand around her waist. "Don't need you getting banged up before your time."

Molly mumbled a response and lived and died against the gag still shoved in her mouth.

"What's that love?" Moriarty teased. "I can't understand you. You seem to have something in your mouth."

He yanked the cloth out with great force that made her cry out in pain as he pulled it down over her lower jaw until it hung around her neck. She licked her lips, or tried to, but her thick tongue was drier still and made the whole endeavour pointless.

"You bastard," she murmured, her voice hoarse in her throat.

"My mother always taught me: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," he told her, spinning her until she was facing him. He slipped his fingers beneath the gag. "I can arrange that again if you're not careful."

Molly hesitated, but bit back her comments. Moriarty grinned.

"That's more like it," he said, gripping her painful jaw in his hand and turning her face to look at his. "You have such a pretty mouth, and I hate seeing it gagged." Then he laughed. "Oh, who am I kidding—it's the sexiest thing! A woman, dropped at my feet, trussed up like my very own Christmas prezzie…"

"No, please," she whispered.

He appeared to consider, shrugging his shoulders before agreeing to her wishes. "All right then," he said. He started to walk, pulling her with him until he reached the far side of the room, where he dropped her onto a bed. "You'll be comfortable here, yeah?"

It's better than the trunk, she thought to herself.

He loomed over her for a moment. "You know Molly Hooper, I thought we had a connection, you and I," he told her. "When I was 'your boyfriend Jim' back in the good ol' days. Before you had to go and involve yourself with him…"

"Jim," she said, out of habit. "I can explain…"

"No need, poppet," he cooed. "I have all the explanation I need. That fiancé of yours—what's his name…Tom. Sherlock version two-point-oh. Though, really, with an intellect like that I think they should stop production on the next version, at least until they work out the kinks."

"We're not engaged anymore," she said.

"Oh, I know," he said, engrossed for a moment by the skin around his right pinky finger. "You saw to that the moment Sherlock returned from the grave. Coincidence?" he asked, grinning at her again. "Highly unlikely."

"I-I didn't break it off with Tom for—"

"Not consciously, baby doll," he winked at her. "Ain't sabotage grand? Sometimes you don't even know you're doing it!"

Molly shut her eyes. She felt dirty, cold. Everything ached. She tried to push herself into a more comfortable position. Moriarty stepped in to help, swinging her legs up to the middle of the mattress and then pivoting her upper body too, so she was less on the edge. Then he continued to look at her.

"Did you miss me, then?" he asked her, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her. "Did you think about me at all on those long, cold, lonely nights when Sherlock—your one true love!—was off on his merry adventures trying to break down the organization I've spent my whole adult life building?"

His fury terrified her. She winced. "Jim—"

"YOU DON'T GET TO CALL ME THAT!" he barked at her. Then, he softened, took a deep breath she could hear, and leaned over her to brush errant strands of auburn hair off her forehead. "Not after you colluded with him to keep his secret from the world."

One of the two men Molly recognized from the day before strolled into the room. "You yellin' boss?" he asked, leering at Molly. "She givin' you trouble?"

Moriarty stood up from the edge of the bed and slammed the trunk lid shut. "Nothing I can't handle."

Molly fixed her eyes on the menacing man advancing toward the head of the bed. His grin belied a sick appetite, and Molly felt her stomach clench as he neared, meaty fingers twitching at his side. She was disgusted, utterly, but the state of those hands, the wretched metallic smell he gave off, so overpowering the closer he got.

"You bein' a good girl?" he menaced.

Rearing back as much as she could, Molly spat at him. What little moisture available to her landed with a satisfying splat against the man's shoe. But her triumph was short-lived; the man raged, lifted one of those sausage hands, and brought it down against her face. Molly cried out as she tasted blood, blinded by the pain and shock of his assault.

Not a second later, a sharp gunshot rang out. Molly felt blood splatter across her face; she gasped, her mouth hanging slack. She watched the man standing beside the bed staggered and fell against the wall before slumping to the ground. His blood pooled behind him and frothed up and out of his mouth as he gurgled, attempting to breathe through the bullet hole in his lung before he died.

Moriarty pocketed the pistol and came back to sit on the bed. "No one touches my Molly," he said, as Molly found her voice and began to cry, stunned at what had just happened. As she wept, Moriarty kicked the body of his henchman over and pulled Molly into his lap, using the corner of a handkerchief to wipe away some of the blood from Molly's cheeks.

"Let me go…" she whimpered, flinching at every movement her captor made. "I'm not your Molly…I'm not your Molly…"

"Oh, but you are," Moriarty said. "You've been mine since the first time I had you…" He bent to her face and trailed his tongue along one of the already drying bloodstains before wiping it away. Molly sobbed and shuddered, trying to push herself away. But he pinned her body down against his with one hand and forced the other beneath the waistband of her trousers. She cried out in shock and struggled even harder to squirm away, but he only forced his hand in further, pressing through the cloth of her panties, moving them against the very core of her. "Remember when I used to lie between these thighs? When I made you beg me for more?"

"Stop…" she cried through gasps and sobs wrenched from her throat as her body betrayed her and she felt her hips buck involuntarily against his machinations. Mercifully, he pulled his hand back, sniffing his fingertips with a satisfied grin that made Molly's stomach churn. She didn't bother trying to hold back the tears from her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," he muttered, tossing her back to the bed as he stood up again. "It's not you I want anyway. You're just a pawn. The bait." He bent over her again and pulled the gag up from her throat, securing it again between her lips as she groaned in protest. "You're going to get me what I want," he told her, reaching for his phone. With a smile plastered on his face, he snapped a few pictures, and Molly wept as she heard buttons pressed and the familiar sounds of text messages being sent. "Think Sherlock'll like these?" he asked.

He laughed as he turned from her bedside and kicked the shoe of the dead man beside the bed. "Don't worry about that happening again," he said as the second of the two men entered the room and, with nary a reaction, pulled the dead body out and through the door that led beyond the walls surrounding her. "You should rest, love. We've got quite a game to play."

When he shut off the lights, the room was plunged into darkness, save for the streetlight outside the window, slanting in across the floorboards.

Molly strained against her bonds and struggled to push the gag out of her mouth with her tongue and teeth. It was futile, and she quickly gave up entirely after a few minutes. She was so tired, but too afraid to sleep. She didn't know how this would end.

For the first time, she wondered if she was, perhaps, in too far over her head.

29 December 2014
Early Afternoon
Baker Street

As Sherlock and John returned to Baker Street, Toby in tow, past the two police officers still in the car across the street, they trudged noiselessly up the stairs, dejected as ever by the lack of returns on their afternoon's investigation. The Toyota, it turned out, had been abandoned; canvassing the neighbourhood where the car had been found revealed no suspicious activity. The vehicle identification number on the car had been hastily scratched out, but Scotland Yard was running a search on the likeliest combination of letters and numbers that they could make out; no pertinent information had yet been retrieved.

The only link they had to Molly were two strands of long brown hair on the backseat, most likely belonging to her. It was barely enough to warrant a missing persons file, let alone a criminal investigation. But it was enough for Sherlock to believe that Molly had been there.

Sherlock set Toby down in the middle of the parlour and helped John up with the bag of cat food and litter essentials that they'd picked up on the way back from the only crime scene they knew of. As they stepped through the door to the flat, and as John deposited the cat accoutrements in the kitchen, Sherlock recalled with a pang that the comfort of John's presence was temporary. He'd be returning to the house he shared with Mary soon; the detective would be alone in three rooms that suddenly seemed cavernous without the gentle hum of John's laptop or the padding of his feet on the well-worn path between his chair and the fridge and back again

Sherlock suddenly felt himself grow impatient. "You'll be off soon, I suppose?"

"Hm?" John turned from the table. "Where did you plan on putting the litter bin?"

Sherlock removed his coat and tossed it over his armchair, scratching the feline between the ears and under the collar. As he did, his fingers glanced across a folded piece of paper that came loose in his hand. He pulled on it, unclipping it from its home beneath the collar clasp, and recognized it immediately as the label from a can of cat food. Exactly like the stack of cans on the countertop. Purina. Toby's brand. He won't eat anything else.

"What's that?" John asked.

Sherlock, unsure himself what it was, unfolded the paper and let his eyes fall on the word written, unmistakably, in the hand of the forensic pathologist they were searching for. "From Molly," he said, keeping his voice low and steady, handing the note to John. "Neighbour."

"Neighbour?" he asked. "Her neighbour?"

Sherlock shut his eyes. Why did Molly only write one word? Time? Fear? He did tell her specifically to not be obvious, and one out-of-context word is about as non-obvious as can be. She must have had faith that he would understand it but that if it fell into the wrong hands no one would be the wiser. But why this word? It had a hundred different meanings and also one very specific one. Think, Sherlock, he berated himself. He recalled the details of the people who lived in her building—Mr. Delacroix, the landlord, obviously had a preferred type of tenant as his building was full of single women: the retired schoolteacher with the dogs in 9D, the steady stream of single female occupants in 9B, and Molly in 9C—and realized quickly that none of them matched the descriptions of the men Molly had said were involved in her kidnapping. Certainly none of them were the owner of the handprint they'd seen on the doorframe. But that didn't mean they couldn't have been involved in some other way…

He furrowed his brow. "We need to go back," he said. "Canvass the street. Someone had to have seen something."

John was already calling Lestrade, requesting backup.

"We just need a handful of officers," Sherlock said. "Ten or twelve ought to do it."

"We'll be lucky to get two," John shook his head. "This isn't his only case, y'know."

Sherlock grumbled as he fingered the note. "It's the most important one..."

John sighed into his own phone as he pulled out Sherlock's from the pocket of the detective's great coat. "Your mobile."

"Hm?"

"It's buzzing," he said, "No, not you, Greg. Sherlock, why don't you take this thing off of vibrate once in a while so you can hear—"

When his eyes happened on the lock screen, however, he froze, his words cut off mid-sentence.

"Come on, John, give it here." When his outstretched hand was not filled by the cold weight of his mobile, his irritation reached a tipping point. "You berate me for ignoring it and then refuse to give it to me when asked for—"

"Sherlock…"

He looked up at John, whose face had lost what little colour it had. "What?" he asked, grabbing for his phone. He flicked his thumb over the screen, keyed in his passcode, and brought up the text messaging window…and a photo of a bound and gagged Molly Hooper, lying in the centre of a filthy mattress. Her face and hair were splattered with blood, and it was clear she had been crying.

I believe I have something of yours…xx JM

Sherlock felt blind rage behind his eyelids as he shut them and struggled to control his heartbeat. It had been one thing to imagine Molly's abduction; seeing photographic proof of it was quite another thing altogether. Who's blood is that? If he's harmed her...

"Sherlock's gotten a text," John explained to Lestrade on the other end of the phone. "Yeah, from Moriarty. A photo. Of Molly..."

The detective said nothing. A second text arrived:

What? No quick quip in reply? You're slipping, Sherlock.

Sherlock typed his response:

What do you want?

"Lestrade is on his way." John offered as he ended the call. "He can look at the texts..."

Suddenly protective, Sherlock shook his head. "I don't want him seeing these. Molly wouldn't want him seeing these."

"But they can help find her..."

You can't promise anything when it comes to Jim Moriarty, Sherlock thought, uncharacteristic pessimism peppering his mind. Still, he stood up straight and took a deep breath. "You should go home, John."

"I don't have to, y'know," he said. "I can stay."

"I know, and that's appreciated, but at the end of the day it's bad enough that one person I care about has been put in harm's way. I don't need your abduction on my conscience as well."

John snorted. "Yeah, cheers mate."

There was a better way to phrase that, Sherlock reprimanded himself, but before he could summon the wherewithal to actually come up with it, another text bounced in from the ether, lighting up Sherlock's mobile phone screen. The welcome distraction diverted his attentions as he swiped across the screen and read the full message:

You. Me. Kensington Olympia station. 7pm or the girl gets it.

Then:

I kid, I kid. I just always wanted to say that…

And finally:

But seriously. 7pm.

Sherlock shot back his affirmative reply, a sickening feeling pitted in his stomach as he dropped his phone back into his pocket with a sigh. "John, I'm a dangerous person to be around as long as Moriarty has his sights trained on me. I've let Molly down already, and if something were to happen to you, too—"

"Sherlock, I know," John said, hauling his bag up around his shoulder. "Lestrade'll be here in half an hour. I'm a phone call away. Yeah?"

Sherlock nodded. "Right."

John smiled as reassuringly as he could and turned to leave the flat but paused on the threshold. "I'd say you haven't let Molly down at all. Quite the opposite. Apart from all the other things...the clues and all that...I mean, you've probably given her the best chance of survival just by being the one who's looking for her."

Sherlock considered but was not convinced. "What if that's not enough?"

John's smile faded until his lips were nothing but a firm, unbroken line across his face. There was nothing for it. The day—only now brightening to its fullest as the sun crested in the sky—had suddenly grown ink black. John turned and left the flat, and Sherlock sat in silence with his troubling thoughts as his only company.