**A/N: Happy 2015! Here's my New Year's gift to you all-the first bit of Sherlolly goodness! It follows another dark Moriarty scene but I'm hoping the good stuff after that outweighs the bad!**

EDIT: I changed the order of these two sequences-after looking at it, I realized having it be flashback first and then current day was more powerful. Nothing else has changed. What do you think?

26 April 2012
Bethnal Green, East End

"Do you know any martial arts?"

His voice startled Molly out of her reverie, and she turned to look at the doorway into her living room, where Sherlock stood, leaning against the wall.

"No," she said, confused. "Not really. I mean, I took a boxing class once with Caroline a number of years ago. She'd had this boyfriend and—"

Sherlock was rolling up his sleeves and moving her furniture around, clearing a space in the middle of her small living room. She narrowed her eyes.

"Sherlock?"

"I'm going to teach you some basic self-defence maneuvers," he said. "Ones I hope you'll never have cause to use, but which you should have nonetheless."

Molly shook her head. "No, Sherlock, as your attending physician—"

"You're not my physician," he argued. "You are a forensic pathologist who stitched up a shallow knife wound in my side four days ago—a stitch job which, and don't take this personally, you could work on…"

Molly gaped. "I sew cadavers for a living, Sherlock. Not living, breathing humans."

"Which is why it's hard to say you're my doctor, and why your advice is to be heeded with the same general care as that which I'd receive from the online NHS symptom checker."

She scowled. "Thanks."

"No offence."

"None taken."

He pushed his sleeves up past the elbows and took up a stance facing her. "Stand up."

"Sherlock—"

He ignored her. "The three most essential principles you must remember when entering into a defensive situation with an assailant are: one—to disturb your attacker's equilibrium," he told her. "Getting them off-balance should be the very first thing you do."

He motioned for her to stand, and with a deep-seated sigh, she did.

"After you have rendered them off-balance, you must use your advantage to surprise your attacker before he has the chance to regain his feet."

"I don't see how—"

"Third," he barrelled onward, "Focus on the joints." He stepped towards her and illustrated, pointing to various locations as he named them off: "Ankle, knee, shoulder…" he circled her wrist. "Wrist, fingers…" He wrapped an arm around her and walked his hand to the middle of her lower back. "Lumbar spine…neck…"

As she stood in total shock, with Sherlock's hands on her body, Molly was unable to speak.

"You must subject the joints to strains that they are physically incapable of withstanding."

"H-How?"

"Grab my shirt."

"What?"

Sherlock sighed and took Molly's right hand in his, planting it against his chest; Molly's breath hitched in her throat. "Watch," he ordered as he placed his left hand over hers, slipping his four fingers beneath her palm and pressing his thumb against the back of her hand. Gently, he twisted the hand counter-clockwise, so her palm faced her, and switched hands, his right hand holding the uncomfortable position while his left hand trailed down her arm. "A simple wrist-lock. It caused maximum supination of the hand and puts tremendous strain on the radio-ulnar joint. If done properly, it almost certainly will cause the bones in the wrist and elbow to break and will also probably dislocate the shoulder. As a pain-compliance technique—"

"Pain compliance?"

In a flurry of movement, by way of demonstration, Sherlock first tucked his left arm around Molly, pushing her hand towards her and sending her off balance, using her own desire to wriggle free and away from the pain of a potentially broken wrist to push her to the floor, which he guided her to gently using the arm wrapped around the small of her back as support.

This is too much, Molly thought as she stared up into his eyes from her sudden position on the living room rug. "Uncle," she whispered.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said as he stood her up again and took a step back. She shook her wrist and pressed her other hand to her cheek. "Just…wasn't expecting."

"Exactly," he took up a stance once more. "Now. Your turn."

She shook her head. "No, Sherlock, I really don't feel comfortable."

He shrugged. "You wouldn't actually be able to hurt me," he told her.

"Seems rather pointless then," she told him with a short laugh.

"Come on, Molls. Pretend I'm an attacker," he said, reaching out to fist a wad of fabric from the front of her shirt. "Grab my wrist."

Her blush was ferocious. "Sherlock, I—"

"Take it."

She meekly did as she was asked, copying his movements from earlier—slipping her fingers between the palm of his hand and her chest, twisting the wrist counter-clockwise. "Hold it like this," he instructed, positioning her hand with the flat part of her fingertips pressed against the back of his wrist and her thumb laying across the top of his hand. "Good. Very good. Keep twisting."

Molly pushed and watched Sherlock's wrist twist, until his palm faced him.

"Use your leverage," he said. "You're manipulating the joint to an extreme. Anyone in this position will be desperate to avoid the pain of a broken wrist. They'd be like putty in your hands."

She did as she was told, and gradually she reached a point where Sherlock seemed only too willing to allow her to move him where she wanted. It was a palpable shift in their power dynamic, even if it was manufactured. Molly didn't know what to do.

"Now what?" she asked, breathless.

"Take out my legs."

Molly shook her head. "This is so stupid…" she muttered, though she instinctively she put her arm behind his back and gently—too gently—attempted to kick his feet out from under him with an arcing sweep of her right leg that did little more than cause their ankles to knock together.

"You can do better."

"Shut up," she said. "I'm concentrating."

On the second go, she kept the pressure on his hand and used the heel of her right foot to dislodge both of his feet at once, and the intended effect was achieved. Sherlock tumbled backwards and sideways, landing on the sofa.

"Sherlock!" she cried. "I'm so sorry. Oh my god, are you okay?"

The detective managed a small laugh as he shook out his hand. "Good job, Molly," he said. "Like your stitches, it could use work, but for a first timer…"

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Well I'm not about to go practicing on you," she said, as Sherlock folded his hands neatly over his abdomen and crossed his legs at the ankle. Almost immediately as he was settled, Toby leapt up down from his perch and saw fit to make a bed in Sherlock's lap, barely a handful of inches from the delicately-bandaged wound in his side. The detective winced, slightly, before relenting and petting the feline between the ears.

Molly was aghast. "Toby," she hissed.

"It's fine," Sherlock said. "I don't mind."

"You sure?"

He nodded, pushing himself up slightly to better accommodate the circled cat in his lap. "Did you know that the frequency of a cat's purr is thought to promote healing?" he announced.

Molly shook her head. "I—no, I didn't know that, but why am I'm not surprised that you do?"

Sherlock continued unabated. "Vibrations in the range of twenty to one hundred-forty Hertz are thought to be beneficial to bone strength. They can also lower blood pressure, heal soft tissue damage and infection…"

Molly grinned and crouched down she she was eye to eye with her pet. "Hear that, Tobes?" she said. "Scoot up a bit so you're sitting right on that stab wound."

She laughed and stroked the cat under the chin, her hand colliding with Sherlock's as he did the same thing.

"Whoopsie!" she whispered.

"Sorry," he said.

Molly felt Toby begin to purr. "All the same, I think he appreciates the extra attention."

"Apparently."

She nodded, but pulled away all the same, feeling a slight blush creep up from her neck and into her cheeks. In her shyness, she averted her eyes. "Tea?"

"Delightful."

As she walked into the kitchen, expecting her faithful feline to follow her, she was surprised to find that Toby remained curled against Sherlock. The skittish cat had never shown much affection for anyone other than Molly in the past, and it was more than ironic that a man practically incapable of such feelings himself had managed to coax them out of a cat like Toby.

No, not incapable, she corrected herself. He's more than capable…

She busied herself with the tea and recalled with a certain nostalgia the last time Sherlock had sat on her sofa (a different one, in a different flat, a cozy one bedroom above a Bangladeshi restaurant in Spitalfields where the the scent of curry lived in the wallpaper, which was one of the reasons why—when she moved to Bethnal Green—she had to buy the sofa on which Sherlock currently sat.) It was, admittedly, not so very long ago as to be relegated to a bygone era. But she had pushed the memory of that time to a corner of her mind saved for Things She Knew Would Never Happen Again, and thus it might as well have been a million years ago for how she felt about it.

She'd only known him for a short time then, their entire relationship conducted at the side-by-side microscope station in Bart's pathology lab during her internship and the last months of his studies. She had fallen hard and fast for her bench partner. He was cold and all-too calculating, emotionally unavailable (weren't they all?) but she longed to be the one to break through that. That was her M.O. Fix the broken ones. Fix them until they're well enough to toss you away.

And he had been broken. She saw that. Such close confines were the reason she'd first noticed the clues that formed a picture of a man beset by addiction: the sunken, tired eyes; the erratic behaviour too strange to be chalked up to aloofness or a personality disorder. She recognized the signs, and stepped in to fix it. Like she always did. And she'd been rewarded like she always had been: by a man who kept her at arm's length, rebuffing her advances at every turn until she felt smaller than small, less than worthless. She carried her torch regardless, because that's what she did. And he had never seemed to notice.

Now she knew he had noticed, and she knew he did care. Very much. Spending a night watching telly with him, her cat, and nary a word spoken between them would be more than payment enough for all the hardship.

Is that why you did this, Molly? she asked herself. To ingratiate yourself into his life? Make yourself indispensable? Are you putting your pathetic life at risk so Sherlock will notice you?

She shook her head as the tea kettle began to whistle and Toby scampered off through the kitchen and down the adjacent hallway. Moments later, she walked back into the parlour to find Sherlock fast asleep against the pillows.

Molly smiled and set the mugs down before crouching at his side. She seized the opportunity to brush his curls away from his forehead, where they'd flopped errantly when his head had—adorably—lolled to the side in his short slumber. They were softer than she'd expected, and she noticed with a kind of pleasure that her fingertips fit within the spirals as she moved her hands through them. Lovely…she thought.

She came to her senses with a soft sigh. "Sherlock," she whispered. "Time for bed."

He barely moved. "Can't I stay here?" There was a hint of whine in his voice, something altogether too human and unexpected coming from him.

She rocked back onto her heels. "But this is my bed," she told him.

"I don't mind."

As much as she wanted to, Molly didn't give herself permission to pick that apart. "Come on, Sherlock," she nudged him. "I need to check your dressings."

He voicelessly agreed, allowing her to help him stand to his full height before leaning on her for support as they made their way down the short hallway to her bedroom. He sat on the bed and waited while she collected her first aid supplies before rejoining him.

She laid out a fresh bandage and her roll of surgical tape beside him on the bed and knelt on the floor in front of him.

"Lift," she urged, and he pulled up the bottom edge of the plain t-shirt he'd been wearing, exposing his pale but toned stomach. Molly ignored the flutter of attraction that settled in her own stomach, pressing her fingers to the square bandage and lifting it away from his skin in her best imitation of a doctor.

"It's coming along very nicely," she said, pulling the gauze off completely and examining the wound again. "No swelling. I think the infection is going down. And it's not such a bad stitch job…"

"Molly?" Sherlock said, and she looked up for a moment into his eyes, as the flutter became a burn that burrowed to her belly. "I want you to know—that is…I need to tell you…"

In the dim light from the hallway, his eyes were graphite cast, but there was nothing cold or hard about his gaze as he fixed it on her. She felt herself melt as he lifted a hand to cup the side of her face.

"I know this is not what we planned," he told her. "And I know it's very dangerous for us both. But I need you to know that…that I'm glad. To have you. To be here."

She blinked slowly and pressed against his hand, reaching up to grasp it with her own. "Sherlock," she whispered.

Her shock when he leaned over between them and kissed her, fully, on the lips, manifested as a gasp smothered against him. Warmth emanating from his mouth gave her strength, and she wondered if he felt the same until she heard it, a sound—a groan? a growl?—emanating from the base of his throat right before he pushed against her, his lips softening and parting, and then she knew he felt it, too. He brought his other hand up to her face, tilting his head to lock his lips against hers, deepening as their tongues met…

Molly's eyes flew open and she pulled away. Her hand replaced his lips against hers; she held her fingers there as if in pain. "I'm sorry," she whispered against her fingertips as heat flushed her cheeks and pooled between her legs.

Stunned, Sherlock gripped the edge of the bed with one hand and scratched the top of his head with the other. "No, no it's my fault. I'm the one who—"

She smiled as best she could, her mind reeling, and remembered her purpose there: with trembling fingers, she reapplied the bandage and taped it to his side, carefully ignoring the taut muscles beneath her hand or the telltale evidence of his arousal…

"There," she whispered. "All set."

"Molly—"

"No need, Sherlock," she said as she stood up and collected her supplies then rested a hand on his shoulder. "Get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."

With that said, she slipped from his room—her room, really—and into the hallway. "Good night," she said behind her as she shut the door, not waiting for his response.

29 December 2014
Unknown Location
Night

Molly opened her eyes and didn't immediately register her surroundings or situation. When she did, however, her heart sank. Snippets of the last day—…has it been a day? Two days? It feels like weeks…—rushed back to her as the stiffness in her shoulders, pain in her wrists and ankles, and throbbing headache confirmed that she was, still, held captive by Moriarty.

As her eyes opened fully and she took stock of her surroundings, she spotted her captor leaning against the door, ankles crossed in front of him. "Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty," he cooed as he pushed himself off and strode to the bedside. "I trust you slept well?"

She groaned against the fabric still clamped between her teeth. Moriarty made a show of straining to hear her, to understand her words, but brushed his hand in front of his face in dismissal.

"Doesn't matter," he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them gleefully. "We've got to get you ready for your audience!"

He sat on the edge of the bed and flipped her body over so her back was to him. Startled by the sudden movement, she gasped, stiffening her body as she felt his hands on her arms. He began to untie the ropes that had held her prone since he'd deposited her on the bed.

"I don't think I need to remind you of the dangers that face you if you decide to disobey," he said. Her eyes flicked over to the congealed pool of blood still sitting beside the bed, and the drag marks leading away from it, from the man Moriarty had murdered in front of her. Her stomach clenched and she shut her eyes on the memory as Moriarty continued. "But I'll have you know the room is being guarded right now by men armed with deadly force that I've instructed them to use as necessary. Be a sport then and cooperate, and I'll make sure they have no need to use it."

He pulled the rope free from her wrists. Her arms hung limp and useless at her sides. Moriarty then slid his fingers along her cheek to loosen the gag, wrenching it from her mouth and untying it from behind her head. Molly licked her lips, but found her tongue useless in the endeavour. As soon as Moriarty finished loosening the bonds on her ankles, he reached down to the floor and produced a bottle of water and a straw and, upon helping Molly to sit upright, handed it to her. She gratefully accepted, gulping down half the bottle before he pulled it away. "Not too fast," he warned.

She slowed down, relieved at having water at all. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't let it be said that I'm a cruel captor," he intoned. "Now…this will never do." He motioned around her body, referencing her clothing. "Would you be a dear and remove your shirt for me?"

Molly resisted.

"I won't ask you again…"

Still, she didn't move, and within seconds Moriarty's hands were on her, ripping the shirt and sending buttons flying. She screamed, hands flying to her chest to cover her semi-nakedness, but Moriarty forced her arms out as he tore the shirt away from her and tossed it to the floor. "Trousers," he ordered. This time, she did as she was told, unbuttoning them and sliding them off her hips. They tumbled to the floor beside her blouse. She drew her knees to her chest, huddling against the cold that invaded the draughty old room.

"Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged. "Boredom, really," was his reply as he took a look at her, shivering in her white lacy bra and pink and purple striped panties. "Quite nice. Mismatched," he shrugged. "But then you were never going to be a Victoria's Secret model, were you?"

He didn't wait for her to answer before instructing her to stand up, which she did. It was then that she noticed the hook hanging from the ceiling, the thick leather cuffs attached to a chain that draped over it…

"Jim—"

He pulled her towards him, holding her against his body. "Come on Molly," he said, lifting one arm one arm up and into the cuff, which he tightened around her wrist before moving onto the other. "This hurts me more than it hurts you."

"But why?" she begged of him.

He pulled her other arm up, and she balanced precariously on her tiptoes as he tightened the second cuff around her wrist. "It's not you I want. It's him. You are…collateral."

"Sherlock said you didn't do collateral damage?"

"Not if I can help it," he said. "But when you need to bait a prize winning fish…"

He bent down to the floor and she felt a leather cuff wrap around her ankle, and decided she was having none of it. His words rushed once more into her head—Disturb equilibrium, surprise him before he has a chance to right himself, focus on the joints and causing movement beyond what is anatomically or mechanically possible and, thus, most painful—and she steeled herself, all in a matter of seconds. As Moriarty bent to restrain her other ankle, she kicked her foot, landing a blow to Moriarty's shoulder with the flat upper arch that connected with a THWACK! and caused him to stumble back on his heels, where she pulled back and kicked him again, hitting him square in the jaw.

Stunned, he sat there, holding his gaze in front of him for a long moment before standing up to his full height and rolling his shoulders. He clutched his jaw, opening it and moving it side to side before spitting out a wad of blood. Molly froze, her mind blanking. That had been her entire gambit. There was nothing else to do. Fear rose in the back of her throat as Moriarty raised his arm and slapped her, hard, across the face and back again in the other direction.

Molly tasted blood but bit back her cries.

"Feisty," he said, his hand still cradling his jaw. "You know, I'll let that one slide, but if you ever do that again, I promise you won't live to regret it."

He yanked her foot down and attached it to the cuff, which she realized was itself attached to a eye hook buried in the floorboards. Rendered completely immobile, Molly began to panic. No, stop it! Be brave! Have courage! she ordered herself. Even as Moriarty removed his own necktie, quickly and mercilessly shoving it deep inside her mouth before producing a wide roll of electrical tape, a strip of which he pressed across her lips to secure it, she fought to keep calm. He pressed the tape down across her mouth with his thumbs, then pressed his lips there. Molly whimpered.

"So perfectly compliant!" he beamed. "Look, I'd love to stay and play but I've got a meeting to get to, my dear." He winked at her, brushing some hair away from her face. "Don't go anywhere..."

It was the last thing Molly heard as she drifted away to her own, smaller and less sophisticated, Mind Palace…