Chapter Nine – Heeding The Call

He replayed the memories of John whimpering and shivering on the floor, begging Sherlock to save him, the sounds of John's screams as Moran rubbed the salt in his wounds and when John ordered him to turn his computer off to spare him the sight of his own torture. The tears flowed quite easily and there was no way even the most skilled observer could tell Moriarty that he was faking anything as the tears where very real.

"Good luck, Sherlock" Mycroft said as his little brother went out the door and to his fate.


"What do you need?" Molly asked without hesitation or a second thought. He had not flirted with her to get her compliance, had not bribed or cajoled her help because he knew she would not be able to keep his secret unless she truly believed.

"You," Sherlock had replied simply. He marvelled at Molly and could not understand why she would help him or even want anything to do with him at this point when his career, his life, everything that made him what he was in her eyes was about to come crashing down about them. Like John, she believed in him. Sherlock wasn't sure what he had done to cultivate that trust, but he was glad he had found people who were worthy.

"Wh-excuse me?" Molly stuttered, not sure at all what he meant.

"You are the only person who can help me now, if not then I will die and in likelihood John will die too. Moriarty has him," Molly cringed at the mention of her ex-'boyfriend's' name.

"I'll do everything I can. What do you need?" she asked, putting her bag down on the table and removing her thick jumper.

It didn't take long for Sherlock to explain what he needed, a syringe of a particular chemical that would slow his heart down to only a few beats per minutes, essentially giving the impression that he was dead. She would take a pint of his blood which she would douse over him when he hit the pavement. Fifteen minutes before he was due to meet Moriarty she would sneak outside and slash the tyre on the hospital laundry truck, keeping it in place so his impact would be shielded from most people's view. She would then make sure the body came to her lab and she would process him and then she would inject him with the serum to wake him up from his coma and hide him in the hospital. Mycroft would then take care of the rest; he would supply a suitable replacement body and use his influence to get Sherlock's remains interred as soon as possible. He would also stay at Molly's flat until the funeral when Mycroft would collect him and he would be secreted away to places unspecified.

"There is also something I need to you do Molly which is really important," Sherlock added, with some considerable hesitation. She looked up, eager to help. "I need you to…keep an eye on John, make sure he's alright." His eyes were the most unguarded Molly had ever seen them and in an instant she understood what the doctor meant to Sherlock.

"Of course," she said, nodding assuredly. After a silent moment which almost turned awkward, Molly went off to get what they would need to make the two solutions, leaving Sherlock to contemplate his plans in the lab.

Where are you? GL

The message popped up quite unexpectedly and Sherlock frowned at it; he didn't have time for Lestrade right now.

Out. SH

A word of advice: stay that way. The chief super wants you in for that kidnapping. Am dragging out the paperwork as long as I can. I know you didn't do it, am trying to prove it. Anderson and Donovan are being idiots. I'm sorry. GL

Sherlock was stunned again. He wasn't sure what would make Lestrade have any considerable loyalty to him (besides solving cases for him) but he was grateful. If he survived this and Moriarty then he would have to thank the DI not only for helping him, but for saving John's life. There would be no way this could work if Sherlock was in cuffs at the Yard. He didn't reply yet, he knew what he would say when the time came, but now was not that time.

The next couple of hours were sombre, the two of them working in the lab mostly in quiet; Sherlock was contemplating his checkmate move and Molly was concentrating hard, knowing that this was going to be one of the most important things she had ever done. Dutifully she went about her business, taking syringes and chemicals without anyone noticing and for the first time ever she was grateful that no one ever took much heed of her presence in the hospital, it meant that she could go about her important tasks unhindered and without suspicion.

"Right, we're all set up. I'm just off to sort out the truck and get some things for you when you wake up. So I guess this is it, this is the last time I'll see you before…you know," she said, a little awkwardly as ever. "Well, good luck," she said and, without giving him any choice in the matter, hugged him around the middle. Her eyes flickered up to his briefly and her cheeks set aflame. With no second spared, she grabbed her bag and jumper and went out the door, leaving a rather surprised Sherlock behind.

He had about half an hour until he had to go up to the roof to meet his nemesis. He looked at the little syringe on the desk, the bright sterile light glinted off the needle tip and for the first time Sherlock felt a little nervous. He knew the risks his plan carried and had taken all the measures possible, it was a calculated risk after all; even if he didn't survive, he still planned to take Moriarty out with him and if he had to pay for taking Jim's life with his own then that wouldn't be too bad a price to pay. The only thing he would regret would be leaving John behind in such a way, leaving him to face the vultures of the media as they demanded to know if he was 'in' on Sherlock's fraud and possibly even face investigation as being an accessory to fraud. The other one who would face extensive enquiry would be Lestrade who would probably be thrown to the jackals for his support of Sherlock and letting him in on police work. Sherlock did feel a little guilt at this, he had a certain respect for Lestrade that meant he did not wish to bring down his hard-earned career and he also felt he would be leaving London in a poorer state for causing one of its only inspectors with a brain to be crucified as the scapegoat.

The time came far sooner than he would have ever liked and soon he found himself having to make his way to the door. He slipped the syringe into his pocket and took a deep breath, pushing his emotions away and feeling his old, cold self slip back into place; he had to be at the top of his game to pull this off. He would beat Moriarty, no matter what.

The rooftop was warm, the sun bathed it magnificently and the wind was minimal, but he could see the dark clouds quickly descending upon them. At least the impending rain would help wash away evidence; all he needed were enough fuzzy facts and people would do the rest in believing what they wanted to. Bound with harsh cable ties cutting into his skin and tape over his mouth, John lay on his side on the ground, barely conscious. His eyes recognised Sherlock's form and widened; he struggled for a second.

"Say hello to him. It has been a while," Jim said from the far edge, his phone playing the Bee Gee's as some kind of twisted joke. Sherlock crouched down beside his partner, but did not take off the tape.

"It'll be alright John, I'm here to get you back. I'm going to set everything right," he said, quietly. In theory, Jim would not be able to hear his words, but he had to be careful nonetheless, John had to believe this too. The doctor's wounds had not been cleaned up very well, he still had blood on his face from the cut under his eye, but Sherlock stroked the side of his face lovingly, affording John a rare, comforting smile that Moriarty would not be privy to. It would likely be their last intimate moment. John's eyes told him that he was worried and he was agonised to be so powerless. "Trust me," Sherlock said and kissed John through the tape, knowing that he could not have his resolve shaken by John's inevitable words of 'don't do it'. He straightened up and turned on his heel to Moriarty.

"I'm glad you came, though you certainly took your time," Jim said above the music. "I love the eighties, don't you? Their music…" he said, just as the chorus came crooning through the little tinny speakers. "That's the problem, isn't it? We're just staying…" he said, gesturing with his hand a straight line and then holding his head in his hands, exasperated.

Sherlock saw in that moment the madness of James Moriarty; he was exactly like himself but passed his limit for boredom, he was everything Sherlock would have been without the things that pulled him back from the vacuum of his own powerful mind. There were times when Sherlock feared he would drown under the weight of his mind, ever buzzing, ever working, never ever shutting down even for a second. What would take people hours to figure out would take him seconds, his mind worked at such a furious pace that his life seemed to be drawn out by a factor of N; for every minute John would spend reading the paper, for Sherlock would feel as though an hour had passed and he had long ago run out of things to think about in those in between moments in life.

At first he had not been able to handle it, he had been sent to an institution where they had medicated him, but this had only stretched out the time longer. It had made him even madder, but it had given him time he needed at that age to sort his own mind; that was where his mind palace was built, he spent hours in a chair by the window sorting through every piece of information he possessed and filed it away, stored it in the various rooms for access later so he was able to better process new data. The hospital staff had thought he was getting worse when in fact it was what he needed to sort his mind. However, when he had finished that task and the palace was ready to be put in use, he was not free to learn new things or find problems to exercise his new formidable mental strategy. He recalled the mind-destroying terror that had engulfed him when he thought about how he might spend a large chunk of his future with little to no appropriate stimuli and it was only Mycroft's promise to get him out that had made him hang on as long as he did.

Then there were the drugs; those dark days filled with anger and frustration at his condition, at never seeing a satisfactory outcome for him, at always managing his difficulties and never excelling at anything. He numbed himself out with morphine when he felt it get too much for him to handle and shoot up with cocaine when he was scared about losing his mental acuity. That time too he felt as though his mind was sucking him in to a black hole of its own destruction, a vacuum in which everything that he was would implode and he would become a being of instinct. Purely rational and logical instinct but he would never really be him anymore. His self-control would be gone and he would do only as he pleased; while this had its merits and he was fairly sure he would get away with it for the longest time, he knew that self-control was what separated him from the average plebeians and he would always prove himself better than most people even if it was only for the sake of it.

James Moriarty had been crushed under the weight of his own mind. It's never ceasing, endless chasing of itself in circles of boredom where every little thing in life was unsatisfying. The acts of eating, sleeping, shagging (he supposed) were empty and boring, the supposed great stimuli of life were dull and grey for him. He no longer controlled himself, he saw things he wanted and took them by any means necessary because he couldn't help himself, because he was a slave to those things now. Sherlock could see Jim knew this, at times the other man had moments of clarity which buried him further in his own mental prison and Sherlock, in another life, would have empathised with him. But he had turned that uncontrolled instinct, no better than a cruel animal, upon his loved one, upon John who had brought a new stimulus into his life which had made him want to turn away from the abyss and gather himself together. For that, for harming Sherlock's anchor to sanity he would kill James Moriarty. For his sanity, for the love of John, for the love of his brother, for the care he had for his few friends.

"How do they do it? Ordinary people, go on living day to day doing the same boring things? How do they not get BORED?" he cried, roaring the last word out to the world for it to hear. He snapped the phone shut and the music cut out abruptly. "Then again, I guess they don't have minds like us, they don't have greatness weighing them down like an iron collar choking the life out of them," he said, looking as though he was physically in pain. "All my life I've been searching for distractions, little things to keep my mind from eating itself from the inside out. Imagine my joy when I found you. You were like my salvation, finally, an interesting little problem that would take time and deliberation to get out of my way. But you turned out to be boring, ordinary like everyone else." He scowled in hatred at Sherlock who was standing straight, needing to get the facts out of Moriarty until he made his move. "Plain old boring Sherlock," he said in a playground voice, trampling around a few paces imitating something he supposed would be boring and plain.

"I'm here aren't I?" he said.

"Yes, I suppose there is that," he sighed. "And what did it take? A bit of torture of some pet to break you. To get you here."

"And what do you plan to do now?"

"Did you laugh? You had to laugh. Richard Brook? No one else seemed to get it, but I thought you might find it funny," he said, not even registering Sherlock's question.

"Richard Brook is Reichenbach in German. Did you honestly expect any of them to get it?" he said with a snobbish air of superiority. They were the same.

"No, I suppose not. Did you like it though? I thought it was such a fitting way to get rid of you. I mean, not only am I going to get a dead Sherlock, but everything you worked for, everything that you wanted to leave behind, your legacy if you will, is going to die as well."

"Do you think everyone will swallow the lies you've fed them?"

"Nice place, by the way, a nice high building. Good way to do it."

That was the curtain call.

"Do what? Do-Oooh," he said, as though it was only just dawning on him. "My suicide. You've built up your lies enough that they will only want one more little piece of so called evidence and they'll believe you. My suicide will be an admission of guilt."

"You got to admit that's sexier," Jim said with genuine relish.

"What makes you think I'm just going to jump off this building?"

"Please? Do it for me?" he pleaded in a mocking tone.

"I've got contacts, I can prove to everyone that you're telling a lie and exonerate myself."

"Oh PLEASE!" he snapped, there it was again, that flash of utter lack of control. "They've been fed exactly what they want to hear, it'll never leave you now, Sherlock. You'll be smeared forever, no one's going to come to you with a case when they think you're a big fat phoney. Your little 'pal' at Scotland Yard's about to get crucified for this one. They want to believe it Sherlock, that's the beauty of it. They always will want to believe too, you can't escape it. You'll be under investigation for the rest of your life, by the public and the police. Please, it'll save everyone a lot of unnecessary time and effort if you just took the flying leap now." Sherlock stared him down, not going to give in if this was all Moriarty was going to throw at him, he had to know more, know the entirety of his nemesis' endgame if he was going to defeat it.

"Not convinced? Let's throw in some extra incentive then!" he said, imitating a game show host, complete with a cheesy fake smile. "You remember Seb, don't you?" he asked and looked over to John. There was the red dot of a sniper's sight hovering in between John's bloodshot eyes and Sherlock's heart flipped. He fought for control of his reactions for a second. "Looks like you already know what will happen to him," Jim sneered, he had seen the look on Sherlock's face, a second of unguarded feeling as his heart leapt for his lover. "I will have your other silly friends killed as well."

"What?" Sherlock said, wondering if he had really known that the stakes were always going to be this high.

"One of my men is at your flat at this moment doing some repair work for your landlady. He's been known to do some impressive work with a knife," he said nastily. Sherlock's eyes darted about for a second, as though searching for some way out of this.

"Mrs Hudson?" he sighed, panicking.

"Everyone."

"Lestrade?" he asked, needing to know how many people where targets. If Molly had been a target then he might have been found out.

"Everyone. Three assassins for three people and they all have orders to kill your friends if you don't jump, even if you kill me. Friends are a weakness, Sherlock, I thought someone like you would know that. You may have only collected a few of them but they're the flaws in the diamond. And I had hoped you were a beautiful mind…" He was back to that melancholia again. Sherlock locked his expression to one of horror, he could absolutely not give away that he was relieved Moriarty had not thought Molly worthy of a bullet.

"What makes you think you're going to win?" Sherlock said, suddenly curious. He knew Moriarty had thought of everything, had planned for every contingency, but if he had held Sherlock in such high regard did he really think he would not be met with some equally cunning moves…like the one the detective had in his pocket.

"Because even if you weren't ordinary," he spat the word like a foul taste on his tongue, "you're one of them, one of the goody goodies. You're boring because you're on the side of the angels," he said. Sherlock snorted with distaste and slowly stepped right up to Moriarty's face, looming tall over him and bringing every part of his formidable mind into step like an aura of power that made the sun flare up behind his head; the last gasp of sunshine before the rain.

"I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them," he hissed coldly. His entire focus now was on making James Moriarty see him for every part as extraordinary as he was. "You want me to shake hands with you in hell? I shall not disappoint you. Here I am; I am you ready to do whatever is necessary. Willing to do anything," he menaced. His gaze, as focused as a single beam of light shot into Moriarty's dark, mad eyes and burned a hole in his mind, or whatever tattered remains of his soul if there was such a thing. His face relaxed and brightened.

"You're me," he said in a moment of total clarity. It was in this moment that he saw himself in Sherlock, what he might have been had he not given into the vacuum of his mind and he acknowledged that he had allowed himself to be crushed by the weight of his own ferocious, ceaseless brain. He saw in his nemesis what he might have been if he had held onto his sanity and not become the impulsive creature he was now. "You're me," he said, moved in such a way that it made time stop and for seconds which actually felt like real seconds, he saw everything he could have been and he realised that he wanted it. "Bless you." He was irredeemable now, there was no way he could have what he wanted; there was no peace for him, no respite from his madness and endless thoughts and there was nothing he could do. He knew he was doomed to this.

In a flash that clarity faded and the impulsive creature that lurked in narcissism and hedonism broke forth again.

"I'm not going to let this game end in an impasse, Sherlock," he said and stepped away from the taller man and returned to pacing the rooftop and edge. "You have a time limit. If you don't jump in the next two minutes there's going to be an awful lot of blood going flying around. I'd get a move on if I were you." Sherlock looked frantic, crushed that he had not been able to manoeuvre Moriarty into the position he had wanted.

"Please then, give me a minute. I need to…say goodbye," he said, defeated and nodded his thanks when Jim waved his hand in consent. He stuck his hands in his pocket to gather his phone and at the same time took hold of the syringe and pushed the needle through his clothing and into his leg, pushing the plunger. He had about a minute before it would take effect. He typed in a few words and showed Jim, who looked gleeful at them.

Goodbye. Thank you for everything. SH

The message was sent to his brother, to Lestrade, to John and Mrs Hudson's phone. He looked up at the sky, as if wishing the messages a safe journey and he felt an icy wind whip up around him, the storm front was moving in now, the sun was blotted out and there were spots of rain in the air. He filled his lungs deeply and prepared himself for the fall. His coat blew out behind him and he shivered in cold involuntarily.

"Now would be a good time," Moriarty said. "Unless, of course you want Doctor Watson's brains decorating your lovely jacket." That made Sherlock snap. With a ferocious roar and a strength he had summoned from nowhere, especially with the drug starting to take effect, he rushed Moriarty and rugby-tackled him over the edge, sending them both plummeting to the earth. Sherlock only had time to hear Jim's scream as they fell before the dark reflection of their being landed on his back on the pavement, playing cushion to the taller man. The impact was painful and messy, Sherlock had felt a few of his ribs break, but Moriarty's shattered body had been enough for his nemesis to survive. The world began to spin around him as he felt warm liquid being thrown over his head and it blinded him, running into his eyes and down his face. He was tired and the warm liquid running through his hair was soothing and his eyes closed. He stayed conscious enough to hear people screaming and John's cry of 'SHERLOCK!' from the rooftop but there was no sound of a sniper bullet and he 'died' happily.

Molly rubbed her eyes until they were sore. She looked in the mirror, they were bloodshot and the area around them was red, an excellent way to make people believe she had been crying. She grabbed a tissue from her bag and exited the Ladies' dabbing her eyes. A man, who revealed himself to be an agent of Mycroft, had the body of Sherlock wheeled into her lab and went to take care of putting through the paperwork nice and quickly. As soon as she was absolutely sure she was alone and took the syringe from earlier out of its protective shell in the glasses case in her bag and she carefully pushed it into the detective's arm. She had only unzipped the upper half of the body bag, not bringing herself to peek too much at his prone form, even if the thought did cross her mind – every few minutes or so. Instead of sneaking a look, she took out the clothes she had managed to get from her quick trip out earlier and placed them on a stool which she put next to the table on which he was placed. She took a few pictures of his body, the necessary injuries that Mycroft's man would need for photoshopping some nasty skull damage onto and he left as soon as he took the images from her camera. Molly knew the serum she had injected would take a while to get around Sherlock's body and wake him up so she alternated between catching up on some old papers and carefully looking out the door to see if anyone was coming.

After about twenty minutes she heard the unmistakeable groan of her not-so-dead body and the rustling as he fidgeted. After taking a good long while to grow accustomed to living again, Sherlock reached for the zip on the bag and extracted himself. As soon as his fingers touched the zip, Molly flushed bright red and immediately turned around to give him some privacy, she refused to perv. It didn't take him long to dress and he tested out the functioning of his limbs and fine motor control.

"Is John alright?" he asked at once.

"He was found not too long after you…you know," she said. "He's in the Intensive Care ward, but they're taking good care of him."

"Has he said anything?"

"Not a word the last time I checked with the nurses down there. He's going to be ok, Sherlock," she said in her best effort to comfort him. He was looking a little lost and Molly couldn't decide if that was because he was still waking up from his coma or because he was now very separated from John.

"I know you don't like to eat much, but you should after having those chemicals in your system. They only had pasta pots left in the cafeteria when I went down, sorry if you don't like," she mumbled and passed him a little plastic tub of cold penne. Sherlock nodded and consented to pick at the food until he had finished it, which took quite some time.

"We need to wait until dark and then we can sneak you out of here. I've got a place you can hide." She checked the corridor outside was clear and led him to a large storage room; it was filled with shelves of supplies ranging from latex gloves to body bags at so forth.

"This is the storage room for the morgue. I'm usually the only one who comes in here, even when the other pathologists are working. I'll come in as often as I can. I'll be in the morgue if there's an emergency," she said and passed him a bottle of water. "Rehydration is important too," she said as she left the room and closed it behind her with a soft click. Sherlock exhaled long and loudly. His body still felt strange after the use of the drug and the clothes he was in were not, by any means, making him feel as though he had jumped out of his own body on the top of the hospital and into another one. He sipped the water Molly had given him and contemplated his next move. He would be hiding with Molly for the next two weeks, staying in London until after his own funeral when Mycroft would be able to sneak him away onto the continent where he would be able to begin bringing down Moriarty's network. Moriarty had tried, and in some ways succeeded, in bringing down everything that Sherlock had worked to build up: his career, his reputation, his skills and now Sherlock was going to do the same to him. Jim had hurt John and Sherlock was definitely going to be doing the same to Sebastian Moran. The network was vast and there were many people in it, but none of them would be terribly intelligent, they had not supplanted their old boss after all, but still his work against international crime would be a tremendous legacy, it would be a worthy magnus opus to leave.

But it would be work completed without John. He would be travelling the world and uncovering mystery upon enigma without his soundboard, his blogger, his lover by his side. He licked his lips at the thought of John's kisses and felt sadness at the knowledge he would not be feeling those delicious kisses for some time now. Even with Mycroft's help it would take time to accomplish his goal. An unpleasant thought then crawled into his mind which provoked a slightly nauseous reaction; if John believed he was dead he would eventually move on, stop loving Sherlock and find someone else to be with. The detective could not predict how long such a thing might take but there was no reason to believe that his partner would remain static to Sherlock's memory and he would eventually start dating again. Perhaps he would meet a pretty (but oh so boring) woman and they might well get married, have a child (he could see John being an exemplary father), hold a (boring) job, move into a nice house, maybe have another child and generally settle down to all the things that were supposed to bring happiness to a man. His stomach rolled nastily at the thought of losing John in such a way, but then he experienced something new: a rare moment of selflessness. If John could be happy that way then Sherlock would accept that, if his work took so long that John moved on from him then it would be acceptable; not to mention that his decision had saved John's life and that in itself was worth any personal suffering. It was strange, valuing another's happiness above his own, he had never seen the need, use or desire for it but now he felt it as though it formed a basic part of his being.

He pondered a little more on this feeling, this selflessness and he compared it to other expressions of this feeling in order to try and place it, to find a name for it so he might understand it a little better. He found the closest answer he could in fiction; when characters gave up their own happiness and desires for the benefit of someone else's that was usually reasoned by love, Character A loved Character B. Therefore, he thought that he must love John, truly, in order for him to sacrifice the one connection that had made him feel most at peace with himself in his entire fraught life for the chance at happiness he knew John could have. The revelation was a bittersweet one; he felt joy at being able to feel the emotion in this manner, it made him feel human and connected to his species in a way that grounded him, that gave him the strength to face the goliath task ahead of him. What was sour about the realisation of his feelings was that he never truly expressed it to John, not in a way he would have liked in hindsight. He had never spoken the words, or indeed, many words of affection, and he wished that he had been able to express these feelings more adequately. He wondered if John would ever, looking back, question their relationship, those feelings which had drawn them together in the first place; those emotions that had caused them to touch, to kiss, to sleep in the same bed with such intimate closeness that warmed them both.

But just the memory of the red laser sight on John's head was enough to steel his resolve, he would remove any and all threats to those he cared about, John foremost, and if he was still around by the time he had finished then perhaps they could return to that happiness they had known before two weeks ago. He had never worked for a specific reason before, the work was always its own reward and he wondered if a motivation would conflict with his resolution of the work, but he quickly concluded that it would not matter; he would do the work because he had to and whatever the reasons happened to be were clutter if he dwelled on them for too long.

Sherlock wondered if John would be alright, he wondered how his partner would take this 'death' and all the press attention that would follow it, especially when he found out about 'Richard Brook' and how everyone now thought he was a fraud. He worried for a moment before he thought about something he had considered in those long, horrid nights when John was being tortured for his viewing agony; John believed in him until the very end, he refused to let anyone shake his belief in the detective, no matter what anyone said or did to make him think otherwise. Likewise, he had faith (what an alien concept for him) in John, he knew that the doctor would not believe the idiotic press and the stories that would undoubtedly surface in Sherlock's absence. He knew John would be alright.

When Molly returned some hours later it was dark and the hospital had gone quiet now, even with the press hawking around like vultures, scavenging the scene of Sherlock's 'death'. They had been outside all day, journalists reporting live from the scene and cameras flashing periodically as the paparazzi and passers-by wanted a macabre memento of the day's events.

"There's a taxi waiting outside, one of your brother's men is driving it. Are you sure you want to come back with me? I mean, wouldn't it be better to hide with Mr Holmes for a while?" she asked, awkwardly, reluctant to make eye contact with him. She passed him a plastic bag from the taxi driver.

"No, Mycroft would be under constant surveillance at the moment. No, you flew under Moriarty's radar, he won't have anyone watching you." He emptied the bag, finding a short blonde wig in there and he immediately started to push his dark curls into the wig cap with a practised hand.

"Seems a bit silly since he pretended to date me," she said, forcing a little laugh. He settled the wig into place, adjusting it so it was in the most natural position, enough to be able to fool someone who would only spare him a passing glance.

"He didn't consider you important and too stupid to be worth keeping an eye on you." Her face fell. "Something I am grateful for. Thank you, Molly Hooper, you have saved my life today," he said and, like at Christmas, placed a kiss on her cheek. She thought he looked strange in the wig, but he still had those eyes and she turned to mush a little on the inside.

"I showed him," she said with a huge grin, mostly from the tingling on her cheek where those lips had touched her face. "He thought I wasn't worth it and now I've helped bring his plan down! For the first time in my life I'm glad everyone ignores me. I wouldn't have been of any use to you if they paid me any attention!" Sherlock couldn't tell if she was being brutally honest with herself or if this was that irritating self-deprecation which people were prone to do when they were fishing for compliments.

"You would have been of no interest to me if you had been boring and normal like the rest of this hospital," he said, feeling that was quite the end of any such things he was going to say. While he had only spoken the truth, he didn't want this to turn into pampering Molly's ego or she would become unfocussed and likely to give the game away. She seemed to sense this and turned to the door, forcibly removing the pleased smile from her face and rubbing her eyes a little more again to keep them red and sore; Sherlock had to admit she was rather good at this. He face straightened and fell into one of sorrow and upset before she opened the door and headed down the corridor, guiding him easily down the hospital on the path that would put them into contact with the least amount of people.

Molly's apartment was small and clean, there were several pink cushions which had been hastily stowed behind the sofa as she had prepared to receive a guest who would regard them with the distaste he was showing now. The tour was brief and ended with the spare room, which had been prepared for him. It was very small, only large enough for a single bed, canvas wardrobe and a small set of drawers but it would do for now. He only planned on staying here for no more than two weeks anyway.

"I've done a full shop so there's enough food for both of us, take anything you like," she said, refusing to cross the threshold into what was now his territory. "Oh, but no severed heads in the fridge," she giggled. He stared at her. Immediately, she stuttered and looked down. "John told me. I had no idea what you did with the parts I got for you. To be honest, I was a little scared to ask…"

"What did you think I did with them that was so frightening?" he asked, astonished. Surely even Molly had the basic deduction skills to realise that he would be experimenting on them in household conditions which would be closer to those presented in his cases.

"I don't know…" she trailed off, embarrassed by what she had said. Sherlock rolled his eyes and reclined on the bed. "I'll go now. I'm going to run a bath. If you hear any scratching it's just Toby," she said and eventually left him alone, closing the door quietly after her. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. He owed Molly after everything she had done, but he supposed her prattle wasn't going to get any more bearable because of it; he just had to keep his mouth shut for longer was all.


AN: Since I'm so excited about going to see the Avengers tonight I'm posting this chapter a day early :p I hope you enjoyed it! Don't worry John, it'll be alright in the end... XD