Revenge is Sweet

Charles had put a great deal of time and effort into his plan for revenge.

His father's contacts at the golf club had come up trumps again and Charles had had a long and very fruitful conversation with a criminal psychologist about what makes a stalker tick, although he didn't tell Sean what he needed the information for, he wasn't sure that the other man would find it entirely ethical that Charles was going to use the information to deliver someone, hopefully, a lot of pain.

His very long and confidential chat with Major Beck was something that had to be done, an essential, but it was far too late for any sort of official complaint or action, even though what he'd done to Molly was a crime, and, as Molly had said all along, there was no actual proof. That didn't mean that the army didn't have to be told what a threat he was, and that there were other female soldiers who were probably at risk from him. Charles knew that Beck would make sure that everyone was vigilant, that they would act as soon as there was a hint of anything suspicious, but the fact that there might well be some investigation, sometime, maybe in the future, wasn't nearly enough as far as he was concerned, so Charles didn't tell Beck that by the time he'd finished any females having difficulty would be lining up to shop the little shit, he thought it was best to keep that to himself.

-OG-

She felt as beautiful as Charles kept telling her she was as she walked slowly across the middle of the room to their table, obeying his instructions to let their target get a good look at her. She hadn't been able to spot him in the sea of mess uniforms, so that for a moment a part of her wished more than anything that he wasn't going to be there, that he hadn't turned up, so that she could just enjoy the fact that they were at a party and it was New Year's Eve and that she looked as good as she possibly could and was with someone who not only looked drop dead gorgeous in his mess uniform but who adored her.

She had looked around the room at the light from the chandeliers twinkling off the crystal glasses and the silverware and the white table linen, at all the women like her in long beautiful dresses and the men in mess uniforms and thought what a bleeding far cry it was from the local in east Ham where she'd spent most of the New Year celebrations that she could remember before she'd joined up. Once she was in the army she'd never been on leave at New Year and had, in fact, spent one far away in a FOB in Afghanistan.

"Well, well, well if it isn't Miss Dawes, I hardly recognised you"

"Sir" Molly tried hard to avoid sounding as if she was using the title as a sneer, she didn't want to curl her lip and sound as though she'd just said 'arsehole'. He had taken her by surprise by coming up behind her and hearing his voice so suddenly and without warning had made her jump, as well as filling the pit of her stomach with remembered fear and revulsion.

"Last thing I heard you'd gone AWOL, so I'm surprised about you turning up here, what are you doing here anyway?" he quite deliberately looked her up and down "Not that I'm not pleased to see you back and looking so …. good … because I've certainly missed seeing you around. Still, we can change all that now can't we?"

Anyone listening to their conversation would probably assume that they were old friends or acquaintances who hadn't seen each other for a while, but his voice was absolutely loaded with menace.

"I was invited, and I don't know where you got that I was AWOL, cos I weren't" She forced herself to smile at him as if she was totally unconcerned, although she couldn't be sure that her smile wasn't actually more of a grimace, as she saw Charles give her an almost imperceptible wink as he sat at their table and watched closely what was going on. They were still standing towards the centre of the room and her stalker put his hand on the small of her back trying to guide her off towards the edge, but she stood firm because she knew that the second part of Charles' plan needed them to be as visible to as many people as possible.

"Take yer hand off me" She then raised her voice trying to draw attention to them "Keep yer bleeding hands to yourself"

"Molly" His voice dripped with syrupy sounding sarcasm as though he was completely puzzled at her reaction.

"I never said you could call me Molly neither" Out of the corner of her eye she could see that they were starting to attract quite a lot of attention, that people were looking at them and whispering to each other, obviously talking about them "and I said you was to take yer hand off me"

"Don't be ridiculous I don't need your permission" He laughed as though he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

"I think the lady said to take your hand off her and I think it might be a good idea if you did just that, don't you?" Molly turned and looked into the face of a complete stranger wearing mess uniform and quite obviously a knight in shining armour, which, though lovely of him and it was obvious evidence that Charles' plan was working, was a bit worrying because it might also mean that it was all going to go to shit before he'd had the chance to come over and do his bit.

"We're old friends" He hadn't looked around him as he answered her knight so he probably wasn't aware of the audience there was now to their conversation, so that Molly quite deliberately scanned the room, piquing his curiosity at the same time as drawing his attention to the sheer number of people who were looking at them.

"Yes, I've heard all about your 'friendships' with women" Her knight in shining armour raised his eyebrows and Molly silently swore under her breath, it looked as though the plan might have been a bit too effective.

Sean had underlined for Charles that the one thing the arsehole would hate more than anything else, the thing that he wouldn't be able to cope with, was to be humiliated, to become a laughing stock, the subject of barrack room jokes and derision. Letting him find out that there was gossip in the officers' mess about his fetish for going through female soldiers' underwear and about him being such a total failure with women that he had to follow his subordinates around and chase after them when they were off-duty because they wouldn't voluntarily give him the time of day, would diminish him completely. He needed to see himself and for everyone else to see him as all-powerful.

The Chinese whispers of the army grapevine took some beating as a bush telegraph, but the timing and selection of their unwitting accomplices was crucial, it was vital that no-one knew he was using them to help deliver any sort of comeuppance to anyone and the timing had to be spot on so that the gossip and the jokes were spreading at the time of the party but not so far or so fast that her stalker was already on notice that people were laughing at him. It was important that he wasn't too cautious to approach her in public.

"Everything okay here?" Charles was at his most civilised and superior as he joined the trio in the middle of the floor, a lot earlier than they'd originally planned but it was a sort of damage limitation exercise in reassuring her knight as Charles put his arm round Molly's shoulder and smiled at her would-be rescuer "Thanks very much" The knight walked away reluctantly leaving the three of them together, still looking over his shoulder as he went and then sat down and began talking earnestly to the people sitting at his table, who all looked towards the trio in the centre of the room.

"Who is this darling?" Charles was still using the voice that Molly called his posh twat one.

"It's the one I told you about, you know, the one what kept following me about and wouldn't leave me alone, kept moving me stuff"

"Is it?" Charles' voice was now low, cold and full of menace as he turned and addressed him, drawing himself up to his full height, which was considerably more than the other man, so that he could look down his nose at him as he spoke "What the hell are you doing talking to her, what is it you want? I thought she'd told you long ago to leave her alone but you don't seem to understand, do you? so now I'm telling you to leave her alone"

"She didn't tell me to leave her alone, we were close, I looked after her" he tried to sound both indignant and misunderstood "We were friends"

"Were you?" Charles snorted a sceptical laugh down his nose "We've all heard about the way you make friends with women, and if you were close and you did look after her, she's obviously changed her mind, hasn't she? She's got me to look after her now, and I'm telling you to leave her alone" He kissed the side of Molly's head and squeezed her shoulder in an unspoken apology for saying that she needed someone to look after her, which was arrant nonsense.

Sean had explained that stalkers are almost always deeply attracted to women who are feisty and self-motivated which made a lot of sense to Charles, Molly didn't seem to him to have been either weak or vulnerable when he'd targeted her. The fact that he'd expressed his need for power as 'loving' her or being 'in love' with her and that he had fooled himself into believing that those feelings were reciprocated was typical according to Sean, but his emotions had very little or nothing to do with affection, or even sex, they were about his need to dominate and control someone's life through fear, to have power over someone that he saw as powerful.

When he'd asked Sean what effect Molly pissing off would have had, he'd explained that her stalker would have found it unbelievable and infuriating that she'd managed to get way and go missing so that he'd lost her and if she came back into his orbit the man would almost certainly, in his opinion, do anything and everything he could to re-establish that hold over her, that he would need to demonstrate to her that he was the one who was all powerful and that she would only ever be able to escape from him temporarily.

That was why Charles had decided that the best way to punish him was for her to humiliate him and to make him the subject of ridicule. Knowing the army and soldiers, even the officers, as Charles did, he knew that the ridicule would quickly translate into endless piss taking and if there were any girls or women who were being targeted or feeling uncomfortable about him they would be beating a path to report him.

"Come on, darling, let's leave him to it" Charles put his hand in the small of her back and they walked away from the other man, looking every inch a couple as they left him standing alone, isolated in the middle of the room and knowing that the rumour and gossip mill was in overdrive as they took their seats back at their table and completely ignored him as he went back to his own table running the gauntlet of fascinated stares.

"Bugger, I never got the chance to smack his bleeding gob, I were really looking forward to that bit"

"Never mind, I had to stop Sir Galahad, and did I tell you that you look amazing, by the way"

"Yeah, you did tell me, but that don't mean that you can't say it again does it?" She put her hand up and put it on his cheek "Mind, you're a bit biased. You know, I really thought he were gonna whack him one" She giggled "He'd heard all the stuff cos he told buggerlugs over there that he'd heard about the way he treated women"

"Yep, worked a little bit too well though, didn't it?"

-OG-

Her killer heels meant that she was almost tall enough to dance with him without getting a stiff neck, although in the end he pulled her close enough so that her head was resting against his chest and they weren't actually making any progress round the floor at all. The area cleared for dancing was small which meant it was crowded and it didn't matter that they were mostly swaying on the spot. After a while Molly looked around and realised that the man who'd made her life such a misery but who had, in the end, been the reason she'd gone to Bath, had left the party. She supposed she should be grateful to him, if it hadn't been for the way he'd behaved she wouldn't have met Charles, their paths would never have crossed, but she couldn't, she hated him, she would always hate him, even if he was bleeding pathetic.

"Happy New Year" Charles swung her up off her feet so that her face was on a level with his and kissed her, then let her slide down him slowly until her feet were back on the floor.

"Yeah, to you as well, hope it's a bit better than the last one, what with everything"

"What, finding you? Can't come any better than that can it?"

"No, I weren't talking about that; I was talking about you getting shot 'n that"

"That seems like a lifetime ago now and it meant that I met you" He smiled, then kissed her again "Alright it was a bit drastic I'll give you that" He laughed and grabbed her wrist as she went to slap him "Have I told you that I love you tonight?"

"No, you was too busy patting yourself on the back for being so bleeding clever"

"Shall we go and then I can show you?"

-OG-

Their hotel room was very up-market, the bed was so big that it made his bed at Royal Crescent look like a single instead of a king-sized although they were only taking up a tiny bit of it as they held each other as close as they could. Molly kept thinking that there was an awful lot that they didn't know about each other, but as he ran the tips of his fingers up and down her arm, it didn't seem to matter that much anymore.

"One of us is going to have to learn to cook" He laughed "I can only do warming up in the microwave and I need supervision to do that"

"I can do stir fry"

"Can you?"

"Yeah, you put everything in the pan and stir it while you're frying it" She started to giggle.

"You're lying"

"Course I am, dickhead, but I'm bloody good at take away"

"Once of us had better learn to do a bit if we're not going to starve"

She knew that he wanted her to move in with him, that he wanted them to set up home together and she did want to because being without him was unthinkable. She wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to go back in the army any more, but if she did she didn't know what that would mean for them, the problem was that she just didn't know what she wanted to do instead, everything was changing and sometimes it felt as though things were running away from her.

She'd given up her room in Weston and agreed to move back to Royal Crescent for the moment and had then upset Norm very badly by telling him that she wasn't going to be working there after the weekend. He'd kept offering her more money and had even offered to cut her hours as well so that she'd felt very guilty, he'd been so good to her when she needed help so she told him that the only reason was the travelling, that she couldn't commute backwards and forwards to Bath, and had then felt even more guilty for not really telling him the truth.

Sleeping in a giant double king sized bed felt a bit weird, two feet of space between them didn't feel right so that she kept gravitating onto his side so that in the end he'd laughed and said they'd be better off in the middle, so he re-organised the pillows, put his arm round her and asked her to tell him what she was thinking.

"That I don't know what I'm gonna do, whether I wanna go back in or do something else, or what"

"Do you want to be with me? and be honest"

"Yeah, I love you"

"Well that's okay then isn't it? you don't need to decide now, you've got all the time in the world and I've still got a job because I managed not to beat the shit out of an arsehole even if he did deserve it, so we won't starve even if we can't cook. What do you reckon; shall we find somewhere to live so that I get out of barracks and can come home to you at night?"

"Only if it's like Royal Crescent"

"You'll be bloody lucky"

-OG-

Author's notes: Thank you for all your support and for your lovely reviews. I had to be very careful not to get carried away with their revenge because it was important that CJ had to keep his career intact and I think he'd be more likely to be subtle than violent in any action he took.