When Molly awoke, she saw that she was leaning against the wall of the alley. Moriarty hadn't even taken her anywhere. She found herself to be dressed, thank God- and perfectly fine other than the pounding in her head. Unfortunately, she found that to be wrong when she noticed that her wrists were bleeding from the fibers of the rope that bound her hands and ankles together, and she winced when she began to feel the pain of her circulation being cut off.

"Aw, she's awake!" the psychopathic voice exclaimed, and Molly squeezed her eyes shut in fear. The last thing she wanted was to see him- the person that had given her so much emotional and physical stress- the person that put both her and Sherlock through way too much. Mortiarty smirked and took out a whip.

Molly yelped in surprise and pain when the leather hit her arm, forming a new cut just above her elbow. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, love, it's very rude to look away," Mortiarty said casually. "Although, I do quite love using the whip. It's the best way to get people to listen to you. Miss Adler was truly correct about that." He sighed. "Looks like she wasn't correct about one thing, though. Can you guess, dearie?"

Shaking her head slowly and trying to free her wrists, Molly didn't respond verbally. "EXCUSE ME, I ASKED A QUESTION, LOVE!" Morarty's voice yelled, and she felt the whip smack against her arm again. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes from the pain. "N-no… I d-don't know," she stammered. Mortiarty sat down across from her. "Oh, of course you don't. You see, Miss Adler believed that Sherlock wasn't romantic in the slightest, and she couldn't ever tempt him with anything. I couldn't, either. Which is a shame, if you ask me; I think we would've made a marvelous couple. However, the git never called me. So sad."

"But somehow, you, Molly dearest, have made him love you. You know, I was going to leave you alone. I left you off of my hit list, and I let you become a sniper. All you were going to do was shoot the old woman, if anything. You would've been just fine, even now! Except, you see, you kept a few things from me. A few very, VERY important things."

"First," Mortiarty continued, collecting his whip and walking towards Molly, smirking. "You weren't supposed to help Sherlock live. That was NOT a part of my conditions in order for you to live, you worthless SLUT!" He smacked her again with the whip, this time with a much harder force with a blow to the side of the head, making things begin to look fuzzy. Molly began to cry. "N-no, you were dead! Y-you couldn't-"
"SHUT UP!" Mortiarty bellowed, and hit her again, this time in the arm. She fumbled with her wrists, trying to distract herself from the searing pain in her arms and face. "Second of all," Mortiarty carried on sickly, "You then told him that YOU WERE A SNIPER! And you let him kill the OTHER TWO! I think that's worthy of three, don't you?"

One.
Two.
Three.

Smack.

Molly screamed at the agony. Her face was bleeding, as were both of her arms, her mind was racing, and she prayed constantly to herself that someone-anyone- would hear her and save her. She knew that only happened in fairy tales, though. This could very well be the day she died. She wished that he hadn't tied her up, she could at least try to run, or fight back. She was decent at defending herself, but it was useless if she couldn't move.

As she waited for another blow that was no doubt going to come from the mad man, an all too familiar voice pierced the cold air.

"Moriarty. You better hope to God you're not doing what I just saw you doing."

Sherlock's voice was full of rage and horror, another emotion Molly had never seen Sherlock with. Well, at least the horror part. She'd never known him to be afraid of anything.

Moriarty smirked and dropped his whip. "Too bad I was doing what you saw. Otherwise I wouldn't have been doing it. You know, for a brilliant man, you can be really stupid sometimes."
"I'm going to blow your brains out," Sherlock said with his teeth gritted. "How dare you."
Moriarty rolled his eyes. "Well, if she means that much to you, she's right there. HELLO. You can easily just go over to her and treat her wounds. Sure, I'll run away, but she needs medical attention pretty quickly. And I don't think you'd kill me right away-"

For the first time, Sherlock did something without going into a battle of wits first. He fired his gun three times into Mortiarty's chest, missing him once but getting a perfect killshot with the other two rounds. This time, there was no doubt that he was dying, and that it was truly him. "Didn't you-want to know-how I faked it?" Moriarty rasped.
"No," Sherlock replied angrily. "You took it too far. It's been awful knowing you. Goodbye."
Moriarty let out one more evil laugh, and eventually stopped breathing, clearly dead on the ground, blood surrounding him completely.

"Are you all right? Oh God, no you are not all right," Sherlock ran towards her and began to unknot the rope from Molly's wrists. "John!" he called over his shoulder, and soon John came crashing into the alleyway. "Sherlock! What the bloody- oh." John stopped when he took in the situation. Moriarty dead on the ground, blood pooling around the corpse. When he caught sight of Molly, his doctor's instincts kicked in, and he rushed to her. "God, what did he do to you?" he asked, horrified.
"Whip," Molly mumbled through her incoherent, ragged breathing, her head pounding way too hard for her to muster a better explanation. "How is he not dead? How?" John asked hurriedly, cleaning the cut in the side of Molly's head with a handkerchief. "I don't know," Sherlock replied, and looked up at Molly. "This is going to hurt, okay? I'm sorry. One, two, three." He ripped off the rope from Molly's wrists, and she yelped. Even through the pain, she manged to blush, embarrassed at her pitiful-sounding voice. She was already crying and breathing like she'd just run a marathon, she didn't need to scream and make things worse.

"I'm sorry, it's okay now," Sherlock soothed. "John, we need to get her back to the flat. I doubt we can do much out here." He finished unknotting the ropes around Molly's ankles, and the agonizing tearing from the skin made her scream again. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I m-made everything h-harder." John and Sherlock lifted her up. "Nonsense, love," he said gently. "You didn't do anything, except get victimized by that…" Sherlock didn't finish, but Molly got the message. She still hated the fact that Moriarty had ruined the first few hours of Christmas morning for everyone involved, but the relief was so overwhelming that she couldn't seem to bring herself to care.

In the flat, once John had treated her wounds and carefully pressed and wrapped bandages, and Ms. Hudson had kindly delievered her tea and given her the world's most symphathetic hug, the woman and the doctor left to go have breakfast, and leave Sherlock and Molly alone.

"Molly, are you sure you're all right now?" Sherlock asked, his voice still full of concern. "If you need anything else, let me know." Molly shook her head and smiled. "I'm perfectly okay, Sherlock. Thank you. I don't know what he would've done if-"
"How do you do that?" Sherlock interrupted thoughtfully.
"Do what?" Molly asked.
"Smile. You do that all the time, and they're genuine smiles, not the kind of fake smiles you'd see on the news. You're always so chipper and lighthearted, even right now, when you've been through a lot of stress and horror for the past few months, especially the past few hours. How?"
Molly laughed once. "Because I have a lot to be grateful for. I have beautiful, wonderful friends who have helped me so much, and have just saved my life. I'm grateful that I have an amazing job, and that John is so kind, and that Mary is such a great friend and co worker, that I haven't ended up like my parents despite recent events and dangers, that I always have somewhere to go at the end of the day, and that I still have my life. And," she added, her eyes sparkling. "I have you, Sherlock."
Sherlock smiled at this as well, and kissed her, then held her in a tight embrace.

"Merry Christmas, Molly."

"Merry Christmas, Sherlock."

AWW! I hope you guys enjoyed that story as much as I loved writing it. That was a magical adventure, and I can honestly say I'll never forget this right here, completing my first fanfiction. And I have you guys to thank for it. I never, ever in this universe imagined that my little daydream snippets of writing would actually get over 6,000 views and counting, and over 30 reviews, and I want to thank you so, SO MUCH for that. It means more than you'd know, and just... thank you.

Okay, sappy time over.

No it's not.

THANK YOU SO MUCH. Guys you really, really, REALLY have no idea how touched I've been at reading your reviews, how entertaining and awesome you guys are, and you're just completely amazing, and I'm lucky to have you crazy kids reading my stuff like it's worthy of the attention it's gotten.

So thanks, and I really mean it.

I hope you enjoyed this story, that was the last chapter. So... that's all, folks! Thank you :)