"What did he want?" John demanded immediately after the call ended.

"He wants to get close enough to the person who matters the most to me," Sherlock said, already texting frantically. He looked up for a mere second. "My best friend, I'd imagine."

"Please, like he could ..."

"Oh, we all know he could." Sherlock, John and Mary turned to the door of the flat, where Mycroft Holmes stood, supporting his weight on his umbrella. "Do stop with the texts, brother, I am right here."

"How did you ..." Mary started, but trailed off after Mycroft dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

"I was just on my way here," Mycroft said. "It was just blind luck that I was here just in time Moriarty decided to make his first official connection with the living world."

"Did you get it?" Sherlock asked. Mycroft held up an envelope.

"The Woman has been seen entering and leaving Molly Hooper's apartment everyday for the past three days," he said. "Also, some of my men managed to catch a glimpse of her and Tom together."

"Perfect," said Sherlock and took a sensible amount of photos out of the envelope. He looked through them quickly and then turned to his brother. "Moriarty is after John. I shall need maximum protection around Baker Street and Bart's."

"Bart's?" Mycroft asked with a slight, but smug, smirk. "Why would I have to put someone there? I had called that John is unable to go to work for taking care of his wife. Who should be resting on her maternity leave."

He threw a look at Mary's direction, who glared back and snorted.

"We can't exclude Molly as a potential victim of Moriarty's plans," Sherlock said with a blush of either embarrassment or anger on his face.

"Oh, right, because she counts as the person most important to you," Mary didn't miss the opportunity to tease him.

"Shut up," Sherlock snapped.

"Why don't you just put some men around her apartment?" John suggested. "It would be more rational."

"Yes, which is why Sherlock asked me to do so before his four minutes long exile," Mycroft answered. "His dying wish," he added with a mocking smirk, amused with Sherlock's hateful expression.

John raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Wait, you were going to die on that mission?" he asked, after his surprise was replaced by anger when he looked at Sherlock.

"Why else do you think they would only exile me for six months?" Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"And you just went with it?" John yelled at him.

"Let's not waste time on the things of the past, John," Sherlock tried to dismiss him. "I'm here now, I'm not going anywhere and I'm going to bring down Moriarty."

"Oh, we bloody will waste time on the things of the past," John said. "I lost you once without a proper goodbye and you were going to make me do so again? And you were going to let Molly find out just how much you care about her after she confronted Mycroft about the guards around her house, just because you're too much of a coward to say it to her face!"

The room fell silent after his outburst. Sherlock looked shocked and remorseful, John was glaring daggers at him, Mary looked worried as she watched her husband and his best friend and Mycroft simply raised his eyebrows a little.

"I ... am sorry," Sherlock finally said. "I thought you might have gotten the idea of what was happening when we said goodbye at the airport."

"Well, I didn't," John said. He wanted to say something more, but Mycroft intervened before he could.

"We don't have time for unnecessary arguments," he said. "After we get to Moriarty, and make sure he actually is dead or imprisoned this time, you two can resolve every argument you ever had while drinking tea. But right now we are all alive and present, so we should all start doing what each of us does best."

The silence that followed was a good enough agreement to this.

"I shall keep you posted on Moriarty's rats – as I'm sure you're network will try to do, as well," Mycroft said and headed to the door. "And you keep me updated on your progress, Sherlock. Remember, Moriarty is the only thing that is still keeping you here."

Sherlock nodded and averted his eyes from his brother to the pictures and stared at Tom. He was caught talking to Irene with an evil smirk on his face. Sherlock frowned at the strange feeling of his stomach supposedly tying itself into a knot.

When they first met, he couldn't find anything wrong with him. He unknowingly put Molly in danger. Even after that incident with "Jim from IT", he let another criminal slip past him while using Molly.


Molly sighed, grateful for the end of her shift. She waved politely at her coworker who had come to take her place and left for her locker room.

Since Sherlock's return (and that embarrassingly awkward reunion, when they awkwardly stood there with small, somewhat shy and welcoming smiles in a silence, which was interupted by her obvious observation about him being back – which went by uncommented on Sherlock's part), it felt strange walking into her locker room. She always half expected Sherlock waiting for her there – as improbable as that sounded.

She walked straight to her locker and opened it to gather her stuff. In her mirror, however, she caught a glimpse of a figure standing behind her. She turned with a gasp, ready to scold Sherlock for frightening her, but as she turned, she realized there was no one there.

It's just my imagination. Silly Molly!

She put away her lab coat and took her winter coat and her bag, ready to head out into the winter night. She went out of the locker room, feeling much less at ease than before, and was walking through the corridors of the hospital, almost alone, when the lights on the hallway went off. Her brain went into panic mode, as she stared into the dark with wide eyes. She was still in the basement, so there was an absolute darkness around her.

With a few deep breaths she managed to calm herself and searched the pockets for her phone. When she found it, she unlocked it and turned the shining baby blue screen away from her and to the floor, so she could at least see where she was going. She kept thinking happy thoughts to forget about the scary situation she found herself in, and started to make her way to the exit.

She walked past many closed doors, and she soon realized she was completely alone in the wide and seemingly never ending hallway. The light on her phone lighted only so much and when she thought she noticed a figure standing by one of the doors, she decided to go closer.

"Hey, got stuck?" she joked pathetically as she approached the unmoving figure, which was staring in the other direction. It wasn't until she was so close she could see the dark hair and a well-tailored suit of the man that he turned around.

Only to reveal the face of a wide-grinning Moriarty.

Molly screamed and stumbled backwards, which resulted her to fall and drop her still shinning phone. It was left forgotten on the floor as she tried to move as far away from the figure as she could while trying to get up and run into the other direction.

Her phone fell screen down on the floor, which brought back the scary darkness, and she couldn't even see an outline of the psychopath's body. She was left in the dark and tried not to make a sound. He didn't move while she was trying to escape and if she couldn't see him now, he couldn't see her either.

She moved slowly and as quietly as possible in the way she came, though she was almost sure she could hear her own heartbeat echoing throughout the hallway. Not one sound broke the intense silence, not one step was heard and even she stopped breathing for the time being.

Then, all of a sudden, lights were back on, the white light bounced of the white walls, momentarily blinding her. Once her sight got back, she instantly looked at where she had seen Moriarty, only to find she was alone again. Well, almost.

"Molly?" came a voice behind her and she turned, seeing Mike Stamford approaching her. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes," she said with a shaky voice as her trembling legs barely let her to stand up. "Just got a bit frightened, I guess."

"Yes, someone thought it would be bloody funny to turn off the lights. I never took you for someone who was afraid of the dark, though," Mike said and didn't miss her worried look over her shoulder. "You sure you're alright?"

"Hm?" She looked back at him and faked a smile. "Yes, of course. I just need to ... to get home. I'm very tired."

"Okay," Mike smiled. "Take care."

"You too," Molly said. "Bye."

She hurried to the exit and hailed a cab. She sat inside and took out her phone, playing with it in her hands and deciding whether she should call Sherlock or not.

No, she said to herself. I'm just being silly. If Moriarty is alive, he won't come to get me first. He wants Sherlock, not the mousy pathologist, no matter how much Sherlock thinks I count.

"Having troubles miss?" asked the driver through loud chewing of his gum. She looked up to meet dark brown, almost black eyes staring at her through the rearview mirror.

"No, just ..." She sighed, not really knowing how she should answer and put her phone away. If she decided the games of her own mind will bother her, she won't solve anything.

"Listen, lady, as a cab driver I know when women need their boyfriends close," the cabbie said. "You should call him."

"I ..." she trailed off once again before composing herself. "He's just a friend. And I really don't need to bother him whenever I feel insecure."

"Well, you look downright scared, dearie," the cabbie insisted. "Call him. At least let him know, he should keep an eye out for you."

"How would you know that?" she asked suspiciously. Maybe it was just her paranoia, a result of what appeared to be a strange form of hallucinations in the hallway of Saint Bart's hospital, but her mind was telling her something was very wrong with this certain cabbie.

"Like I said, as a cab driver I know a few things." For a cab driver he also sounded way too smug and proud for being able to read her like a book, so Molly decided not to bother talking to this boasting idiot anymore. She remained quiet and looked out of the window – and saw the doors of her flat moving past it as the cab drove by.

"Hey, you drove past my house!" she said, internally deciding the cabbie will not get a tip when seh gets out.

"Oh, you're not going home, dear," the cabbie chuckled. He adjusted the reaview mirror so now she could see a well-known chesire grin. "You should really call Sherlock while you still had the chance."

Molly stared at the back of Moriarty's head in horror. After her brain finally concluded it was really him and not just another strange hallucination (although she started to wonder if she should really call what happened in the hospital hallucinations), she reached for the door, hoping naively that she would be able to throw herself out.

It shouldn't even be a surprise that they were locked. Hasn't she learnt anything from the movies?

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

"Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that," Moriarty said with a shrug. "But mostly I hope to piss Sherlock off. He is quite sexy like that, you know?"

"But wh-why me?" Molly asked. She didn't know, why she felt brave enough to ask questions. Perhaps it was because part of her still believed it was just some horrifying dream. "Why not John?"

"John's dull," Moriarty said. "Sherlock is only willing to fake his death for him. Let's see if he's willing to die for you."

(A/N: Again, I am SO sorry for the long wait! I literally wrote this chapter three words per day until I got to Molly's part :S also, I'm on my holidays right now, so my time for updating is limited. I'm working on the next chapter now, and hopefully I will be able to publish it tomorrow morning (if I don't sleep in late) :P I hope you enjoyed it!)