Okay, so I changed this chapter because I just came across a bunch of stuff that I wrote last year and I liked it a lot better than what I've just written. The next couple chapters didn't work with what I had planned, so I'm changing them.

Chapter Fourteen: The Past

"You promised me! You promised me you'd find him!"

Melissa closed her eyes, trying to stop the words from repeating in her mind. She opened her eyes once again, and stared at the dark ceiling of her bedroom. She couldn't sleep. Sighing, she stood up and moved into the living room of her flat. She lit the wood in her fireplace. Then she grabbed a glass and some alcohol. Pouring herself a glassful, she sat back on her couch and tried to stop thinking.

Who could she call to talk to her?

She couldn't call Moriarty. She couldn't see him again. She couldn't call Sherlock. He had comforted her, but he'd surprised her. First of all, she didn't think he'd been capable of comforting anyone. She'd also thought he'd hated her. But more importantly, she'd been embarrassed that he'd seen her break down like that. She couldn't call John, either. She hadn't really spoken to him properly since Sherlock had some back. And Lestrade had driven her home and made sure that she'd been okay. She'd insisted that he leave, so he had.

She wished she could call her sister. But she hadn't spoken to her since she'd gone off to college and left her messed up family. In fact, she couldn't contact anyone in her family. She'd left them all and had never looked back. She'd also cut herself off from her childhood friends when she'd left. And then in turn, stopped speaking to her college friends when she'd arrived in London for work. She'd been dodging any sort of commitment all her life. What kind of person did that make her?

It probably started with her mother's condition. Melissa didn't want to turn out like her mother, losing her mind completely. Her mother had been so attached to her father; they'd loved each other since they were sixteen. But when her father began travelling for work when they were both in their early twenties, her mother had apparently begun to act strangely, constantly changing her mind and acting out unpredictably. So to keep her company when he'd be away, they'd decided to have a baby. Maybe that would make her happy, her father had said.

And it did, for a little while. She'd loved Melissa. Her bizarre actions seemed to lessen and she actually seemed happy for the first time in years. But when Melissa had been about three years old, her father had come home to find her mother stringing together words that made no sense, talking to herself, and sitting in a corner of the kitchen on the floor. When her father had tried to help her up, she'd freaked out and didn't recognize him. Melissa's childhood was riddled with her mother's bizarre antics. Her father stopped travelling to be with his family, and her mother's condition stabilized somewhat. When Melissa had turned ten, her mother had another baby. Melissa had been so annoyed. Why had her parents had another child now?

Her mother had begun to have hallucinations and delusions, and had to be kept away from the baby. Her unpredictability made her dangerous to be around.

As Stephanie and Melissa grew older, Melissa grew to love her younger sister. By fourteen, Melissa barely saw her mother as she spent most of her time in her room. Her father had taken on the role of raising two daughters himself and Melissa had grown close to him. By the next year, Melissa had researched her mother's symptoms and feared that she had schizophrenia. She'd begged her father to take her mother to the doctor, and the doctors had delivered the news: her mother did indeed have schizophrenia.

The news came just days before Melissa's sixteenth birthday. So, a then sixteen-year-old Melissa and her father had to raise a five-year-old little girl. They'd had so many great times together, just the three of them. A few weeks before her seventeenth birthday, Melissa was invited to a party. Her father had insisted that she go. She should be a normal teenager, forget about taking care of a younger sister for the night. So she'd gone.

It was something Melissa regretted to this very day.

The party had run late into the night. She'd called her dad for a ride home and he told he he'd be there soon. But after half an hour, he hadn't shown up yet. Her cell phone had rung and she'd been surprised to see that it was her mother calling. She'd answered the phone to find that her mother was crying.

"Melissa," she cried. "Your father's been in a really bad car accident. He's in the hospital."

Her aunt had picked her up a few minutes later and they met her mother and Stephanie at the hospital. A drunk driver had been driving on the wrong side of the road at a high speed. They'd had a head-on collision. Her father was in critical condition.

A doctor had come in and told them that one person would be able to go in and see him. They'd been able to stabilize him for the moment. Melissa had jumped to her feet and walked across the room. Her mother had also risen.

"You don't get to see him now," Melissa had turned and yelled angrily at her mother. "I do. I've spent the past five years raising Stephanie with him. And where the hell have you been?" And she'd followed the doctor to her father's room.

He'd been covered in bandages and casts. Melissa began to cry. She'd sat next to him and gently held his hand.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she whispered through her tears. "I'm so sorry."

She'd only been given a few minutes with him and she'd moved to the hallway. She couldn't bring herself to go back to the waiting room with her family, so she's stayed in the general area of her father's room. So she saw the doctor's and nurses running in and out of his room, yelling things about how he was dying, And twenty minutes later, he'd died.

He'd died because he'd been on his way to pick Melissa up. She'd cried for days.

She had to celebrate her seventeenth birthday without the person she'd cared for the most.

The worst part was that her mother's condition declined. She'd take off for long periods of time without telling Melissa where she was going. And when she was home, she openly blamed Melissa for his death, even though she didn't always recognize her or remember how he had died. Melissa did her best to raise six-year-old Stephanie. But as soon as she was done with school, she'd moved out. She'd left everything behind.

Maybe she was afraid that commitment would leave her like her mother. As if commitment led to schizophrenia. She knew it didn't, but she was still afraid. Maybe she was also afraid because she knew that all lives ended in death.

She took another sip of alcohol to drown her lengthy list of sorrows. Gaby's reaction to her father's death had broken Melissa's heart.

Because she knew that's exactly how it felt to have her own father so cruelly taken from this world.

She woke up to the sound of knocking on her door. She slowly opened her eyes to find that she had fallen asleep on the couch, that the room was way too bright and that she had a pounding headache. She stood up and crossed the room to her foyer. Peering through the peephole, she saw that it was Sherlock.

She opened the door, sure that she probably looked awful.

Squinting her eyes, she looked at Sherlock.

"Are you alright?" Sherlock asked immediately.

"Do I look alright to you?" Melissa replied.

Rather than answering her question, he instead said, "Lestrade called me to make sure you were alright. You didn't answer any of your phone calls and you didn't show up to work."

"I didn't?" She hadn't realized it'd been so late.

"Melissa, it's after three o'clock," Sherlock informed her.

"Oh. Well I'm fine," she lied.

"There's no point in lying to me," he responded.

"Sherlock, I just really want to be alone right now," she said, even though the last thing she wanted was to be alone.

He didn't say anything for a moment. He just looked at her. "You shouldn't blame yourself."

For what? Her own father's death? Abandoning her family? Killing her ex-boyfriend? Leaving her friends behind? Liking Moriarty? Gaby's father's death? Not catching the murderer?

"But if you really want to be alone right now, I'll leave," he added.

She exhaled slowly, weighing her options. Finally she decided. "Tell Lestrade I'll be in tomorrow." That would give her enough time to pull herself together.

"Right. See you around, then," Sherlock said.

She nodded and closed the door.

"Absolutely not!" Melissa exclaimed the next day at Scotland Yard.

"But we need you to do this," Lestrade pleaded. "Who else can we get to pretend to be at Joe's Bar and Grill to pick up guys?"

"No," Melissa said again. There was some rapist who was running rampant and they'd just asked her to set him up.

"Please, Melissa. It's the only way we'll catch him," Lestrade begged her.

"You want me to pretend to be some helpless young woman? The perfect target for this guy?"

"We'll be right there the whole night," he said. "We just need you to bait him."

"Why don't you just walk in and arrest him?" she asked.

"Because he won't be expecting you to arrest him," Lestrade explained.

"How do we even know that he'll want to talk to me?" she asked, beginning to give in a little bit.

"It's a good thing John and I have already been to the bar. Apparently, he takes women home all the time," Sherlock said.

"And that's supposed to make me feel better about doing this?" Melissa asked.

"Now we know what he likes," John replied.

Three hours later, Melissa found herself inside Joe's Bar and Grill. She had straightened her long hair prior to going. She was also wearing a very revealing purple halter-top that was about two sizes too small. She thought her boobs looked ridiculous, but whatever. She had on black sequined short shorts and six-inch heels.

She thought this was being way too obvious, but Lestrade, John, and Sherlock had all agreed that the man would definitely go for her. She had to admit, though, that she didn't look anything like herself.

She sat at the bar, legs crossed, drinking some sort of fruity drink. And she waited.

The man who'd been sitting next to her stood up and left, leaving the bar stool open. A few seconds later, someone sat next to her.

"Why hello there, sexy," the man said in a smooth voice.

Melissa glanced over to see a man that matched the sketch Lestrade had shown her. She got goosebumps just from looking at him. He was really, really creepy. Not much taller than her, dark, greasy hair.

Here was her opportunity. She had originally planned to act ditzy, but she instead decided to mimic his personality.

"Hi there, big boy," she said, dropping her voice a little lower than normal. She was trying to be as seductive and flirtatious as possible.

"And what is a gorgeous lady like yourself called?" he asked, leaning in.

"Heather," she lied. "And you are?"

"Damian," he replied, holding his hand out. She took it and they shook hands.

He turned and ordered himself a drink and another for Melissa.

"So Heather. What are you doing here by yourself?" he asked, fishing for answers. Good, he wanted to make sure she was alone.

"Just having a drink. What about yourself?" she said, smiling.

"Same as you, just having a drink."

She turned to take another sip of her drink as he downed his entire glass. She felt his eyes checking her out, taking in her long legs.

"So, are you seeing anyone right now?" Damian asked, trying to get her attention back on him.

"No," she replied. "My line of work doesn't really allow for that kind of attachment."

"Your line of work?" he asked, curious.

"Mhmm," she replied with a smirk as she put her hand on his thigh. "My line of work."

Damian inhaled as she moved her hand slowly up his thigh.

"And what is…your line of work?" he asked her again, his voice now filled with lust instead of cockiness.

She leaned in to whisper in his ear, "I love to entertain."

Her hand was nearing its destination. As she touched him, he closed his eyes and let out a small laugh.

"I should've guessed," he said, eyes still closed.

Well. This was certainly not what she had planned to happen.

Opening his eyes, he placed a hand on her cheek and slowly kissed her. He pulled away, grabbed her hand in his, and stood up. He pulled her with him to a dim hallway that seemed to lead to the bathrooms.

Lestrade, where are you?

Damian began to kiss her again, but then his lips moved to her neck. He pushed her up against the wall and pressed his body against hers. She played along, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Hands above your head, now!" Lestrade yelled.

Melissa stepped away to see that they were surrounded by police officers, guns trained on Damian. She moved her right hand to her back pocket and procured a pair of handcuffs.

"You're under arrest," Melissa said, approaching him. She spun him around and placed the handcuffs upon his hands. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law…"

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