Chapter 14
When she wakes up, her shoulder is bandaged but still painful. Moriarty and a new man come in, this one a mountain of muscle and grotesque flesh.
"This is Arthur. He'll be in charge of making sure your stay here is unpleasant. Start with the shoulder." He directs the beast. She is quickly dumped from the bed to the floor and held down. Jim presses his foot into her wound until she blacks out.
This vision is of Hamish at a much younger age. He's so young that she's taller. In his hands he holds a stuffed bear in a pink jumper. He offers her to her.
"Molly will make you feel better."
"Molly Hooper?" She asks as she reaches for the bear. The boy gives a small smile.
"No, Molly Sheryl." He hugs her then, and the dream dissolves.
She has no sense of time. Whenever she wakes up from the pain Jim and Arthur return with drugs. She gladly takes them, almost hoping they'll kill her now. Mostly she hopes to imagine Hamish again.
The blood's DNA isn't in any databases. The drug is homemade; no way to trace the buyer. Hamish smashes vial against a wall, barely caring when a shard slices his cheek.
The pain awakens a memory. He had jumped into fight on the playground to defend Sheryl. It was sometime in primary school. She had on the pink jumper that almost matched his bear, and even then, it gave him a funny feeling in his stomach.
She runs a wet cloth over his face, cleaning the cut. She sings nonsense softly, wiping under his eyes to hide his tears. She has a bruise on her cheek and red marks from being slapped, but she took care of him first. She giggled.
"It's because I'm tough. I'm scared a lot though. So I'll be the tough one and you be the brave one, okay?" She whispered, and he nodded.
"I'm the brave one." He muttered. Then he thought that he could trace the ingredients. Maybe one was rare. Maybe they only grew in one place.
Idiot, he thought. He had what he needed. He got to work on isolating the components, his minor scrape forgotten.
Molly found him there, asleep at the microscope, hours later. She grabbed a blanket and tucked it around his shoulders before placing a bandage on the scratch.
Hamish dreamed of Sheryl. She and her father stood together holding hands. Then John disappeared, leaving only Sherly, clutching her shoulder and backing away from him, crying.
When Sherlock shook his son awake, he was not surprised by the anguish in his son's eyes. The murderous gaze that followed reaffirmed his own feelings towards Moriarty.
Together the grey eyes plotted.