In this chapter, the story will alternate between Sherlock talking to John in solitary and the actual happenings of the story Sherlock is telling. I'm hoping this will help you picture it in your mind? There will be a line break between flashbacks and the storytelling. Please let me know if you think it was effective!

"Before I was in this mess, I was a private detective," Sherlock began. "I had solved so many cases that I've lost count. My success rate was through the roofs. Anyone and everyone knew that if the police just weren't working fast enough, Detective Sherlock Holmes was the man to go to. I solved so much of the police's work that, finally, someone noticed."

A few solid knocks echoed through the Baker Street apartments.

"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson came bustling into 221B. Sherlock lay on the couch, hands poised on his chin. "Sherlock, Lestrade is here to see you."

"Mm." A soft mumble was all the detective offered as reply.

"I'll just send him up." Mrs. Hudson sighed and descended the stairs, "What have you done now…"

A few moments later, Lestrade came up the stairs and stood in the doorway. He looked around the room, appall on his face. The flat Sherlock occupied was apparently more disorganized then Lestrade had pictured. Clearing his throat, Lestrade finally addressed the tall man laying silent on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

"Sherlock, you're going to have to come with me."

Sherlock shifted his gaze towards the other detective in the room. He looked Lestrade up and down, eyes darting about his figure. "What am I being accused of? Something to do with you, then?"

Lestrade wandered into the flat and started futzing with various items on the table. "We've known each other for a long time, Sherlock, and I don't want this to damage our relationship…"

"Relationship?" Sherlock questioned.

"Friendship, then," Lestrade clarified. "I don't want you to think I'm against you, but…"

"But what?" Sherlock's voice intensified. Lestrade paced over to the fireplace. He looked questioningly at the skull and touched it.

"Don't touch Billy," Sherlock snapped.

"What?"

"Don't touch him."

"Him? It's a skull. You have a sku-Sherlock why on earth do you have a human skull sitting on your mantelpiece?"

"Why not? He's a friend of mine."

"Just about the only one-" Lestrade mumbled. Sherlock pretended not to hear, but sank even deeper into the impression he had made on the couch.

"Why have you come?" Sherlock asked, "Is there another case? I just finished one, but I'm always open to another if it isn't boring." Sherlock, however, was aware there was not another case. And there wouldn't be for a long time.

"That's when Lestrade brought me to the Scotland Yard and explained the situation to me. I was being charged with fraud and embezzlement from the Scotland Yard."

"Wait, hold on," John interrupted for the first time. "Fraud and embezzlement? Whatever for?"

"I was just about to get there." Sherlock rolled his eyes, annoyed with humanity's ignorance.

"Sorry, carry on."

"Sherlock Holmes," Donovan spoke with disgust as Sherlock was dragged into the station for questioning.

"Donovan. Spent another night with Anderson, did we?" Sherlock said, smirking. "Why am I here?"

"You can't honestly be oblivious to why you're here. You, of all people, should have seen it coming." Donovan replied.

"I saw it coming, just not the reason behind it."

"Well that's what happens when you weren't behind it all in the first place. You can't figure it out."

"Whatever do you mean?"

Donovan looked at Lestrade who was guiding Sherlock towards the interrogation rooms. "Is he that daft?" Lestrade didn't answer and continued the hesitant march, his hand on Sherlock's arm.

"Lestrade informed me they had gotten copious anonymous phone calls telling them "Sherlock Holmes is a fraud". The callers told them I had been setting up the cases I had solved. Essentially I was accused of being the criminal and detective at the same time, for my personal gain."

"They couldn't prove it, correct?" John asked.

"Of course not. They could not take me in on the soul foundation of a few anonymous callers. The reason they brought me in was because I was apparently stealing all of the police's business. I thought people were allowed to run their own business, in my case a private detective agency, but according to them it was my fault there were hardly any cases to work on."

"If this were true that you were a fraud, why would you solve basically every case? The only thing Scotland Yard would be able to focus on would be what was going on right then. You'd bring the doom onto yourself."

"They didn't think of that. That's their problem, they just can't think. All they had was what was in front of them, basically nothing, seeing how I solved a great majority of their work for them, and the suspicious little idea planted into their minds by that scheming devil."

"Scheming devil? Hold on, I thought the callers were anonymous." John inquired.

"He was."

"He? So it was one caller? And you knew who he was?"

Sherlock sighed wearily. "That is why I'm here. They didn't believe what I was trying to tell them."

"I'm telling you, it's him. Only he could be this clever." Sherlock stated desperately.

"You've had yet to tell me who him is. Our anonymous tippers are exactly that, anonymous," Lestrade tried to explain. "Even the call receivers don't know who they are. However you say you got to the information is beyond me. We scramble the lines-"

"I don't know it's him, I feel it."

"Well, sorry to tell you, Sherlock, but we can't run an entire investigation based on your feelings," Lestrade sneered. "They can, however, search your flat with a warrant. Sherlock, if they find anything that even hints to you being the murderer in any of the cases you've solved, there's nothing I can do for you. Just tell me if you're a fraud, Sherlock, will you do that for me?"

Sherlock leaned in so close that he nearly fell off his chair. He whispered coarsely, "It's Moriarty."

Lestrade sighed heavily, "Here we go again."

Sherlock's voice raised, "Jim Moriarty. He's been following me my whole life. He is out to ruin me, and mock me doing it. I assure you, Lestrade, I am no fraud. I make simple deductions and you know it. Why are you doubting me now? We need to find him!"

"Of course if I had simply submitted to not solving so many cases, I could have walked out of Scotland Yard and been working at this very moment. They found nothing at my flat, I'm still surprised he didn't plant anything. But I told them about Moriarty and-"

"Well?" Sherlock blurted when Lestrade came back into the room, "You found him right? Or at least a clue. We can track him down, prove it was him, it was always him, lurking in the background. He's a criminal genius, my archenemy. He must be stopped-"

"Sherlock." Lestrade finally stopped Sherlock's babbling. "There's no record of a Jim Moriarty…anywhere."

"They did a full scan of birth records everywhere and didn't find one person by the name of Jim Moriarty. Neither by birth or by changed name. They were convinced it was all in my head." Sherlock let his head sink even more.

"Who is this Moriarty, then? Have you met him?" John asked his patient after a pause.

"Yes…"

"Staying alive is just so…staying. It's boring. Why not die?" Moriarty proposed. Sherlock was standing on the roof of a hospital with his nemesis Moriarty. He was trying to convince Sherlock to jump.

"What on earth would make me jump? A short man with a gun?"

Jim looked disappointed. He had obviously hoped Sherlock would share the same viewpoints. "No, not me. I would never get my hands dirty. If you don't jump, all the people you love will die," Moriarty smirked. Sherlock mirrored him.

"I love no one."

"Moriarty didn't realize that I was just like him, with nothing to lose. The only way he could have killed me then was by, in his own words, "getting his hands dirty". So he left me, and said that one day he would get me."

"Eventually, Sherlock, you'll have to find something, someone to hold on to in your painful, genius existence. And when you do, I'll be there to…congratulate you."

"So why do you think he was after you this time? What was it you think he saw that you were holding on to?" John asked.

"That is something I still haven't figured out for certain. Perhaps it was the job I had obtained. After all, it has been a while since I had an encounter with him. I didn't love any job I landed and was never happy until I was doing what I was born to do."

"Hold on, when did you last see Moriarty?"

"On the roof, I told you."

"Yes, but how old where you?"

Sherlock hesitated. "I was eight."

"Eight?" John repeated. He liked to believe in his patient's stories. If he trusted them, they'd trust him. And even if there was possibility that they were lying, John would listen and believe everything they told him to be true. Besides, even if it wasn't real, it was real for the patient. Why shouldn't he listen? But in light of the new information, John found it hard to push away the doubts creeping into his mind. Sherlock caught sight of that weed of doubt beginning to grow in his doctor.

"I know, the other doctors think I'm making it up, seeing how that was the day…" Sherlock's voice faded. He looked as if he were kicking himself for mentioning it, whatever it was.

"That was the day what?"

"That was the day…my mother died." Sherlock swallowed the lump in his throat and continued. "Moriarty…tried to convince me to jump. He said if I didn't, he'd kill everything I loved, and the only thing I loved then was my mother."

"It's you or your mother, your choice," Jim Moriarty said with a grin. Sherlock stared straight down to the pavement tens of stories below him. He took a deep breath and stuck his foot out, but something stopped him. His cell rang. His mother had given him a phone in case of emergency. Sherlock didn't know that the number was listed on his mother's emergency contacts.

Sherlock pulled it from his jacket pocket and answered the phone that was playing the ringtone Staying Alive, ironically. After a few words on the phone, Sherlock hung up and stepped off the ledge of the building. He turned to face a confused enemy.

"What, you want your mother to die?" What Moriarty didn't know was that his mother was already in intensive care and probably wouldn't have made it from the car accident, anyway.

"That was the hospital. My mother is dead." A single tear slid from Sherlock's deep green eyes. He stood there for some time, then smiled in grief. "You have nothing to take away from me."

Moriarty thought that over and bit his lip. "You may be right, but I'll get you one day. Know that I'll be watching you. I'll be overlooking everything you do. And when the moment is right, I'll take away all your happiness, in a single, heart wrenching snap of my fingers."

"And he disappeared. I haven't seen him since." Sherlock pursed his lips. "All the others think I made this story up to balance out my mother's death. The doctors, the police, even my own brother."

"Was your brother there when Moriarty tried to force your suicide?" John asked.

"No, he's too good to have any witnesses. No witnesses, no loose ends." Sherlock replied.

John pondered all of this. It was quite an elaborate story, how on Earth could he be making all of it up? But then, if he was setting up all the cases he'd solved, wouldn't he take the time to create a fool-proof story? After all, John thought, wouldn't an asylum be better than prison?

"Sherlock, why did Moriarty come after you? Why not your brother? How did he even know who you were when you were so young?" John asked.

Sherlock sighed. "Earlier that day I had been solving a case that he was behind…"

"Wait, you were eight?" John said as half a question, half a statement.

"Yes." Sherlock confirmed. John looked at Sherlock in surprise. "What, I was bored."

"I see," John smiled in admiration. "So he came after who was trying to reveal him."

"Where's your notes? Aren't you going to label me and whatever it is you psychiatrists do?" Sherlock scowled.

"No, I am not."

Sherlock appeared indifferent, but John could sense his anxiousness. "Then…what? What are you making of all this? I may be able to deduce at the drop of a hat, but I can't read minds."

After a quiet moment, John replied, "I believe you."

I hope this was satisfying for you! Review?

Thank you for reading!