Oh look, I've forced Sherlock to be in pain again. Why do I do this? Because I am a sadist and I enjoy it. Injuries and sex: my favorite things to write. Sometimes I combine them...

There will be one more chapter after this, as well as a brief epilogue.

The feather pillow he clung to was soaked with sweat, and his breathing had become ragged. Sodden curls clung to his forehead and what little colour he had was drained from his face.

"Keep looking at me like that, you bastard. I dare you."

The black hollows of absent eyes did not relinquish their icy gaze, and Sherlock glared back as though he could obliterate his own pain by sheer force of will.

"I'm better than you. I've won, don't you understand?" He panted, his voice cracking. "I've won."

The pill bottle drifted in and out of focus, framed by the skull's wide-grinning teeth.

It had been two days, and John, good Doctor Watson, in spite of the stiffness in his muscles and the aching in his head, had counted each day to make sure that Sherlock had been taking at least one pill every eight hours. It was Oxycodone, or something in that family of drugs. A generic. An opiate: double the potency of oral morphine, though administered in smaller doses. John made sure Sherlock took them. John did this because he was kind. John did this because he did not want Sherlock to be in pain.

Sherlock had hidden them; he had pretended to swallow and then had spat them into his hand. Every single one that John had plucked from the bottle for him. Sherlock did this because he was weak. Sherlock did this because he was afraid.

He snarled at the skull, still sitting unobtrusively on his bedside table, and knew that he was telling it lies. The pile of illicit drugs had been pushed from his bed the day before yesterday when they had returned from the hospital, and swept hastily under the bed the next day when Lestrade had dropped in to speak with them. John had felt well enough to give him a statement, but it was Sherlock who had spun the web, and Sherlock who held all the threads, so John could only tell so much. He had insisted that the detective wasn't yet in any condition to go through the legal rigmarole, and had shooed Lestrade away. The DI had enough empathy to concede.

The label jumped into focus. HOLMES, SHERLOCK. 45 tablets. 10 MG. NON-REFILL. Take one by mouth every six hours as needed to control pain.

"I've won," he growled again, though half-heartedly. "You won't take this away from me, too. I won't let you."

The pill bottle drifted until it was little more than an orange blur, and the leering skull solidified behind it in hard, dry lines of chalk-white and jagged shadow. It seemed barely able to restrain its morbid giggling.

The six unswallowed tablets of Oxycodone rested heavily in the drawer beneath it, taunting him with promises of relief and comfort, beckoning him down the slippery slope of emptiness and forgetfulness and starry-eyed wonder.

A feather to tip the scales of his tenuous temperance.

"No," He snarled – though it sounded more like a whimper - to the grinning skull, "I survived, you didn't, I'm stronger than you. Do you hear me? I won't let you have this, Vincent, not this, not him. I'm stronger than you!"

Vincent dared him to prove it. Vincent stared at him with long-empty eye sockets and grinned silently, knowing that he was a coward.

Sherlock's jaw clamped tight with determination and his pale, trembling hand closed around the pill bottle, squeezing hard enough to whiten his knuckles. Long moments crept past as the hard plastic cap scored purplish divots into his palm, long moments in which Sherlock did battle with demons he couldn't name, until his fluttering heart finally calmed enough for him to draw a slow, measured breath. With his other hand he unscrewed the cap and stared into the jumble of gritty, oblong tablets. His trembling index finger slid along the plastic and he withdrew one – only one. Slowly, deliberately, he brought it to his lips and dropped it into his mouth, rolling it on his tongue hesitantly for a moment before swallowing it dry.

As needed to control pain.

The pill bottle snapped back down onto the bedside table, squarely within the skull's line of sight, and Sherlock sneered right back at it.

"I've won, Vincent."

And this time it was true, this time there was conviction to it. The skull was a dry, empty, long-dead thing. The skull had shot its own liquid fate into the crook of its arm years ago. Vincent was dead.

Sherlock knew this. Sherlock had the strength to swallow that one pill, to know that it would do no more than take the edge off the pain in his side, to know that he was in control of it, and not it of him. Sherlock had won.

He sighed his suffering into his pillow and waited for the drug to take effect.

"You're sure, Sherlock? You're absolutely sure? Because it just seems so…paranoid to think that he–"

"Greg," Sherlock interrupted, and Lestrade looked up, because a first name from Sherlock Holmes meant listen and listen now. "I'm sure."

He flipped through his notes, and John fingered the handle of his mug anxiously as he glanced between them. He still wasn't sure if Sherlock was recovered enough, but he had seemed to make great leaps in improvement since last night, and the DI had been hounding him for a statement, because the higher-ups were clamouring for answers by now. Sherlock had telephoned Lestrade himself that very morning and asked that he drop in down at Baker Street.

"There is no such program as the 'Powers Institute,' here are no records of it, you can look that up yourself, it was a blind. A blind within a blind, if you will, a very elegantly woven deception, but he knew I would figure it out. He counted on it."

"I'm going to repeat this," Lestrade announced, "just to make sure I've got it clearly enough." He cleared his throat and tapped his notepad. "Approximately three months ago, Adrienne Van Orden was contacted by parties unknown, who offered him £50,000 cash and admission to a music school in Switzerland, complete with brochures, admissions forms, photographs…"

"All faked. Faked very nicely, but any idiot with a computer and glossy paper can create a fake pamphlet with a coat of arms on it." Sherlock interjected.

"Yes, I've got that nearly verbatim, I'm just summarizing. So, fake school in Switzerland. The parties in question then intentionally informed him that he would be competing against three others in the selection process for a single spot. These are the girls who turned up dead, and in actuality they had no idea about the whole music school thing, they were just singled out because they were exceptional musicians that Adrienne would have had contact with. After he was informed of this, someone started hinting, sending him sort of... vague suggestions about how best to eliminate his competition."

"Strangers online," Sherlock added, "chat rooms he stumbled across, seemingly at random. Children go blindly about on the internet, he didn't connect them immediately, but it was all organized specifically to plant the idea of murder in his already rather unstable mind."

"Got that, and that's why the mother disappeared from social networking shortly thereafter. She was afraid of the ideas her son seemed to be developing, so she got rid of the computer." Lestrade continued.

Sherlock nodded, his imperious nature prompting him to explain more or less continuously. "It was no good, the inspiration was there, and it grew. The boy convinced his mother that it was the only way to be sure that she would get the money and be rid of him. Given her marital trouble and her son's violent disposition the offer was simply too promising, and Adrienne knew full well that the whole family was afraid of him."

"So," Lestrade resumed, "she decided that, at the risk of bringing the boy's violent temper down upon herself and her daughter, she would go through with it, kill the little girls as humanely as she could, let the boy smack the bodies around, and hide their true motives with the supposed rape, all to be rid of him. Even if the genetic material were identified, the donor would be the one incriminated by it, not her or the boy."

"Ingenious."

"You could call it that, I guess," Lestrade murmured, "so here's what I don't understand, first of all, why create a fake music school just to force a child to kill other children, and second of all, why go to all this trouble, build this elaborate scheme, and then leave this 'Powers Institute' hint that was so obvious to you, specifically?"

"It was a test," Sherlock declared breathily, "isn't it obvious? A test of the boy's intelligence and brutality. He needed to be cold-blooded enough to kill three innocent little girls for personal gain, and smart enough to keep me from deciphering it, even when it was right under my nose. The boy had to keep me from ever getting far enough to learn of the supposed 'Powers' grant, because with a name like that it would be obvious to me who was behind it, it would all unravel. He was grooming the boy, starting from the ground up, Greg, grooming a successor, an heir, a succeeding criminal mastermind."

"Another Moriarty?"

"Yes."

"...Christ."

"But his prospect, in this case at least, fell through. When we visited the house the first time, Adrienne knew that I was on to him, he knew he had failed, so he decided that he would try to redeem himself by dispatching John and I. It wouldn't have worked, dear Jim has his heart set on killing me himself, but Adrienne had suddenly found himself unable to contact his puppet master, he was backed into a corner."

Lestrade nodded slowly, processing. "So, basically, right now, how should we be treating this case?" He sighed, tapping his pen against the notepad in agitation. "Is Moriarty going to be coming after this kid again? He's still in the hospital, should we increase his security, what?"

"Adrienne failed," Sherlock reminded him, "I saw through the plot, Moriarty has no further use for him. As for his security, I would increase it to absolute capacity. Not that it will matter."

"Why?"

"Because Adrienne Van Orden will be dead before he ever gets a chance to testify, likely before he ever leaves that hospital."

Lestrade met his eyes in cold silence.

"James Moriarty," Sherlock explained, leaning forward slightly in his chair and speaking with the gravity of experience, "does not leave loose ends. The boy knows too much."

"Well, we have him under 24-hour surveillance, there are officers outside his door at all times," Lestrade insisted, "at least while we're there, there's no way anyone could - "

His mobile buzzed loudly in his pocket and he was deathly still for an instant before looking fearfully from Sherlock to John, knowing that this was not the first time Sherlock's warnings had very nearly approached divine providence. Hesitantly, he retrieved the phone and raised it to his ear.

"Lestrade." There was an indistinct yammering from the other end, but it sounded urgent. The DI glanced back at Sherlock and his face said it all. "I...god...how?" Pause. "Hold them for questioning, and seize every bottle of that antibiotic; they may all have been tampered with. Yes, immediately. I'm coming now." He ended the call and buried the phone back in his pocket.

He muttered grimly, through tightly clenched teeth. "Do I even have to tell you that you were right?"

"Do I have to tell you I told you so?" Sherlock countered, quietly.

"Wait...wait, the boy's dead? How?" John demanded, genuinely shocked, but tactfully breaking the tension.

"Been dead for nearly an hour," Lestrade growled, "they just realized that it was foul play and not a result of the injury. Someone poisoned the medication they were administering him. They've detained every nurse who's been to tend to him, but he's been given several doses by several people, all of whom had apparently no idea, and no-one can be sure which one killed him. From pathology alone, looks like strychnine."

"Same poison used in the cab driver case," Sherlock pointed out coldly, "though common enough."

"I have to go," Lestrade barked with finality, rising from his seat. "And remember, you two are effectively under house arrest until we sort out what you will and won't be charged with, so please don't do anything...dramatic."

John glanced over at Sherlock, still a little pale (paler than usual) and still in his dressing gown. "We'll be here," he announced authoritatively.

Lestrade nodded, his expression dire as he took a few steps toward the door. "Take care of yourselves, the both of you. Can't have you dropping dead as well."

"Detective Inspector," Sherlock called after him, and he turned briefly, "don't blame yourself. Or your staff, for that matter. There's nothing you could have done, the boy chose his own end. This is how he operates."

"If that was supposed to be reassuring – "

"It wasn't."

Another tense silence – only the latest of a career's worth – passed between them before Lestrade reminded him tersely, "unofficial house arrest, both of you, I'm serious," then turned to hurry down the stairs.

John leaned back in his chair, forgetting for a moment that the back of his head was still painfully bruised. "You're overdue for more codone," he remembered suddenly, glancing up at his flatmate, every bit the attentive doctor.

"I'm fine."

"Take it for my sake then," he insisted, pushing himself to his feet with a sigh. "Just to shut me up."

Sherlock's eyes fell closed for a moment before he stood gingerly – hand pressed to his wounded side - and retreated grudgingly to his room, the good doctor tight on his heels, looking after him like a parent, like a friend, like the exceptional human being that he was.