A/N: The usual thanks and disclaimers apply. Change in dynamics in this chapter, be warned!

Chapter 4: Proficiency Exam

January 22, 2012 – There

"Get your coat. The car is waiting."

Molly looked up from the book she'd been perusing – one of Sherlock's many chemistry manuals, and one of the few books she found readable in the flat – and dutifully put it down on the coffee table before rising to her feet and reaching for her coat.

As she slipped into her heels she brooded on how obedient she'd become. She'd been in this terrible place for a month, and hated and feared every minute of it, although she'd learned to school herself into an external neutrality even when her heart was hammering anxiously in her chest, as it was now.

They were going out. So far, going out hadn't meant anything good.

"Wh – where are we going?"

The question slipped out as she buttoned up her coat, and she cringed away automatically, one eye on the ever-present riding crop in Sherlock's left hand. It didn't so much as twitch, however, which meant he didn't mind her asking. Thank God. He enjoyed seeing her cowed and afraid of him, but he loathed it when she stammered. But if she couldn't control it when in the presence of her own, relatively benign, Sherlock, how could she possibly be expected to do so when in the presence of this much colder, much more dangerous (she stopped short of using the word "evil" in her mind) man?

"St. Bart's Hospital," he replied, surprising her by actually responding to her question and not simply ignoring it. "We have an appointment."

An appointment. For what, she wondered as an icy fear flooded her veins. Something relatively harmless, she prayed. More blood to be drawn, more DNA to be analyzed, more CT scans or another full-body MRI would be bearable. Even another visit to the physicist who had apparently confirmed Sherlock's hypothesis of her origins would be tolerable compared to some of the other tests she'd been forced to endure.

She shuddered inwardly as she recalled the unpleasant nature of some of those tests. So far she'd been taken to three different London hospitals and two private labs, and all of the visits had been either uncomfortable bordering on unpleasant or downright painful.

The only consistent element – besides fear and pain and frequently invasive procedures, including one where several of her eggs were extracted (without her permission, needless to say, but also without her putting up any kind of a fight over it) – to these visits was that they were all overseen by John Watson.

She couldn't say she'd come to know him well, either in this world or her own, but she knew enough to recognize how different "her" John was from this man. Oh, this one wasn't a bad man, not like Sherlock was, not a criminal. Just…weak. He gambled, admitted to owing thousands and thousands of pounds (the money here was identical to what she was used to back home; pounds in England, dollars in America and Australia, except there was no European Union and therefore no Euros on the Continent) to various gambling establishments that all conveniently happened to be owned by Sherlock Holmes. So he did as the crime lord told him, and his debts were cleared, only to pile up almost immediately after. The man absolutely couldn't stay away from the cards, and Sherlock actively encouraged him to continue in his vice. It was utterly despicable – and from what she'd gleaned, just another example of "business as usual" on this topsy-turvy world.

Still, she found herself pathetically pleased that it was a semi-trusted face behind the surgical mask on these visits. Even if this John Watson had no idea who she was, it still helped that she knew him, recognized him, remembered the kindly man he was on her own world. It was something. Even though he'd made it clear that he had no interest in learning anything about her, past the medical information he was gathering for "Mr. Holmes."

Everyone called him that. "Mr. Holmes." Not "Sherlock." Still, she couldn't stop thinking of him that way in her mind; he'd always been Sherlock to her and always would be, apparently, no matter what horrific things this version of him did.

Thank God he allowed the familiarity; once she realized that everyone else referred to him by his surname, she'd made a conscious effort to do so as well, only to be given unexpected permission to use his first name – within limits. "You are obviously used to calling him by his first name, and I have no objections to it when we are in private. However," he'd added, his voice dropping to an arctic freeze, "you will accord me the proper respect and call me Mr. Holmes in public. If you do not, I can assure you there will be…consequences."

Then he'd caressed the riding crop as she cowered away from him. And he'd smiled, a shark's smile, all teeth and hunger and she'd shuddered, hard, and waited tensely to see if he intended to deliver one of his "lessons" to press the point home.

She always had a bruise on her somewhere, generally the tops of her thighs or backs of her legs or shoulders, for slights or lapses of attention or just because he wanted to, as he put it, "remind her of her place." But this time he merely placed a hand at the small of her back as he always did when escorting her out of the flat.

That single hand on her back was almost worse than the beatings. It evoked comfort and familiarity, even though she knew it was only another, more subtle way for him to control her. She always stiffened when she felt his fingers against the small of her back, and she knew he always smirked even if he offered no comment.

It was the only liberty he took that could be construed in even the remotest manner as sexual in nature. Even his beatings were delivered with too much detachment to be mistaken as sexually motivated (she'd looked carefully for signs of arousal and seen absolutely none, the few times she managed to keep her wits enough about her to do so).

A month ago, she would never have believed it to be a relief that at least one aspect of the original Sherlock she wanted to change – his indifference to women in general, and to herself in particular – was the one she was most pathetically grateful for in this world.

It didn't stop her worrying about it, of course. Nothing could stop her brain from buzzing, her thoughts from chasing themselves in circles all day and well into the night. She wasn't sleeping well, but politely (always politely with this man, say nothing in a sharp tone that might be construed as disobedience or face the consequences) refused the sleeping draughts he offered.

She refused all the recreational drugs he offered as well, with equal politeness, and so far he hadn't pushed it. She'd learned he was just as interested in conducting experiments as her Sherlock had been, although with far more sinister results in mind. Since he didn't appear interested in actually seeing her high or zoned out, she'd worked out that he offered the drugs simply to gauge her response to the request. It was another way to put her on edge as well; now that she knew he had access to such things (of course he did, he was a criminal and it was insanely easy to acquire illicit substances on her own world, let alone this one) she found herself wondering uneasily if she might one day be given a dose of Ecstasy or LSD or something even more exotic in her morning cup of tea.

She wouldn't put it past him. Every now and then he would casually mention some interesting results from an experiment he'd performed on some poor junkie, watching carefully to see how much revulsion he could provoke her into revealing – and how much fear that one day he would decide to do the same to her.

And there wouldn't be a damned thing she could do to stop him. Oh, she wouldn't just knuckle under and let him inject her or feed her pills, but no matter how hard she struggled, she simply wasn't physically strong enough or familiar enough with self-defense techniques to be effective against him. When she got home (she ignored the tiny voice in her mind that whispered "if") she was signing up for Krav Maga classes. And maybe Greg or John would be willing to teach her how to shoot a pistol…

One day, she told herself as they reached the car waiting for them at the curb. One day she would be free and all this would be nothing more than a distant, unpleasant (horrible) memory.

She settled into the car, hands folded in her lap, eyes trained out the window. Avoiding him as best she could. Not that even that much defiance would be allowed; a single tap of the riding crop on the seat between them after he entered the car and she found herself scooting closer to him, turning her head to not-quite face him, eyes nervously trained on the leather crop, fingers trembling. Just like a well-trained dog, she thought bitterly. She'd only been here a month and already he controlled everything about her life – everything but her thoughts and (sometimes) emotions.

She ate what she was given, drank what she was given, and wore the clothes he'd picked out for her – clothes that fit her almost too well; tight, short skirts and low-cut tops that revealed a great deal of her admittedly modest cleavage, but then, the demi-cup push-up bras she now wore under those tops worked wonders. And she still blushed to think about the thong-style knickers she'd been given; even if this Sherlock seemed just as indifferent to her sexually as the real one, he still dressed her from the inside out to match this world's expectations for what all reasonably well-formed and attractive women wore.

That was one of the things that had truly cemented her plight, her isolation, in her mind. Women on this world were openly viewed as sex objects, even women in professional capacities. It had been quite a shock to see a heavily made-up bleached blonde in a skimpy uniform that screamed "slutty nurse Halloween costume" on her first trip to a hospital – and an even worse shock to realize that this was just how the nurses were expected to dress here. Except the older ones, of course; even this world wasn't twisted enough to expect women in their 60s to dress like 18-year-old tramps.

At least the clothing Sherlock procured for her suited her figure and was somewhat age-appropriate. She would be grateful for whatever crumbs of dignity she was allowed – such as the fact that even if other men ogled her, due to the company she kept lewd advances were rarely offered up the way they were to virtually every other woman she'd seen that fell roughly between the ages of twelve and fifty.

It wasn't just the women in London, either; her few early (and quickly abandoned) attempts at watching telly to pass the time had shown that not only was it the norm here, but apparently the world over. All television was virtually nothing but thinly veiled porn masquerading as the more normal fare she was used to: talk shows and reality television and serials alike all slanted alarmingly toward sex and violence (tilted over the edge of what she would ever consider acceptable for general consumption). Even the kiddie shows were horrifying little exercises in reinforcing how acceptable this sick society found it to belittle the female half of the species, to bully those weaker than yourself and how any means of getting ahead were acceptable. Indoctrinating the next generation into horrid little copies of the current lot of adults.

Not wanting to believe that what she was seeing could possibly be the whole story, knowing how television could be overly sensationalized, about a week into her captivity she worked up the nerve to ask Sherlock if there was a history book available for her to read, just for the chance to get a different perspective. He didn't mind her asking questions, as long as she wasn't interrupting his thoughts or activities and showed him the proper deference when doing so. Which, although she railed inwardly at herself for being such a little coward, she always, always did.

Instead of procuring a book, however, he'd made a quick phone call, then taken her to the British Museum, closed to the public on Sundays but open this time just for him. He'd followed her as she'd wandered from exhibit to exhibit, as she became increasingly horrified by the nature of the world into which she'd so inadvertently tumbled.

It was a bit like she imagined a Nazi Museum might have been, had they won the war – which, contrary to the evidence she'd been given, they hadn't. The draw that had resulted was nearly as bad as them winning would have been, in Molly's opinion. Neo-fascists had risen to power in Great Britain – which was still a colonial power, as were most of the other European nations – and it was sickening, absolutely sickening how various historical atrocities were lauded in the museum that on her world was dedicated to art and historical artifacts.

Instead, she was treated – if that was the correct word – to exhibits dedicated to the multiple wars England had fought – and won – against America, which never had gained its independence and existed only in fragmented form now; the brutal treatment of the Boers in their own bid for independence (not that it had been a shining moment in "her" England's past, but at least her people had the decency to be ashamed of their ancestors' behavior); an entire exhibit celebrating the triumphant Opium Wars, atrocity after atrocity, barbarism after barbarism piling up until she thought she was going to be sick, right there on the polished marble floor.

She hadn't asked for further information after that. It was too disheartening.

The remainder of that week had been spent in a depressed haze, with her knowing that if Sherlock dangled drugs in front of her, she would have probably taken them. She'd even had her first ever suicidal thoughts as visions of living her entire life out in this horrible place paraded through her mind. Only the desperate hope that someone (the real Sherlock, please God) must be trying to find a way to bring her back kept her from slitting her wrists when she was alone in the flat.

Her mind returned to the present with a jolt as Sherlock started speaking; terrified that he'd said something to her, asked her to do something, she turned to look at him, only to see that he was on his mobile. He flashed her an irritated look and she hurriedly returned her attention to the passing scenery, such as it was. London in winter looked much the same here as it did at home.

So did St. Bart's, when they pulled up outside of it. Sherlock snapped out a command to the driver, waited for Moran to open the door, then started walking toward the entrance once Molly had stepped onto the sidewalk.

She hurried to catch him up, having learned (the usual, painful way) that he preferred that she stay close by his side on these visits, at least until he handed her over to John Watson.

As the doors slid open to admit them to the chilly foyer, she chanced another question, gambling that he wouldn't start laying into her in such a public place. "Can you…do you mind…"

"I wish to see you perform an autopsy."

She blinked and felt her mind go blank at the unexpected answer. Of all the things he could have said (we're here to run more tests on you, because I need to smother some irritating infants, a doctor requires a beating for selling drugs without giving me my percentage), that was the last thing she would have guessed. "Why?" she couldn't stop herself from asking as they made their way down the achingly familiar hall that led to the elevators they would need to take to reach the morgue.

He didn't answer, merely turned a how stupid can you be look on her that reminded her so much of her own Sherlock (not that he had ever been hers, not in any way that counted, but she felt an automatic possessiveness toward the people and places of her own world now) that she felt her heart clench at the sight.

Breathing slowly and deeply in order to keep herself under control, she forced herself to concentrate on what was clearly an obvious answer to her question. Obvious to Sherlock, at any rate. And on either world, obvious to him wasn't necessarily obvious to any other living being.

Still, she had to try. And when the answer came to her, it was, indeed, so blindingly obvious that she could have smacked herself for not getting it right away.

"Well done, Dr. Hooper," Sherlock said with in a trace of sarcasm in his dry, clipped tones. "Yes, I wish to observe your self-proclaimed skills first hand. To assess them. It's possible that, if you are in any way adequate at what you were trained to do for a living on your own world, you could be useful to me as more than a mere object of scientific interest."

She swallowed at those last words. Hard. Stared straight ahead until she heard the soft thwack of the riding crop against the side of his leg.

That sound meant "look at me." It meant "do as I say or there will be unpleasant consequences."

Her life had been so much easier when all she had to deal with was unintentionally dating a psychopathic serial killer. Who knew there would come a day when she would look back at her time with Jim Moriarty with something approaching nostalgia?

She turned her head and met Sherlock's gaze, keeping her eyes steadily on his although she could feel her lower lip trembling and had to force herself not to allow her hands to clench into nervous fists. He did not take kindly to any kind of body language from her that might remotely hint at rebellion. The nasty bruise slowly healing on her left wrist – she'd raised her hand too quickly two days ago, too close to his face, when the unbearableness of her situation had set her to agitated pacing – was proof of that.

He didn't say anything further, seemed satisfied at her show of obedience, enough to turn his head from hers and lift his mobile to his ear as they continued down the corridor, firing off a rapid series of commands to whoever awaited on the other end of the line. Wiggins, she guessed, the rat-faced IT tech who'd been allowed to show her the footage of her arrival here, or his assistant to whom Sherlock spent a great deal of time dictating instructions over the same mobile.

The sight of that footage of her arrival had been a shock; yes, she'd been given far too much painful evidence that this was not her world, but to actually witness the catastrophic nature of her arrival here had been jarring, to say the least. She'd watched, over and over again, as a whirling vortex opened up in Sherlock's sitting room, seemingly out of nowhere, and her own unconscious form was unceremoniously dropped to the floor.

It still unnerved her to think about it. Sherlock's theory was that some physicist somewhere had discovered a way to manipulate the heretofore theoretical barrier between quantum realities, broken through said barrier, and then found a way to transfer a person from there to here.

You were dragged from your world and dropped into mine.

It was so incredibly Doctor Who, that theory – and yet it fit the facts, few though they were.

Someone had brought her here, which meant, theoretically at least, that someone could send her back home.

And anything anyone could do on this world, if that was where the scientific breakthrough had occurred, could be duplicated in her own world. She had no doubts about that whatsoever.

And if anyone could find who held the key to her return, it would be Sherlock Holmes. The real one, the one she missed with a physical ache. Even at his most bitingly sarcastic, even after the terrible, awful things he'd said to her at the Christmas party, she'd convinced herself that the reason he'd fallen so abruptly silent in the middle of deducing her had been out of remorse, an emotion she was equally convinced that this version was incapable of feeling.

Sherlock would find her. He would rescue her and bring her home and she would never, ever complain about anything again for the rest of her life.

oOo

The man walking next to her allowed himself a tiny smirk as he returned his mobile to his jacket pocket and deduced every single thought running through her terrified little mind. What a rabbit she was, Dr. Molly Hooper, and yet she was a rabbit who occasionally exhibited unexpected strengths. She no longer cried out when he hit her, for example, just bit her lip and held it in. She hadn't said a single word about how horrifying she found their recent visit to the British Museum, even if her eyes and the greenish cast to her skin and increasingly tense body language told a very clear story, which he'd found intriguing and even worthy of a passing moment's admiration; he'd predicted she would run from the place in tears, but instead she'd held onto her stoic pose as best she could.

She resisted his offers of sedatives or harsher street drugs, although he suspected she would have crumbled had he offered them on or immediately following that particular Sunday. She'd shown clear signs of approaching a clinical depression bordering on suicidal, but had never actually come close to crossing that particular line. Nor was he yet interested in pursuing that line of research; not when she still held his attention as strongly as she did.

Curious. He'd expected to lose interest in her once he'd been satisfied as to the nature of her origins, but that had not happened. Then he'd expected to tire of her after he'd ascertained her complicity in her abrupt arrival in his Baker Street flat. But after a month of close observation, he was quite convinced of her ignorance in that matter as well. Her reactions continued to hold his interest – to his negative reinforcement conditioning as well as to each unpleasant new revelation regarding the nature of the world she now inhabited. No, he was forced to admit – but only to himself – that he was finding her increasingly fascinating.

No other woman had held his attention like this. The closest he'd ever come had been his former business rival and lover, the late and unlamented Irene Adler. She was everything Molly Hooper was not; ruthless and bold where Molly was kindhearted and timid; sexually aggressive where Molly was clearly in terror of facing what she would no doubt term sexual assault (although interestingly enough she seemed to carry an emotional conflict toward the idea of him doing such a thing to her as opposed to it happening at the hands of one of his own men or some random stranger, something to muse over in future).

Irene had also become boringly predictable, both in bed and out, and he'd begun to lose interest even before he'd broken her, physically, mentally, and emotionally. In the end, he hadn't even bothered to kill her himself, but allowed one of Moran's security lackeys to do it.

When the time came to kill Molly Hooper, however, he knew that he would take care of it himself. As inventively as possible.

He allowed himself a predatory smile at the thought of her lying at his feet, begging him with her eyes not to hurt her, the way she had that first day when he'd approached her with the knife and she'd thought he was about to slit her throat. Or perhaps she would verbalize her terror as she'd done when he'd delivered her first beating. She'd said please and don't so prettily that he quite looked forward to hearing her say it again.

Someday. Not soon, but someday.

Just as someday he would initiate sexual relations with her, purely to see how she reacted to it. He knew she feared it, that she'd expected it once he removed her clothing after beating her that first day; then again at her first sight of the type of clothing she was expected to wear, including the underclothing he'd had Mrs. Hudson acquire to his specifications, and the stiletto heels she still had problems walking in. However, once she realized that all women were expected to parade themselves that way, to flaunt their bodies, she seemed to relax, and he allowed it. Just as he allowed her the illusion that, like the Sherlock from her own world, he was indifferent to such things, that he regarded the body as mere transport for the mind.

Self-denial was all well and good up to a point, but even someone with his ferocious mental capacity could not forestall the body's needs forever. Besides, why bother ignoring such basic bodily functions when it was just as easy to appease them?

A lesson the other Sherlock had yet to learn, it would appear. It would be fascinating to watch Molly's reactions when she discovered how wrong she'd been about him.

The other Sherlock. His thoughts turned unusually pensive as he considered the conundrum of his other self. On the one hand he was fascinated by the idea of his alternate self, by the thought of his existence; on the other, he was repulsed by what the man represented, the soft life he lived in Molly's world, the way he aligned himself on the side of the angels when clearly he was not nor ever would be one of them. He made her tell him about him, sometimes over and over again for hours until her voice went hoarse and dry and her cheeks ran wet with tears from missing the world she'd been ripped away from.

But she did what he asked, when he asked, and for that reason, as well as to keep his own intentions toward her to himself and allow her that small crumb of false hope, he didn't allow any of his men or the doctors they dealt with to touch her, either. They could look, they could talk, they could leer, but they could not touch. Not even John Watson, who'd turned out to be such a valuable – and pliable – resource, was given leave to touch her no matter how clearly he lusted after her. Perhaps one day, when Sherlock had finally tired of her and the mysteries she represented, he would gift her to Watson for a while before disposing of her. Perhaps.

Such pleasant thoughts occupied his mind for the brief time it took them to reach the basement and enter the morgue. He put them aside for the moment, flicking an assessing gaze over Molly as he cataloged the anticipation in her body language, the way her face relaxed and her eyes shone as the doors swung shut behind them. She felt at home here, safe, which boded well for the demonstration of skills he wished her to perform, in order for him to assess her competence.

A demonstration he was increasingly looking forward to.

oOo

Competence. He'd expected mere competence, and had been rewarded with...this.

Sherlock found himself breathing heavily as he watched her small, deft hands perform the single most flawless autopsy he'd ever witnessed. Compared to her, every other pathologist who'd cut open a corpse was a mere butcher; they might as well have been hacking at the bodies with stone knives and hatchets compared to the finesse with which she wielded the tools of her trade.

She hadn't been exaggerating her abilities. He'd been confident that she'd spoken the truth even when not under the influence of the drugs he'd used on her during her initial interrogation, but to actually witness the level of her skill was, frankly, arousing.

Literally arousing, physically as well as mentally. Hmm. An unanticipated – but not necessarily unwelcome – side effect of her exhibition of skill. He discreetly tucked his coat more tightly around himself and deliberately slowed his breathing while he pondered this shift in his perception of his prisoner.

His plans to sexually dominate her had been made more out of a clinical interest in her reactions to such an encounter than out of any actual physical desire he felt for her. But now, as he continued to observe her, it became increasingly clear to him that the status quo had been irrevocably altered. A feral grin touched his lips as she began closing the corpse back up, her stitches as neat and precise as her every other move had been, and he felt himself on the verge of losing control. An interesting sensation, one he hadn't experienced in a very long time.

A sensation he intended to take full advantage of.

"Get out," he growled as he turned his glare on Stamford. The doctor started nervously and stared back at him, clearly not understanding, but fortunately – for Stamford, of course – Moran did. Without a word, his head of security – and personal bodyguard whenever he took these little jaunts with Molly out into the larger world – jerked his head toward the door and gestured for the doctor to precede him.

Which, after only a second, the chief pathologist did, breaking out in a sweat as he realized…well, nothing, only that Sherlock Holmes had given him an order…and he had hesitated before obeying. He hurried out of the room as silently as Moran, following hastily at the other man's heels. Sherlock heard the door close behind them. Without taking his eyes off the diminutive woman who was still absorbed in her task – completely oblivious to the actions taking place in the room behind her as she softly muttered her findings into the recording device hanging over her head – he reached back, drew the shades and clicked the lock on the door.