A/N: Apologies for the lengthy delay in producing this chapter, but I hope the content makes up for it! Thanks to everyone for reading, following and most of all reviewing!
Chapter 13: We Have To Talk
Sherlock knew exactly what the other version of himself – best to do as Molly had already decided and just call him 'Holmes' – was doing. He wasn't leaving Molly alone with him out of the kindness of his heart; he had no such organ. At least Molly recognized that truth as well; he could see it in her eyes as the other man strode down the hall without a single glance backward. Holmes was doing Molly a favor, yes, but it was in the nature of a last wish being granted to a condemned prisoner.
And Sherlock knew which of them was meant to come out of this alive to continue her life of enforced sexual slavery, and which of them would not be so lucky – though to call her 'lucky' in this case was almost laughable.
Unbidden, the sight of Molly being forced to fellate his other self drifted into his mind, and he felt the same surge of nausea churning in his gut at memory. It sickened him, to see firsthand exactly how twisted this version of himself was, to see what sort of perversions Molly Hooper had been forced to endure for an entire year. Oh, he was certain that his other self's sexual domination was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but he found himself reluctant to broach the subject even when it was clearly one of the main reasons he and Molly had been left alone together: so he could deduce her, quiz her, demand as much information from her as he could dredge up, all in the name of trying to find some kind of weakness to use against 'Mr. Holmes.'
Because, of course, under other circumstances, that was exactly what he would be doing.
For once, he refused to play the sick games of others. He was not that man and never would be, and refused to use his tactics. As their two captors brought them to a nondescript metal door – no doubt leading to a storage cupboard or small utility room with no windows or other means of egress – he made a private vow to discover what he needed to know without putting Molly Hooper through so much as a single moment's additional pain.
As soon as they were left alone, he began investigating their temporary quarters, cramped as they were and lit only by a single, bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. There were shelves lining three of the walls, laden with musty-smelling linens and towels and absolutely nothing of use. He supposed he could attempt to climb the sturdy wooden shelves (a quick test showed they were securely attached in place) unscrew the light bulb, dash it against the floor and employ it as a jagged-edged weapon, but the usefulness of such was limited considering their opponents were all well-armed and on the alert for any such attempt.
Molly watched in silence as he quickly and efficiently examined the linen cupboard, standing by the door in order to stay out of the way. Once he was satisfied that there was nothing of use as a potential weapon aside from the aforementioned light bulb, Sherlock pulled down a double handful of the least dubious looking towels and carefully made two piles on the floor. He moved to sit on the first, wincing a bit as the wound in his leg reminded him of its existence. Sitting would be problematic, but he knew he wouldn't be capable of standing upright much longer. Molly was at his side in an instant, one arm warm and supportive around his waist and the other hand gripping his forearm as she helped him sit. He gave a thin smile in thanks and leaned back against the wall, waiting for her join him on her own improvised seat before speaking.
"I'm sorry you were dragged into this, Molly."
She looked startled, as if his apology was the last thing she'd expected to hear. "Oh, it's not your fault," she began, but he shook his head impatiently.
"I agree it isn't my fault in the sense that I did something to directly cause the situation, true, but as I was the actual target I feel a certain sense of…responsibility," he said, choosing his words with care. "Also, I'm afraid I've said some other...unfortunate things to you in the past, particularly on Christmas. Suffice it to say there were other reasons for my distemper that were unrelated to you."
There were other reasons he was sorry as well, but he wasn't about to vocalize them. Not under their current circumstances. Molly did not need to hear that he'd begun to realize he was attracted to her when Holmes had spent a year torturing and terrorizing her. Then again, she'd most likely deduced that on her own by the way he'd reacted to her attentions back at Baker Street. He felt an unexpected flare of heat on his face; good lord, was he actually blushing at the memory? He shifted uncomfortably and sought a way to explain his embarrassment, but before he could say anything Molly leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
"What was that for?" he blurted out before he could stop himself. Nor could he stop himself from staring at her in amazement; after everything his darker lookalike had done to her, how could she possibly hold any affection for the real him?
"For coming all this way to find me," she said simply. "To thank you. In case I never get the chance to do it again."
She wasn't blushing or stammering; she wasn't showing any signs of the nervous behavior she'd always shown around him in the past. He'd already had to revise his thinking regarding Molly Hooper since first rediscovering her and seeing the depths of her selflessness when it came to protecting him; now he had to revise it again, to take into consideration that she was no longer intimidated by him…but also that she seemed perfectly capable of separating him from his other self.
He desperately wished John was here; John would know what to say or what to do under these circumstances. All Sherlock could do was stare at her, nodding to acknowledge her words as he wondered with a feeling of unfamiliar panic if he should say something to her in return.
Molly spared him the need by adopting a serious expression as she moved away from him, gracefully folded her legs beneath her and causing the tight blue skirt she was wearing to ride up a bit. She seemed entirely unaware of how much soft, pink flesh she was showing as she did so; undoubtedly more of his counterpart's 'training', but he couldn't bring himself to say anything. There was nothing she could do unless she draped one of the linens over her lap, he reasoned, and if he pointed it out it would just make her self-conscious, a result he was most assiduously trying to avoid just now. Nor was the view an unwelcome one, although he quickly pushed that thought aside. "You have questions, Sherlock," she said once she'd leaned back against the wall. "You must have a million questions, and who knows how long we'll be stuck here? So go ahead and ask."
He hesitated, his determination not to cause her additional pain warring with his need for information. "Molly, although you have a more…personal…relationship with my counterpart than anyone else I've spoken to whilst here, I have no desire to cause you to revisit what must surely be very unpleasant memories."
She shrugged. "It's not like I can unremember them," she pointed out. "I don't have the ability you do to clear your mental hard drive. And any therapist worth their salt will tell you it's better to get it out than to keep it all bottled up inside. No, I mean it." Molly concluded as she held his gaze, her expression fiercely implacable. "Ask me anything, anything that might help you figure things out, get some kind of an advantage over that…monster." The last word was spoken with a slight quiver, but Sherlock easily deduced it was as much of anger as remembered pain.
He nodded sharply, recognizing her need to feel useful and setting aside his earlier determination in light of her statement – and the emotions behind the words. "Right then. Tell me everything that's happened to you since you've arrived, everything you've observed about my counterpart, and leave nothing out, no matter how unimportant it might seem." At her questioning look he suggested, "Let's start with the riding crop."
Molly flinched as if he'd physically struck her, then straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and started talking.
At first he was able to maintain his usual emotional distance from the facts she was reciting, noting her emotional reactions to her words and filing them away for future retention or deletion – most likely the latter, as he felt his own emotions attempting to make themselves known the longer she spoke. Unfortunately, his discomfort continued to grow, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.
He made her go over the details of her arrival several times, not only to glean what he could from the details that so closely matched his and John's own experiences at the hands of Smythe's interdimensional transportation device, but also because she had the advantage of having been allowed to witness her arrival via video due to his counterpart's paranoia. It shouldn't surprise him that Holmes kept his own living quarters under twenty-four hour surveillance, yet it did.
Molly continued speaking for nearly a half hour, describing how she'd been drugged and interrogated (and how she didn't remember the initial session, although of course Holmes had delighted in replaying parts of the recording for her), then drugged again; how she'd awoken, disoriented and confused by her surroundings, how Holmes had explained her situation to her and her growing horror as she recognized how radically her life's course had been altered.
When she reached the part where his counterpart had delivered a severe beating to her for merely neglecting to do as he ordered her to do quickly enough, however, Sherlock felt compelled to stop her. He'd asked for detail and that was exactly what she was giving him, only now he found that his horror at her ordeal rendered him incapable of analyzing these details with any sort of objective detachment. "Molly, it's all right. You don't have to tell me…I already know your time here has been…less than pleasant. You can skip over..."
She shook her head and glared at him, eyes darting toward the door before meeting his again. "No, Sherlock, I can't! Any detail might be the one you need to take him down, to help you and John get back home again, you know that!"
"Well, we're not leaving without you," Sherlock responded, honestly shocked that she wouldn't include herself in the concept of rescue.
The look she gave him shocked him even more, it was so sad and knowing. She shook her head. "You know he won't let me go. Keeping me means he wins, even if you and John and DI Lestrade escape. And if I can act to distract him at the right moment, then of course I expect you to take advantage of it and save yourselves." Her eyes were haunted as she added in a low voice, "You have no idea what I've become, what I've let him do to me just to keep my sanity, Sherlock. I'm really not worth taking back home again. I don't even know if I'd ever be able to take up my old life again, I don't count…"
"You're wrong." She met his gaze, her voice trailing off as he reached out and did something he rarely did; he offered her his hand, keeping his gaze trained on hers as he continued speaking. "You do count, you've always counted and I've always trusted you. And now I need to know if you can trust me."
"But you don't know what I've done," she repeated in a broken whisper. "I've only told you some of what he did to me. It's not just that it was my fault he murdered Sally Donovan in cold blood, or that I let his John Watson take my eggs and perform medical procedures and drug me without even trying to fight…I should have, I know I should have, but I was too much of a coward, too afraid of dying to try and stop them."
"You did what you had to do to survive," Sherlock interrupted her litany of supposed failings, speaking firmly and clearly. He hoped he was managing not to show how upsetting he found her words; how could she possibly blame herself for any of this? And why had his counterpart needed her eggs? There was the obvious reason, of course, but somehow he doubted Holmes had any real desire to procreate and if he did, judging by the enforced intimacy between himself and Molly, he would very likely opt for using the traditional method of impregnating Molly rather than implanting embryos in a surrogate.
Molly shuddered and grazed her fingers across his before pulling her hand back, her eyes sorrowful. "I let him fuck me, Sherlock," she said, not dropping her gaze although he could see what an effort it was for her to do so. "I let him touch me, I pretended he was…not him…I didn't fight him on that, after the first few times. I whored myself to him for the illusion of safety."
"You did what you had to do to survive." Sherlock repeated his earlier assertion with a bit more force than he'd intended. But she needed to understand, and it frustrated him that she was missing the most important point. "Have you killed anyone?" he asked, holding up a hand to forestall her and adding, "And no, Sally Donavan's death doesn't count. Holmes would have killed her no matter what; obviously he was already suspicious of her, as Lestrade said. You must let go of that guilt, Molly." He leaned his head forward, peering at her intently as he said, "Now answer my question. Have you killed anyone?"
She shook her head. "No, of course not!"
"Beaten anyone? Forced drugs on anyone? Have you deliberately harmed anyone on this world, in any way?"
She shook her head again, more forcefully this time. "No, I could never…he'd never be able to make me do anything like that," she said, her voice and expression no longer filled with self-loathing.
Excellent. Exactly the reaction he'd been hoping for. "Then you have no reason to blame yourself for anything, Molly, no reason to feel this unnecessary burden of guilt you seem to have been carrying."
He didn't expect his words to erase an entire years' worth of learned behaviors with one conversation, but felt his own tension easing a bit as he saw her shoulders relaxing, the ghost of a smile appearing on her face. John, he suspected, would be flabbergasted that he'd managed this emotional confrontation without reducing Molly to tears. Speaking of whom… "You haven't asked how John and I arrived here," he said, wincing a bit as he adjusted his injured leg. He allowed Molly to fuss with the bandage, knowing she was thankful for the distraction. He'd given her a great deal to mull over, and felt a vague sense of hope that his words would help her.
"I take it you weren't randomly stolen the way I was?"
Sherlock shook his head. "No. Actually, you weren't taken at random either, only in error. Professor Smythe was attempting to extract me, actually; unfortunately he chose an evening when the flat was occupied by more than just John and myself, and his interdimensional transport device wasn't properly calibrated and couldn't differentiate between myself and another person."
"Why? Why was he trying to bring you here?" Molly sounded fascinated, and Sherlock could hardly blame her for demonstrating the same curiosity he had.
"Essentially he wanted me to overthrow my counterpart, replace him and try to establish a, for lack of a better word, more lawful society here in England," he replied. He smiled wryly. "Considering how easily Holmes was able to ascertain my presence here and outwit me, Smythe might have been better served stealing Mycroft away instead."
Molly's somewhat lightened mood vanished as soon as he mentioned his elder brother; the tension returned to her shoulders and she dropped her eyes to her nervously-twisting hands. "Mycroft. He's taking us to him, to Mycroft." She shuddered. "He's always wanted to get his hands on me…oh, that came out wrong," she said, fumbling her words as she tried to explain. "He wants to experiment on me, Holmes told me so. Take me apart molecule by molecule and never mind if he can put me back together again. He told his brother that if it ever turned out I was some kind of a threat to the Empire, he would take me into c-custody, and now that you're here I guess that's what's going to happen."
"More likely this world's Sherlock will bargain for your life with mine and John's," he corrected her quietly, noting how terrified she seemed to be of his brother's counterpart. In spite of everything his own doppelganger had done to her, the thought of being given over to Mycroft frightened her even more, which realization gave him pause. How much worse must the elder Holmes brother be if Molly feared him more than the younger of the two?
Questions of Mycroft aside, he was confident of his deduction that his own counterpart would want to hold onto Molly Hooper for as long as he could. He recognized his own tendency toward obsession and possessiveness, exaggerated to dangerous proportions in this world's Sherlock Holmes. That thought in turn led Sherlock to wonder how much longer it would be before Holmes returned and forced Molly into another act of sexual congress in front of him. Because that seemed as inevitable as the tides, as his mother would put it. Another way for his counterpart to show his supposed superiority over his captives, and demonstrate his continued control of Molly. To steal her hopes in the most brutal, primitive manner possible, an Alpha male claiming his mate in front of a potential rival.
Sherlock realized his breathing had quickened at the thought, that his fury was growing, and deliberately tamped it down, stepping back mentally and emotionally as he stowed that image away for future deletion. It was all supposition at this point; better to stick to the facts, to distract Molly from her renewed terror by sharing with her some of what he'd gone through to try and retrieve her. And perhaps remind her of her value to hi…to the world she'd been stolen away from. "Mrs. Hudson was the first one to find a clue to your disappearance," he said, noting the surprised expression on her face. Good, he'd caught her attention, given her something to focus on other than their current predicament. "On a television programme of all things."
Molly appeared fascinated as he described the documentary on wormhole theory, how similar the computer generated models were to the phenomenon he and the others had witnessed that fateful night. In order to clarify how much effort he'd gone through to gather this information, he described the sleepless nights he'd spent investigating the various experts in the field and the science behind the phenomena, how he'd turned away any case less than a solid nine in order to devote himself to the research, especially once he'd gotten in contact with the Professor Smythe of their own world.
He was making light of how miserable he'd made everyone with his relentless quest to solve the mystery of what had happened to her when he realized a gradual change had come over her demeanor, and paused to quiz her on why she suddenly seemed so much…happier.
"You…you did all that for me," she said in a wondering voice. "You gave up cases, consulted experts, investigated scientific phenomena I know you have no interest in…and all to find me."
He nodded impatiently, although privately he was heartened by her appreciation of his considerable efforts – and not only because it was gratifying to his ego, but because her earlier statement about not being worth rescuing had shaken him quite a bit more than he'd been willing to admit. Hearing her now, knowing that she was rethinking her original resignation, was encouraging.
Wishing to capitalize on the moment, he started to describe his first meeting with Professor Smythe. He'd gotten to the point this world's version had finally calibrated his instrumentation and swept both John and himself up in the transport field, when he stopped abruptly, tilting his head to hear better. Yes, there it was, a muffled noise coming from just outside the door to their temporary prison. He could tell that Molly had heard it as well, saw the fear returning to her eyes and silently cursed whoever it was for undoing all the good he'd accomplished with his narrative.
Gesturing impatiently for her to help him, Sherlock struggled to raise himself to his feet, listening intently the entire time. Molly remained as silent as he was, only emitting a soft grunt of effort as she struggled to manage his heavier weight and lanky frame.
That first, indeterminate sound was followed by the distinct noises of a scuffle; shoes squeaking along the linoleum floor, muffled grunts where someone's mouth was covered or possibly from being held in a half-nelson wrestling position, and finally the clatter of a metal object (most likely a handgun) falling to the floor.
Molly had edged away from the door, eyes wide, and Sherlock unhesitatingly put himself between her and anyone that might enter the room. Just because someone had apparently taken down their guard, it didn't necessarily follow that it was an ally. His counterpart had countless enemies and one of them might have taken this moment to strike.
The door opened only seconds after he'd kicked away the piles of towels with his good leg, and he found himself wishing he'd taken down the light bulb after all, just to have some sort of weapon no matter how pathetic.
That wish manifested itself tenfold when the door finally opened, and the grinning face of James Moriarty was revealed. "Figured now was as good a time as any to make my move!" he said cheerfully.