CHAPTER NINETEEN
Molly woke up in the midst of a coughing fit. A bright light stung her eyes, and she blinked repeatedly to clear her mind and let her eyes adjust. She felt an IV stabbing through her arm and stared at it for a minute, before letting her eyes wander around the room. A bright, white hospital suite surrounded her. She'd walked past this room hundreds of ties before. Bart's, of course. But, how'd she wind up in the hospital?
Then it came back, all of it.
She choked. What happened? Everything fogged over, hard to remember. But, she was able to recall a few things. The days of drugged stupor. Trying to escape and being beaten senseless. The handkerchief, falling into the drugged haze.
It was odd, she thought. But she wasn't afraid, or nervous. On the contrary, she felt completely calm. What was in that IV anyway?
"You're awake," A softer voice sounded from her other side.
She tried to turn, finding a shooting pain racking through her shoulder. She yelped harshly.
In a moment, Greg entered her line of vision. He had a black eye, a large bruise on his chin and neck, black stitches high on his forehead, and a butterfly clip on the bridge of his nose.
"Hey," He whispered. "Your shoulder got thrown out."
Molly just stared at him, "What happened to you?"
Greg let out a slightly bitter laugh. "Tried to fly."
"I'm serious!"
"Got into a bit of a brawl with Porter."
Molly's confusion quickly turned to terror. "He hurt you?"
"Not as much as he hurt you," Greg said sadly.
Molly pressed her lips together, reaching out to grab his hand. "I'm fine."
"You've got multiple fractures, eleven stitches, drug withdrawal symptoms, a pulled shoulder, and I don't think there's a single part of you that isn't bruised."
She waited a beat, thinking it through. "Yeah. Fine."
"You're in shock."
"It's always shock with you, isn't it?" Molly smiled, surprised to find exactly how sore her face was, tentatively tracing shapes on the inside of his hand. "So, you found him?"
"Found you." Greg said, looking her in the eye, trying not to stare at her battered, cut, and bruised face. "He just happened to be there."
Molly's face remained serious. She gripped his hand a little tighter, tapping the finger attached to the heart monitor on her thigh.
"Oh, and Molly," Greg said, gnawing on his cheek. "They did tests and…if you want, you should be able to find out if he did anything else to you while you were unconscious. I didn't ask. I'm just glad you're all right."
Molly was surprised to realise she had been holding her breath. "I…I have no clue. I hardly remember anything. I didn't realise what was going on when it did."
He nodded. "You've been out a couple days."
She blinked. "And you've been waiting here?"
"When I could," Greg blushed. Then he coughed. "Oh, and we've had a look through Porter's computers, and we found your file. Nothing about your bank accounts or your rent, but it did help us get things sorted here at the hospital. If you talk to your bosses you probably can get your job back."
She stared at him, dumbfounded. "Oh, well…that's incredible."
He squeezed her hand. "There is one more thing though."
"What?"
Greg grimaced slowly. "He got out. Left the hospital early a day or two ago. Got into the database. Looks like he wasn't ever here."
Molly blanched. "So he's still out there?"
His grimace worsened. "Yeah."
Nodding, Molly took another deep breath. "Oh."
Greg shook his head and tightened his grip on her hand. "We've got some of our boys looking into it, trying to find him. And, in the meantime, if I have to walk you around like before, I'll do it. The rest of the force won't be up to it, but if it'll make you rest any easier I'll do what I can."
"You've already done so much for me, Greg. I can't thank you enough."
"I want to see you safe. You don't need to thank me."
"Might I try, though?" Molly said, smiling.
He returned the smile, a small chuckle under his breath. "Uh…the IV…it's got you…odd."
"I'm sober enough, thank you." Molly insisted, pulling his hand closer to her.
She kissed him, and his hand tentatively clasped about the base of her neck, careful not to push against any bruises and the heart monitor bleeped a little bit faster.
Collin Porter sat in an alleyway, crouched over a shiny new laptop It wasn't the most ideal place to flaunt such gadgets – what with homeless people on every corner, but he had no alternatives.
He stared at the screen, finalising the transaction with an override pass code. There was his salvation. A new name, a new life. Collin Porter might've been unlucky in love – might've attracted sluts and cunts, but certainly Marcus Bennett would have a better time. Even the name screamed success.
He paused, wondering if Molly changed her locks. Probably not. She was awfully stupid. It'd be easy enough to track her down again, even if she took basic precautions.
Marcus had nothing to avenge, but, he smiled slightly, it wouldn't hurt to tack on an epilogue to Collin's last relationship. Maybe he ought to even finish them all off – a final ending. Get his revenge on Morrison, Thompsen, Wilkes, and Lestrade, as well as fix up Molly. And then he could start over.
"How'd you happen by that thing?"
He jolted up surprised to hear a voice. He'd thought he was alone in the alley. Across from him, balanced atop of a bin, sat a lanky man in a dirty trench-coat.
He wrinkled his nose in superiority; he did so loathe the homeless.
"It was a gift," he said, closing the conversation.
Yet the lanky man jumped down from the bin. "Must've been a good gift."
"Yeah. Sure. I guess." Collin muttered, turning back to his computer, until the man said something that made his skin crawl.
"How would you gauge the pain of your electrocution?"
Collin blinked. "What?"
The man took a step in front of him, and began speaking quickly. "The skin off the back of your neck is beginning to peel, but you remain untanned. People don't simply back into electric currents, with the exception of being pushed in. Now, just from that evidence, it would appear as though you fell in and horrible wiring caused the shock. But you've got bruises along your face and neck, obviously indicating a fight. There are traces of blood coming through your shirt. You've had a full body injury, and they all seem to be resulting from a fight."
The man straightened his coat and continued. "It could just be from a street fight, but the way you walk, hold yourself, and your eye shifts indicate a personality disorder – possibly antisocial but more likely a lovely combination of that with obsessive-compulsive (the personality disorder not the anxiety variant). Add that to your paranoid schizophrenia and we've got an interesting mix. So, no; not just a random street fight at all. You wouldn't waste your time with that."
The man paused before continuing, ice in his gaze. "It was a battle. And one with a prize involved."
"How—how did you know about the schizophrenia?" Collin blinked. He'd hacked into the mental hospital when he was sixteen and erased it all. It wasn't true anyway. That fucker of a psychologist didn't know anything.
"It's obvious," The man said, a bored tone slicing through his voice. "Your delusions lead you to believe you're in a romantic or otherwise physical relationship with these women you deem candidates for your profile of the perfect woman. And your hallucinations cement the beliefs. You see them, don't you? See them in your flat, with you."
"You're wrong."
"It was medication that made her go away, wasn't it? The girl you thought you were in love with in secondary school." The man said.
"Susan?" Collin's breath left his lungs entirely, the mental image of the most perfect, shy, glorious girl in the world danced behind his eyes.
"Was that her name?" The man said uninterestedly. "Oh. Your medication stopped the hallucination, and your only conclusion was that she died. So, whenever a real woman resembled her, you attached, and followed her to be certain it wouldn't happen again. But then you crossed the line—leaving your counselling and medication—and became dangerous."
Collin snapped his laptop closed and slowly began to retread. "Look, I don't know who the fuck you are but—"
"Looking at records online, it seems as though nothing matches in any mental hospital. But you wouldn't let there be, hacking into networks is your livelihood, after all—you've created it to be exactly what you want it to be." The man said plainly. "And you've done it for others, too. You're the one who helped Jim Moriarty become Richard Brook."
Collin's blood turned cold in his veins. "How…how the hell do you know that?"
The man ignored the question, sending him an exasperated glower, and continued. "And he must have been the one to put you on Molly Hooper's trail. You'd left that life, for a while. Hadn't stalked anyone in years. Sure, you got distracted by the other one, but Moriarty's intention was for you to ruin her. Possibly because she has a realistic memory of him as he was, not just as Brook.
"You followed her. You frightened her. But, moreover, you hurt her. You detached her from everybody, and followed all her connections – stalking her friends as well," The man continued, sounding bored. "But that's when you made your mistake."
"What mistake was that?" Collin asked, going over computer codes in his brain, passwords, records he'd altered.
Sneering slightly, the man stepped closer. "You started following John Watson. That's when I saw you and noticed the pattern."
Collin's face twisted. "So, you've been following them, too. What's the difference?"
"The difference is clear," The man said, irritably. "I simply observe."
A look of realisation hit Collin in the face. "Wait…the fuck? That was you!" He clapped his hands together. "The night I tried to send Watson to the hospital. You were the man in the shadow who beat the living shit out of me."
The man's lip quivered but otherwise he remained silent.
A moment passed.
"So, how would you gauge the pain of your electrocution? But I need your answer. So."
Curious, Collin cringed. "Why?"
The man's eyes flashed, "So I can make it so much worse."
Before he could flinch, the man threw an eerily familiar handkerchief at his face.
Collin crumbled to the ground as the alleyway turned violet and he began to tremble, softly at first, but getting more and more violent by the second.
Once the criminal grew still, the man looked down at him, pulling out a revolver.
A trigger moved. The shot reverberated through the street. And Sherlock Holmes stepped out of the alleyway, hiding underneath the collar of a trench coat.
Fin
A/N: Well, it's that time! Time for random trivia and author commentary about the story! Because I don't like to do mid-story author's notes, I do this. I decided as of now.
BUT ON WITH THE TRIVIA/COMMENTARY.
- I believe I mentioned this at the beginning of the story, but I wrote this whole thing within two weeks. It was the entirety of my existence; I'd sit on my comfy chair getting burns on my knees from my laptop and just cranked this baby out.
- Collin Porter's name was not originally Collin Porter. It was Sam Connors. Yeah, not quite as menacing. I wound up changing it after the entire story was done for that reason.
- However, Collin wasn't actually the original stalker. I changed that around chapter 12, when I realised it made more sense than the original stalker. (more obvious computer prowess, he was always a bit more crass in his talking, it served to a tiny call-back with the idea of IT men and Molly, plus I just loved writing for him) Though most of his scenes were already written before he became the stalker, making all the reviews mentioning how creepy he was a bit off-putting…haha.
- The original stalker was a bloke by the name of Arthur Bennett. Don't recognise him? Well, he got completely cut. He was originally both Shalee and Molly's landlord (this was before I made Molly's landlords gay) who happened to have a hobby of computers. He actually had more background and appearances than Collin in the original draft. (That version was about 70,000 words.) I wound up cutting him entirely. I realised later when everybody guessed that Collin was the stalker correctly that I should've kept him in as a red herring. Or maybe that would've been too obvious. You know, have more than one character it could possibly be. Oh well, live and learn.
- This story contained my first ever non-fade-to-black love scene. I'm sure in a few years I'll look back and be ashamed on how bad it was, but for now I'm pretty damn proud of myself.
- This story was not written in chapter form. My original drafts (all seven of them) are all on a single file. I changed it to chapter form, because 50,000+ word one-shots tend to be a bit off-putting.
- And, finally, the inspiration of this story came from Nicholas Sparks's novel The Guardian. Just, y'know, minus the dog. Or the plot. The concept was similar.