A/N: Thank you so much for your kind comments and for subscribing. Please note that the rating for this story has now increased to an M for violence, thriller and horror-esque elements, and sexuality. This chapter is quite scary and contains an animal's death. Please read responsibly, thanks. Enjoy.
Molly's flat was exceptionally bright and colorful. It would be difficult to immediately explain it to a random person, but after working with deceased patients in a sterile, white and chrome hospital all day, introducing a lot of color to her senses was like taking a shot. It reminded her she was feminine and normal, and it was a healthy dose to her internal locus of control. Molly had certain routines she was used to when she got off of work at the end of the day.
Before Tom, she would walk in, draw herself a candlelit bath, heat up a meal and feed and talk to Toby about her day, and after cleaning herself and eating, she would read something work-related for a while, then settle down to watch the telly. With Tom around, the routine was thrown out the window, and it usually entailed him attacking her the very second she walked through the door to her flat; he'd either rip off her clothes and take her right there, or carry her to the bedroom, and the rest of the night was usually spent going at it like loons, and then having a midnight dinner after he'd tired them both out.
Molly had only sexually been with one other man in her earlier twenties during medical school, but she was always an active, enthusiastic lover and gave everything to the moment. It was great that Tom had been the same; good sex with a good partner always made her feel right with the world and clear-headed. He had always been a voracious lover, and though she really liked being able to unwind and take time to relax after her hectic days, she found her body craving another's.
Sherlock sort of fell out of contact with her for five days, which wasn't unusual when he was on a case. It wasn't until the third night after she'd seen Sherlock that she found a single, long-stemmed pink rose at the doorstep to her flat. She had knelt down, frowning at it. No note, no card, nothing. Tom.
Each following night, she found herself sighing as she picked up another rose, and threw it in the trash. She would have to call him soon and ask him to stop, but she remembered how furious he'd been and the cold, dark anger in his eyes when he's slapped the wall. Instinctively she knew it needed to be completely over. Her body did miss the sex, but she knew she would never be intellectually happy with anyone but Sherlock, and it wasn't fair to Tom to continue like they were.
On the fifth day, Molly was performing a Y-shaped incision autopsy on a young Chav who had been knifed to death, when her mobile phone rang. She pulled the mask down beneath her chin, peeled off her gloves, palmed on some hand sanitizer, and answered the call on the nearby lab counter.
"Hello?"
"Molly, it's Greg."
Tired, she leaned against the counter and rotated her neck. Lestrade called her once in a while over certain cases. "Oh, hiya. How's it going?"
"Not so good, actually."
An alarm went off in Molly's head, and she shot straight up. "I-is it Sherlock?"
"No, actually. It's you."
She put and hand to the back of her neck, frowning. "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm confused. What?"
She heard him sigh gruffly. "I'm at your flat, and it appears that someone's, well-"
"Someone's what? What happened?"
"Well, there's pink roses everywhere. I mean everywhere. A tenant heard music being played really loud, so she sent the landlord up to check it out, and someone left you a message on the wall in paint and some… uh, disturbing things. Are you able to come down here?"
Tears sprang to Molly's eyes and her hands started shaking. "Y-yes. I'm finishing up an autopsy. I'll be done in about twenty minutes."
"We'll be here. Sorry, Molly. I texted Sherlock, he's looking around right now. I hope you don't mind."
"No, that's – that's fine. Thanks, Greg."
"Sorry, hon."
She ended the call, and shakily completed the autopsy, willing herself to calm down. She was in her position at Bart's because she was emotionally well-put together and very level headed, on top of being a skilled physician. She'd seen mangled bodies, people who had been tortured and shot and stabbed and burned, and had dealt with very large amounts of stress; but at the moment she was shaking like a leaf on a tree.
After getting Anna to tend the lab once things were secure, Molly drove to her flat, gulping at the three police cars and crime scene unit out front, and dreading what she would find with each step up the landing. As it turned out, she wasn't even able to go inside because Sherlock was blocking the doorjamb, looking guarded and formidable. He pushed a rollable suitcase forward, and she took the handle.
"Come, Molly, you're going to come stay with me."
"The hell I am!" she shot back, trying to budge past him. "Let me in, Sherlock, it's my flat! I want to see what-"
"-Happened? Very well. Your ex-fiance broke in, left you well over ten dozen roses, spray painted, 'My sweet Molly' on the wall above the sofa, and murdered and decapitated your cat. He left the head on a dinner platter surrounded by a nice curry meal on your kitchen table."
She gasped, covering her mouth.
"Jesus, Sherlock!" she heard behind him. Lestrade elbowed his way into the mix. "Have a little tact, you bastard!"
Sherlock rolled his eyes."Now Grant-"
"It's Greg!" Molly found herself shouting with Lestrade at the same time.
"Be that as it may," Sherlock said testily as Molly felt tears streaming down her cheeks. Sweet Toby. "We need to get Molly to a safe location. I know who this man is, I've dealt with him before, albeit indirectly. You have all the information I've given you, so we're going now. She doesn't need to see anything. If you need a statement you can get one at Baker Street tomorrow morning. Come on, Molly." Sherlock took the rollable suitcase in one hand and hers in the other, and she was too distraught to argue with him.
"Who- who would do something like this? Who would decapitate a harmless cat?" She wept in the cab on the way there. She glanced up at Sherlock, who looked absolutely furious. His eyes darted down to her, his jaw tight.
"Sebastian Thomas Moran, the second most dangerous man in London. He worked for Moriarty. Tom," he added as an afterthought, and Molly threw up in the cab.
Later, after showering at Sherlock's and a fruitless argument about the fact that she was now going to sleep in his bed, take some time off of work, and not leave his sight, she sat against his ornate headboard with her knees drawn up, arms around them as she contemplated it all.
"Did you know?" she asked nasally, her eyes still red-rimmed.
Sherlock was unbuttoning his over-priced cufflinks, looking carefully out the curtains. "Not for certain."
"No, I mean, did you know when you returned and met him for the first time that I was engaged to a psychopathic murderer?"
He turned, dark curls brushing close to one eye as he carefully watched her. "Again, not for certain. Had I been wrong, I didn't want to cause you distress or intrude in your relationship."
"But you were suspicious," her voice rose.
Sherlock gave her a withering look. "Molly Hooper, I'm always suspicious. I intruded once before,-"
"-and you saved me from furthering a relationship with a criminal mastermind! You let it go on at the wedding. God! The wedding! If you knew, Sherlock, if you had even the slightest doubt-"
Sherlock looked down, displeased. "I wanted only for your happiness, Molly. I owed you that much."
"Bullshit!" she shot back, pushing herself off the bed and marching straight up to him. "Sherlock, I hadn't slept with him yet when you came back. It was only after I let you go that day that I decided to further our relationship. God, I had sex with him!" A lot, she thought with a sick, sinking feeling. Luckily she was smart and had a birth control implant in her arm, so there was no chance she could be pregnant. Tears involuntarily sprang to her eyes, and she was once again crying in front of him. She hated that.
Sherlock's expression softened as it had that day he took her out, and he walked slowly forward, his grey eyes conveying what his words could not. "Molly, I am … sorry."
"D-don't," she tiredly held up a hand to stave him off, turning. "J-just don't. I'm going to go make some tea." Whatever contrite expression he wore, she missed it as she angrily wiped away her tears and went into the kitchen, sobbing silently. She reached up on tiptoe for a teacup, and a sharp stinging pain entered the back of her neck.
Before she could scream, her vision went black, and everything disappeared. She felt strong arms wrenching her wrists behind her back, and vaguely, in the back of her mind, glass shattering.
"I have often walked down this street before…"
Molly found herself regaining consciousness to the sound of a beautiful male baritone voice, singing a song she'd heard as a child from an old musical. It rang out loud and clear, with a slight echo.
"But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before…"
It was such an ethereally amazing voice, way passed professional. She felt dizzy and relaxed, listening to it sing close to her ear and feeling lulled. A silly smile spread all over her face; it felt like she was floating. The voice was so familiar and beautiful, and she remembered hearing it sing show tunes in the shower in the not too distant past.
"All at once am I several stories high,
Knowing I'm on the street where you live."
Her eyes felt weighted down and lead-heavy. She was completely relaxed, but she couldn't move a muscle, literally. She tried to wiggle her fingers, but nothing would budge, as if her brain were disconnected from all her orifices. She did vaguely register the weight of her engagement ring, back on her left hand. When the singing stopped, she gradually opened her eyes, vision wavering as she blinked blurrily up at Tom, who was smiling charmingly down at her, his face mere inches from hers. She was half-sitting, half-lying on some sort of soft surface, and he sat on a folding chair in front of her. Everything was oscillating. A single overhead light bulb swayed above her.
"That's it love, time to come round. There's my sweet Molly girl." He turned away from her, and she saw Sherlock, or rather the form of Sherlock, sitting on a dirty floor, chained with his hands behind a pole about ten feet away. They seemed to be in some sort of abandoned warehouse. "See, I told you she'd come around. She's going to be just fine, aren't you Molls?"
Molly tried to open her mouth to speak, but she found that she couldn't even do that.
"What did you give her, you bastard?" Sherlock snarled.
"Temper, temper, Mr. Holmes. Rohypnol, the date rape drug. Only I, uh," he chuckled, "Added some of my own cocktail. Molly can't harm a fly, and she'll be more than compliant. She's listening to everything we say, though, aren't you, love?" She felt his large, warm hand on her face.
"Oh!" he snapped his fingers. "I almost forgot. Someone wants to say hello. Don't move a muscle," he tittered at his own joke, and light-heartedly got up and walked away.
"Molly," Sherlock said, "I know you can hear me. Are you all right?"
She was aware she was wearing some kind of revealing dress and could feel the cool air on her chest. All she could manage to do was moan.
"We will get out of this. I'm working on getting loose, and John was going to come by to make certain you were physically sound, so he will work out that something happened and find us."
She heard Tom's/Sebastian's laughter, coupled with multiple sounds scuttling along the concrete floor. "Don't bet on it, Mr. Holmes. Come on, boy."
Sherlock sharply inhaled. "That's-that's not possible!"
"Come on, Redbeard. You remember Molly, don't you? Missing those walkies with her, aren't we? Come say hello." She saw the Irish Red Setter's soft nose prod her useless hands, and then he whined once and reached up to lick her on the face as if to say, what's wrong, Molly?
"That's- that's not possible!" Sherlock ranted.
"Oh, come now, Mr. Holmes. You know Redbeard, don't you? Come back from the dead. I'm going to have fun putting him down right in front of-"
"No!"
Just that single word from Sherlock in such an emotional, desperate voice was enough to tell her they were all in a bad way.
"Oh, I'm not going to do it right now, obviously," Tom/Sebastian said. He took Redbeard's leash and tied to a pipe near Sherlock, who appeared to be crying.
She heard the folding chair scrape the concrete, and once again his handsome face was in hers. "I'm sure Mr. Holmes has told you who I am, so you can call me Sebastian. I like it better than Tom, don't you?" he asked silkily, tracing her jawline with his finger. "Much more romantic. And with you, sweet Molly, it's all about romance."
She wanted to hit him, scratch him, claw his eyes out, yell at him, but she couldn't do anything but stare.
"You see, Mr. Holmes," Sebastian said tenderly as he stroked the exposed flesh of her shoulders, "I am better than you, in every possible way. I'm a better lover, I'm a better adversary than Jim was, God rest his soul… and I'm better at loving Molly. In the end, I will take everything you hold dear."
"How-how did you know about Redbeard?" Sherlock demanded. She had never heard him sound so broken. She was able to move her eyes a little more, and the dog was nuzzling it's head into Sherlock's face. She remembered Redbeard being sweet as anything, and wondered what correlation this had to whatever Sherlock was feeling.
"Oh, we'll get to that," Sebastian said casually, lightly tracing the outline of the side of her breast. "Right now, I just want to talk about our Molly."
"Stop touching her," Sherlock said, his voice dangerously low.
"I mean, just look at her," She felt Sebastian's long finger stroke down the side of her face, traipsing lightly down the line of her neck. "She is very beautiful, isn't she? It took me a while to see it when I realized you had a thing for her… because let's face it, it's not like she's made up to the nines or goes to the tanning salon or has implants, is it? She's no Irene Adler… but she is classically beautiful, like a painting from the renaissance. And she's wicked smart. I'll have to lay her out au naturale one day and have a go at an oil canvas. It's interesting, but when she sleeps, she makes these endearing little noises, like she's humming and sighing at the same time. Though, they're nothing compared to the noises she makes when she's aroused and we're fuc-"
"Shut up right now," she heard Sherlock growl, and the heavy tight pull of chains echoed in the room. "I am going to tear you apart."
Sebastian seemed unaffected, continuing to stroke Molly's face and speak lovingly. "Oh Sherlock, believe me when I say you'd be shocked to learn what an amazing body she's hiding beneath all those frumpy jumpers and bulky lab coats. Absolutely perfect, and you'd never know it. She's really passionate in bed, too, nothing at all like you'd think. Our Molly is a real treas-"
"I said shut your mouth!"
Sebastian chuckled. "Finickity, aren't we? You know I'm right. You just never had the balls to act on your feelings, because you thought they'd make you weak. I always thought she's a good source of strength. Well, you missed out and Magnussen was right. It's ultimately the one mistake that's going to cost you. It's your ultimate undoing. Isn't that right, Redbeard? Yes, there's a good boy."
"You're insane!"
Sebastian merely chuckled.
"Insane in love with this girl, right here. Maybe we should do it right in front of him, yeah, Molly? Show him how it's done? He could learn a thing or two."
Molly managed to utter a groan that was more of a pissed-off growl to let him know exactly what she thought of him. He continued to stroke her.
"Hmm… but not here. It's unsanitary. We'll need to top up your sleepy juice soon, love. Oh and yes, Mr. Holmes. You wanted to know how I knew about Redbeard. Well, before you murdered my employer in cold blood-"
"I didn't kill Moriarty, he took his own life," Sherlock interrupted, sounding more like the Sherlock she knew. The fighting Sherlock.
Sebastian tittered again, meanwhile looking lovingly at Molly. "Why, whoever said I was talking about Jim? I'm talking about Charles Magnussen. Before you murdered him, he sent the encrypted files-"
"-What files, they were all in his head-"
"Ah yes, that. You know, for a purported genius, you really are a numpty at times. You checked his glasses, yes, but it is the twenty-first century. Did you ever think to check the contacts?"