THE WAR INSIDE MY HEAD

15.

Molly awakened to a soft whisper by her ear. She snapped her head to the source of the sound and was greeted by a swift duck from The Woman herself. Molly stifled her gasp as Irene cupped her mouth with desperation in her eyes. She paused a second to lick her lip as Molly tried to calm herself down from The Woman who cheated death for the third time.

"But you're d-?"

"Dead? Very much the opposite," Irene said hastily. "Stupid man forgot that I live in handcuffs. And the coat is bulletproof, thick enough to hide a pack of blood to feign death."

Molly recalled the coat she had on as she basically kidnapped her into her current state, refreshing her anger toward Irene's betrayal. She glared at the woman before her who despite Molly's previous envy towards her effortless beauty, now looks absolutely frazzled.

"Oh cut your glare. Sherlock Holmes would have chosen his days with you now that you are back and forgo his mission. It's the only way," Irene explained cryptically.

"What do you mean?" Molly asked.

Irene's eyes shifted away from her as she tried to find a way to explain. But before the words could be formed, her keen ears were distracted by the slight ruckus outside.

"You're not going to die. The reason why we are having this conversation right now is because I swapped the supposed amount that bastard Moran ordered me to dose you down. But anyway, don't worry, Sherlock would know what to do." She stopped her rambling words to stuff a piece of folded paper in Molly's pants, ignoring her embarrassment at the touch of another woman tugging on her underwear. "But just in case he doesn't understand WHY I am doing this, pass that to him."

She stood back to grab a strain of rope sourcing from the roof. She hurriedly tied the rope around her, then gave Molly a confusing gaze.

"This is goodbye, Molly Hooper. Tell him that for me will you?" Irene begged.

Molly nodded her head as she watched The Woman tug the rope and slowly ascend upwards towards an opened window in the roof. She was mouthing something, but Molly only caught the words "Sorry" and "Sleep", which prompted her to drop her head into a feigned slumber as the door busted open as Moran rushed in.

The ground beneath her chair revolted again, which cued Molly to "wake up". Moran gave her a snarky look as she shook herself awake. She had no idea what Irene was up to, much less whose words to trust at the moment. She doubt she has a choice but to believe that she still has her life as long as Sherlock has yet to appear.

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Sherlock's hand trembled as it turned the knob to the Watson's residence. He had known for a while that John moved out to his sister's a few weeks after his "death". Harriet Watson had always been his last resort, he once mentioned. This only reminded Sherlock of the damage he had done to his best mate.

He skidded up the stairs in one quick motion, revealing himself right before the man whom had just turned about from the bookshelf before them. John dropped his books as he felt his knees give way to the familiar face staring back at his. He watched as an apologetic smile snaked across Sherlock's face. He dropped to the ground in disbelief, only to be caught by his supposedly dead friend. Sherlock pulled John up by the arms, steadying him by the shoulders then let go after he was sure that his friend could stand on his own.

"I believe I owe you an apology," Sherlock looked down to the ground as he commented guiltily.

Silence followed, which prompted him to look up at John, only to be interrupted by a punch laying on his right cheek, with a sharp object cutting his lower lip. Sherlock fell on ground, his hand cupping the swollen lip that taste of blood.

"Alright. I suppose I deserved that."

"Suppose? No you deserve MORE than that!" John yelled hysterically. "How could you, Sherlock? You had me believe you were dead and before I know it, here you are standing in front of me with "an apology"?"

Sherlock stood up, his hand still on his cheek, his eyes remained on the ground. He tried to find words for his action but the guilt was cutting the words from his mouth. He opened his mouth to try to form his sentence, but his thoughts were stopped by the hands embraced around him.

"That was all that I wanted for the past three years. Thank God you are alive, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock awkwardly placed his free hand upon his sobbing friend, returning his hug in his own way.

Mycroft tapped on the ground a couple times with his umbrella, interrupting the silence that filled the house a few moments before. Sherlock broke the embrace, turned to acknowledge his brother's impatience then told John to bring his gun as he walked towards the exit.

John shot an inquisitive look at the older Holmes as he grabbed his gun and followed Sherlock out. Mycroft waited till Sherlock was in the car before answering John, "Molly's in danger. Sherlock will fill you in on the way there."

As the car sped out of the city, Sherlock had gone through a full detailed explanation of how he cheated his death and his tedious mission in dismantling Moriarty's network for the past three years. John listened with the same amount of interest he has always had.

"So right now, John, you and I are going to rescue Molly from Moran, who had that Woman lock her up in the same Warehouse I found the first few vic- members in."

"Sherlock, you can say "victims". You had to dismantle a network. Of course you had to do your killings. I'm not going to judge you."

"I know, I just- Molly, I, well-" Sherlock stammered through his words.

John craned his neck towards his tongue-tied friend. He had never seen Sherlock behave in such a manner.

"Okay Sherlock, save it. Nobody is dead anymore. Molly is in danger because Moran's going to kill her. And you are in love with Molly. Right on all counts?"

"No, Moran is going to make me kill her. The machines in the background of these photos, I witness what they could do in a mission in Minsk once. They bounce off bullets that hit them. It was a very small detail that barely had to do with what I was working on but it caught me off-guard that I could not forget them. And judging by the way Moran had them all set up, he is using them to trick me to open fire at him, killing Molly in the meantime."

"So you are not denying that you love Molly?" John muttered.

"John Watson that is not the issue at the moment! I need you to find a way to kill that bastard Moran without killing Molly!" Sherlock exclaimed with much annoyance, prompting Mycroft to shoot John a warning look at his brother who was on the verge of breaking down.

Sherlock snapped at the driver to pull over and the car came to a stop at a clearing.

"What? Are we here?" John enquired.

"No. We have to walk there, but we are close," Sherlock stated blankly as he stepped out of the car. "Moran wants me alone, having an entire car pull up before the building would result in an entire explosion in this part of the country."

Sherlock shot a look at Mycroft in which he returned a nod to.

"We better get going," Mycroft said as he dragged the army doctor away from his brother. John struggled to follow the Holmes brothers' intentions but allowed Mycroft to whisk him away as he watched Sherlock trek another way from them.

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Moran smelled of death. Molly recognized that smell instantly; it was what greeted her every day at work. But it smelled of something else, something absolutely sinister and loathing.

It took her a minute but she recognized it. She rarely had to deal with related corpses because they would break her in a minute, but they were unforgettable and to smell it on Moran instantly makes her stomach churn in both fear and disgust.

He smelled like the death of children.

Molly gaped at the man before her, picturing him ruthlessly torturing and killing the children in cold blood with no guilt or remorse written on his face. She watched his hands as the bloodstains begin to form before her eyes, her mind running through the appearance of the wild murderer standing in front of her. It made her sick; it made her angry; it made her want to kill him.

"Aw, the mouse is mad, aren't you?" Moran asked. "God you are so predictably boring. How Jim had his fun with you is just unimaginable…" His knife in his left hand rubbed the sides of Molly's face.

"Sebastian Moran."

Moran spurned himself around with a grin plastered on his face, the same sickening grin Jim had. Molly let go of a breath she had no idea she was holding in. Sherlock stepped towards the man himself, gun pointing directly at Moran.

Moran's smile grew wider at the consulting detective's solid grip on his gun. He fiddled with his knife before sliding it in his back pocket. He then stood next to Molly with his hands in the air.

"Glad you could come, Holmes."

"Let her go."

"Not a chance."

Molly's face relaxed at the sight of Sherlock, but tensed up again when she saw Sebastian Moran's right index finger pointing towards the machines around her. She turned to look at Sherlock but Moran had already stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the man with the gun pointing directly towards one of the machines before her.

"What the fuck is all these for?" Sherlock said through gritted teeth.

Moran tilted his head to indicate to Molly as he explained obnoxiously, "Just the setting for her lucky day to die."

Sherlock shook his head as a mocking smile spread across his face. "No, she was not in the original plan."

Moran cocked his head, his lips pursed at Sherlock's deduction.

"You thought you could use The Woman to lure me out instead. Drove her after the warehouse meeting, tell her to get me. But her being her, knowing that that means she is going to have to sacrifice herself, decides to save herself instead. Made you a deal to use Molly to replace her in exchange for her life," Sherlock continued.

Moran then interrupted with a hearty laughter. "Doesn't matter. I didn't need her. Not when that assistant of your brother's kept texting that bitch all the information I needed. Now she is out there, dead as a log, eaten by a pack of wolves or something."

Sherlock's face tilted up in realization of Irene's fate. Molly tried her best to maneuver in her confinement to try and tell him what she knows but Moran has yet to budge from his position. His burly body remained before her, obstructing her view.

"What are you trying to do now? With Molly in that rubbish chair of yours?"

"Like I said, setting her death. I want you to watch her die," Moran stated cockily.

"Like how you watched your dear Moriarty die?" Sherlock retorted without hesitation.

Moran's face turned grim at his reply as his rage begin to rise. He left his position to charge towards Sherlock when a bullet was fired.

A bullet lodged into Moran's head from the rooftop, stopping the man's advance. Molly snapped her eyes up to see the killer shot and was greeted by John's unwavering soldier face greeting her. She let out a relieved sigh before letting the pent-up anxiety from the event before filled her eyes with tears. Her tears kept flowing despite her attempts to stop as Sherlock hurriedly freed her from the chair.

When all the binding came off, he scooped her up in one arm to his chest and let the embrace last for as long as he could. Molly's tears kept on coming without any signs of stopping. Sherlock's heart ached in pain at the ordeal he had put her through and the trauma he had caused.

"I am sorry… I am sorry, Molly…" he kept on repeating.

Mycroft's man broke in to retrieve Moran's body. John entered along with them, and headed straight towards the couple a few feet away from the body he just shot. John watched as his best friend tried his everything to comfort the woman in his arm.

"Sherlock? Let's go," John muttered gently.

Sherlock lifted his head to acknowledge his friend, and then back to whisper in Molly's ear to leave. He wedged her tightly to his side as they made their way to the exit.

By the time they had managed to return to the house, Molly had grown too weakened to even cry. Sherlock carried her into the house and onto the bed, tucking her in. He wipes away a stray hair on her left cheek then whispered for her to get some rest.

He was about to turn away when Molly grabbed him back by the wrist. Sherlock turned around and saw Molly struggle to fish something out of her pants. He cocked his head curiously, then sees the crumpled piece of paper peeping out.

"Irene. She came before you in that place. Gave me this. She said that that," she passed over the letter, "was why. Then she said goodbye. And, and…" Molly's eyelids were barely open when Sherlock took the letter from her. He then shushed her and cooed her to sleep before leaving.

John Watson was out by the door, pacing back and forth. Sherlock shot him a condescending look.

"Oh, you're out. I was wondering when was a good time to pass you these wet towels," John said nervously.

"She is asleep now. But I need your medical help to check on her. Make sure she is fine. I'll be on the couch in the room opposite," Sherlock instructed in a manner that Mycroft had warned him was too harsh before. He then turned back around to face the shorter man, licked his lips and said, "Thank you, John."

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My dear Sherlock,

I apologize for the trouble I have caused and what I am going to make Molly go through but I have no other options. It was the only way to get Moran.

Moran had us chasing his tail for months and his sudden appearance was my perfect opportunity to strike on what we aimed to do from the very beginning. Moriarty's network was what landed me in the Karachi situation; revenge had been on my mind ever since then. When Moran captured me after your reunion with Molly, I was utterly terrified that you would abandon your mission to dismantle the final piece of the network. So I set this act of betrayal up to make Moran think that he was in control when I gathered time to figure out a way to dissolve his plans. I hope when you read this, I had figured out a plan and succeeded in saving Molly's life and ending Moran's. I hope even if I failed, you would understand that it was my final attempt to dissolve the network with the time and resources I had on hand.

I thank you for the past few months in assisting what I had planned to do since my departure from the Middle East. I promise to disappear from your life from now on-wards. I wish you have everything you want and more, for you are the greatest man I have ever known.

Very truly yours,

IRENE ADLER

"Unbelievable."

"What is?" John asked.

Sherlock passed over the letter to him, which he quickly look over. John nodded his head knowingly for a couple moments as he turned to set the papers on the table.

"She did succeed though, in figuring a way to save the day," John stated casually.

Sherlock shot him a puzzled glance, which prompted John to proceed to recite the entire event.

"We were walking to where you had told Mycroft was a good place to find a way to shoot without anything backfiring. And all of a sudden, the black heel that she wore the first time we met her came flying down from above. When we looked up, she had already pranced off to another tree and I could only identify her because of her footwear-turned-weapon. I then caught Mycroft staring at the roof of the warehouse and found the opening. Mycroft told me she was sending a message to shoot from there, which I did."

Sherlock looked away as soon as John had finished. John saw his indifferent attitude and took it that he needed some time alone.

"I going to bed if you need me," John said softly.

Sherlock nodded his head slightly. He picked up the letter The Woman wrote, then crushed it in one hand. He hated the fact that she succeeded and delivered the final blow to his sole mission from the day he faked his death. He is relieved that Moran is dead; he just hated the fact that she thought of everything while he was completely clueless. He detests the most when he is kept in the dark.

He picked himself up and tip-toed in the room Molly was sleeping soundly in. He eased himself in the bed, careful not to wake her resting body, then slipped a hand around her waist and let himself sleep. But before he let sleep overcome his body, he whispered softly to her ears.

"Never let you go."

FIN.

Ah, so here ends this fic. I hope you all enjoyed it - though it moved fast I know Alicia and I had a lot of fun working on it together and separately. So thanks for reading and I'll see you soon with more of my other fics.

Let me know what you think of the ending, please.

Thanks.

much love,

day