John had a feeling he would regret promising not to tell Sherlock about this, the guilt of hiding his double agent antics coming as he made his way home from the clinic slowly, and John struggled to shake himself out of this rut he was falling into before he fell too far. He felt like he was driving himself crazy like this, his head throbbing little by little as he tried to relax, and he just wanted to be at home in his warm bed again and hope Sherlock wasn't about to beat him up again. He wasn't in the mood to fight, especially not as he mounted the stairs and found people already filling the flat.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"YES YOU DO, YOU STOLE THEM!"

The raised voices made John hurry, sighing frustration.

"Molly?" He called, interrupting the argument and seeing Lieutenant Donovan release the coroner's arm to let her hurry over to him as well. His gut tightened, seeing Molly's stormy expression, and when the normally docile woman jabbed his chest, John was reeling. "Molly, what's going on? What's he done now?"

"You know full well what he's done, John, he's taken them! He's taken them and the dean is going to fire me!" Molly hiccuped, horrified and pale as the officers threw Sherlock dirty looks and gladly consoled her. "Corpses don't walk out of the morgue, and he's denying it! He called just yesterday and asked about them, and now all of them have disappeared!"

John, having had enough of a run already and in no mood to argue with Molly at all, sighed and he rubbed his hands over his face before he stepped up to the plate all over again and he had to get between the police and his flatmate. "Listen... Molly, I'm really sorry about all of this, and I'll handle him, and we'll see you down at the morgue in the morning with everything we can bring. Donovan, Anderson, thank you for bringing her up, but I'd appreciate if you could take her home. Make sure she gets in alright."

Molly looked reassured by his statements, seeing hope when the weary war veteran stepped up to the plate to help her, but the policewoman wasn't so comforted. She sneered, scowling, and she said: "So long as he isn't the bloke who's abducting the live ones too, Watson... Take care of yourself." He was half-tempted to punch her straight, and he knew if it had been Anderson, he would have. On principle, John didn't hit any woman; no matter how deserving. "Night."

"Get out." John said impatiently, opting to just shake his head at them with a sour look as they gawked from the hallway and made it easier to close the door.

After a few moments of holding the door closed and just letting his day wash over him slowly in sections, John hoped to God he could get something back for her, or provide her with some proof it wasn't Sherlock, and he took a careful breath. He hadn't spoken to Sherlock without a fight for days, almost a week or more, and he wasn't looking forward to this. He knew he still looked rough, and a few of his colleagues had commented on it at work nonchalantly.

"You shouldn't take everything out on Molly." He said slowly. "She's a lot of help."

"You shouldn't bring work home with you, but you do." Sherlock countered, still sitting in his chair looking absolutely feline and unruffled even as Molly left in a squad car distraught over the future of her career, and John hated to make a comparison but it came unbidden like a serpent into the garden of his mind. Jim wouldn't have been so goddamn petty.

When James Moriarty was upset with you, or you'd done something to offend him in any way, he took it out of you and he took his pound of flesh right from where it hurt. Be it man, woman, or child, you knew when he was upset, what he was upset about, and to never to do it again unless you were a real glutton for pain and punishment.

John couldn't believe himself, comparing the indisposed consulting criminal to the detective he usually held in highest regard, and John wanted to test his own blood for drugs. Was he out of his mind? Moriarty was a killer, and that was why everyone knew not to cross him! Because he killed anyone who did and he operated under his own moral code. He was nothing like, and no where near as good as, Sherlock Holmes.

John sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Sherlock..." He didn't even know what to say. "Sherlock, we're friends. We work together and we live together, and this can't go on. Give Molly back the corpses, the families deserve to have them and the funerals not happening as planned will get her fired. If you're upset with me, you don't have to act like a petty child throwing a tantrum for attention!" John felt like Mycroft suddenly, wondering if the elder Holmes would have backed him up or not, and he decided to save that thought for later. He could really only deal with one Holmes at a time. "What have I done but be your friend? I don't understand what I've done to deserve this, I really don't!"

John was heaving by the end, his breathing coming more and more frequently as his own frustration pulled at his heartstrings, and he pulled his tongue back. "I-" He exhaled sternly, shaking his head, and he clenched and unclenched his hands as he tried to think. "Is this about you being in that holding cell? Because if it is, that was your own fault and you bloody well know I don't carry my phone on my hip at work. Some- I can't be at your beck and call! I have a life! A job! Detective is your title, not mine- I'm a doctor, and I need to do my job, Sherlock, not yours."

"What a shame you can't do either." If there was one thing John wasn't, it was incompetent, but that still stung with it's abruptness, and Sherlock let his computer suddenly project a spread map of abductions that were all neatly marked out in different colours for him. "But if you're all well and done criticizing how I run my practice, then we can get down to business and get to the bottom of how these corpses are creeping about on their own."

Up on screen came a series of three photos,the faces pale and sickly and the notations all clearly Molly's hand, but John's eyes latched onto the middle one with a weak sense of sickness. "Here are our clients, all missing. Gerald Hoskins, Janice Mallard, and the latest, Matthew Raymond. Matthew went missing last night when he was supposed to be waiting for his parents to pick him up from a bus station near Heathrow,." Sherlock's eyes were cold and clinical when he looked at John. "All of Molly's corpses, I suspect, will be found similarly. Suspiciously far from the abduction site, exsanguinated, and bruised like they'd taken a beating. Do you believe me now?"

At this point, John would have cut out his tongue and ate it. As he stared, dumbstruck, at the screen, his lips fumbled, and his guts tightened like someone had pulled the drawstring tight. "I-I have to make a call..."

That woman on the screen was Jim Moriarty now!