Eleven Weeks and Six Days Ago. Somewhere in Chelsea.
It had taken Sherlock just a few minutes after leaving Molly's flat to track down where Molly's ex-fiance Tom lived. But he knew he couldn't go directly there. In the mood he'd been in when he left Molly in that bedroom, he knew that, if he saw Tom right then, he'd kill him. No question. He'd kill him. So he'd had to calm down. He could be of no help to Molly in prison for murder or, more likely, exiled forever from England.
So, from the hours between leaving Molly's flat and the appointed hour early the next morning when he planned to confront that piece of shit, he did precisely what he knew he mustn't do: he got high.
But, it was the worst high he'd ever had. Not a high at all, but a crashing down into complete misery and a level of anger that no drug could lift him out of. His plan to try drug-induced oblivion to calm himself down backfired spectacularly. Thus, at four in the morning, he found himself outside Tom's home.
For a long time, he stood staring at the front door, trying to control his breathing—when he could finally take it no more.
He ran up to the front door and started intermittently both pounding on the door and pressing the doorbell incessantly until a light came on from inside the house and he heard the angry grumbling of the man inside. "Who the fuck is out there? Do you know what time it is?"
Apparently, Tom looked through the peep-hole and, wrongly determining that Sherlock posed no existential threat to him, opened the door, yelling obscenities at the detective. As the door opened, Sherlock kicked violently at it, the door hitting Tom in the face, sending him flying backwards and breaking his nose. Sherlock rushed in, grabbed the man by the lapels of his pajamas and punched him about the head, careful not to cause unconsciousness, needing him awake and able to speak for the next few minutes.
Tom tried a little to fight back, but the combination of Sherlock's surprise attack and the drug and anger-fueled strength the detective possessed left him largely defenseless. Sherlock kicked at Tom's midsection several times before lifting him up and dragging him to a chair in the dining room. Sherlock handcuffed him and hit him several more times in his torso.
Through his bloodied mouth, Tom spit out the words, "What? Why are you doing this?"
"For Molly."
"She dumped me, man. I didn't do anything to her." At that, Sherlock punched him in the kidneys. Tom screamed out in pain.
"What did you do with the pictures?"
"What pictures?" Another punch, another cry of pain.
"The pictures of Molly. Think Tom. Think." Sherlock saw the look of recognition pass on the other man's face.
"I erased them."
"Wrong answer, Tom." Another punch, another cry.
"Ok, ok. They're in there," he said, motioning to his living room, "on my laptop."
"Who did you send them to?"
Tom looked down guiltily, but said nothing. Sherlock pulled his arm back, readying for another blow when Tom begged, "Please, please . . . I sent them to a few friends from Uni, that's all."
Sherlock lifted Tom violently from his dining room chair and dragged him into the living room to where his laptop sat. Sherlock held on to him and spoke only inches from his face. "Are there other copies besides the ones on your laptop?"
"No," he pleaded. "They're all on there."
"You better not be lying, Tom. It'll be very bad for you if you're lying."
"I'm not lying; I'm telling you the truth."
"Ok, Tom," Sherlock said, getting out a pen and a piece of paper and removing the handcuffs from Tom's wrists, "you're going to write down the names of every one of the scumbags you sent the pictures to." Sherlock let him go and handed him the pen and paper. Tom leaned over the desk and wrote with a very shaky hand, dripping blood onto the paper. He gave them both back to Sherlock, who then proceeded to violently impale Tom's hand with the pen. In the next second, over Tom's screams, Sherlock heard the approaching sirens of police cars. He grabbed Tom's laptop and bent over the crying man. "I wouldn't name me if I were you, Tom. It will be very bad for you if you name me."
Sherlock ran out of the back of the house, leaving Tom a bloody mess, but alive, which was, to Sherlock's mind, a gift.
Sherlock's felt his head pounding furiously in pain at the sound of John Watson pounding with equal ferocity at the front door of his flat. He made his way wearily to the origin of the noise and opened the door for his friend, who brushed past him into the flat in a huff of anger.
"Why do I have to hear from Greg Lestrade and not you that Molly received a package saying it was from Moriarty?"
"Good morning, John."
"Don't 'good morning' me, what's going on?"
"Oh, you know, the game is on."
"Don't be glib about this. This is Molly." As Sherlock collapsed into his usual chair, John noticed his friend had numerous nasty bruises all over his knuckles. "What happened there?" He said, pointing to Sherlock's hands.
"I fell." John huffed annoyance at his friend's evasiveness and was about to continue questioning him about it when DI Lestrade walked up to the flat's landing and waved.
"Morning Sherlock, John," Lestrade said.
At the sight of him, Sherlock stood, bearing his anger. "Where is Molly? You're supposed to be protecting her."
"Easy Sherlock. She's at her lab in St. Bart's. Three of Mycroft's men are following her everywhere she goes. She'll be fine. It's the damnedest thing though," Lestrade said, pulling out a police report, "would you believe that early this morning the Chelsea Constabulary took a report of one Thomas Orley having being the victim of a break-in and severe beating by an unknown assailant?"
"Oh really?" Sherlock tried to evince nonchalance.
"And the strange thing is that he says he can't describe his attacker at all, says he was wearing a mask. All he can say is that the attacker was short, which is interesting because two witnesses say they saw a rather tall man fleeing out of Mr. Orley's house around the time of the attack. And get this: all the CCTV cameras in the area seemed to have malfunctioned simultaneously. What do you think of that?"
"Crime. What are you going to do?" Sherlock shrugged his shoulders.
John tried his best to catch up. "Thomas Orley? Is that . . . is that Tom, Molly's Tom?"
Lestrade placed the police report down on Sherlock's mantel and looked the detective in the eyes with as much gravitas and seriousness as he could muster. "This is unacceptable, Sherlock. You can't go around beating people half to death."
"He'll be fine. So he'll be pissing blood for a week. Better than he deserves."
"Will someone clue me in on what's going on here?" John begged the two men.
"Later, John. First, Greg—I had rather thought you'd be bringing Molly here this morning as per our agreement to discuss her more long-term living situation."
"Well, that's actually been resolved."
"Enlighten me," Sherlock said, picking up the knife he so often carried around while lost in thought.
"She'll be staying with me until we get the all-clear." Upon hearing this, Sherlock attempted to stab at the Chelsea police report sitting atop his mantel and failed to notice Lestrade's hand resting there.
"Jesus Christ, you motherfucking bastard," yelled Lestrade, gripping his hand.
"Sherlock!" John also yelled, running to assist Lestrade, as Sherlock stood by, horrified by the sight of the second hand he'd impaled this day already. And it wasn't even noon.
"It's a nick, stop being such a baby," Sherlock chided the still extraordinarily angry Scotland Yard detective as John finished stitching it up.
"Shut up, you lunatic, I ought to haul your ass into lock-up," yelled Lestrade.
"I said I'm sorry."
"You are unhinged."
"Perhaps," Sherlock conceded.
Having been caught up fully on what had happened to Molly in the previous twenty-four hours while he stitched up Lestrade, John turned to Sherlock and said, "So what now? What's the first step? What can I do?"
Sherlock dug around inside his coat, which had been thrown over a chair, and produced from it a piece of paper with shaky writing and speckles of blood.
"A list of all the fuckers that Tom emailed the photographs to. I want you to research each of them and try and find a location where each one can be potentially found over the next few days."
"There's blood on this paper, Sherlock," said John.
"Hmmmm, I must've had a nosebleed."
"What are you going to do?" John asked.
"I'm going to have high tea with the 54th person in line for the British throne," he said cheerfully, as John and Lestrade both shook their heads, a frequent reaction to Sherlock.
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