Warnings for violence, subtextual incest, and disturbing themes.

When she is six years old, Molly wakes one night to see a ghost standing in the open door of her bedroom.

The ghost is slim, her face and bare feet as pale as old paper. Her fingers are stained black, and in one long-fingered hand she holds a white wax candle and its trembling flame. When she exhales the shadows on Molly's wall shudder around her.

"Mum?" Molly says, and the candle flame flickers once before it dies. The room goes dark.

Molly's mother is slim, but her bones are solid, like iron or stone – Molly's small bed dips under her weight, and long, cold arms curl around Molly's shoulders, pulling her close. Holding her tight. "Molly, my love," her mother says, her face pressed into the sleep-damp curls of Molly's hair, "I want you to promise me something."

Her mother's voice is deep and quiet and always very, very serious, and she's never asked Molly to promise anything before. Molly wants to say yes straight away, but her father taught her never to accept a deal before she'd heard its terms. "What sort of promise?" she asks, and feels her mother's arms tighten around her.

"Molly," she says, "have I ever told you about the day I married your father?"

Molly shakes her head, her mother's chin sharp against her temple. "No, Mum." She pauses. "Are you going to tell me now?"

"I am," her mother says. She might be smiling. "We were married in a little old church in Claregalway, the village where your father's mum and dad lived before they died. The sky was grey and full of clouds, but the wind blew so fiercely that sometimes the clouds were pushed away, and you could see the sun."

Molly closes her eyes tight, picturing the old church and its tall, old trees, bending in the wind. "Did you have a big white dress and lots of flowers?"

"I did. The dress had to be very big, because you and your brother were waiting in here." She takes Molly's hand and presses it low over her own belly. "I used to feel you both kick as you dreamt, twisted together inside me. Sometimes I thought I could hear your heartbeats in my ears."

She pushes Molly's fringe back from her face with long, damp fingers, and Molly smells something thick and sour, like the taste of a penny on her tongue.

"Can you imagine what that was like, Molly? To feel a heartbeat growing inside you, eating what you eat, breathing with your lungs? Warping your body until you're not a person anymore, just womb and breasts and cunt – a vessel for someone else's life." Her lips brush Molly's forehead. "Can you imagine how frightening that was?"

Molly takes a small, stuttering breath. "Yes, Mum."

Her mother takes Molly's face between strong, bone-thin hands and tilts back her head, studying her closely in the dark. "That's why I want you to promise me, Molly. Promise me you won't ever be married."

The smell is stronger now, clinging heavy and bitter at the back of her throat. Molly swallows and says, "Is Jim going to be married?"

Her mother is quiet for a moment. "I don't think he is," she says. "Not if you don't want him to."

"Good," Molly says. "Then I promise."

Her mother presses a hard kiss to her forehead, its sweetness tempered by the sting. "Good girl," she says, and the bed dips as she leaves, slipping into the darkness of the hall.

The next morning Molly wakes early, just before sunrise. She steps into her slippers and walks past Jim's open door, avoiding the floorboards that creak. He sighs in his sleep, curled in blankets, and Molly looks to the end of the hall – to the soft morning sounds she hears from behind her mother and father's bedroom door. She slips into the bathroom, and when she turns on the light she sees her reflection in the wide, silvered mirror over the sink.

There are long stains the colour of old rust on her nightdress, on her shoulders and along her back. Streaks of red on her cheeks and chin, flaking as they dry.

She washes the blood away carefully, with cold water from the tap. The ghost in the mirror watches her, its small hands shaking with the chill.

33

She's two tasteless spoonfuls into her Barts canteen beef stew when Sherlock appears from the periphery of her vision and sets his tray on her table.

"Oh," she says, startled. A dumpling slips off her spoon, splashing back into the bowl. "Hello."

"Molly." He sits in the chair opposite her, and she watches wide-eyed as he unfolds a paper napkin in his lap, picks up his spoon, and begins to eat.

She can't help but stare; she's known him for more than a year, and she's never seen him indulge in anything so human as food. He eats slowly and with great precision, his gaze fixed on something in the distance, just past her left ear.

The canteen echoes with the hollow sort of silence one finds only in often-busy rooms, in places built for crowds and noise that find themselves bereft at night. The lights are dimmed, the other tables empty. In the kitchen, a radio is playing; Molly almost recognises the song.

"Unusual," Sherlock says, between bites. "Despite the nature of your work, your appetite rarely suffers."

Her breath catches. "Sorry?"

"You're not eating." His eyes flick over her face once before he leans his elbows on the table, his spoon abandoned on the tray. His hands fold in front of him, as if in an attitude of prayer. "You're not ill – there must be some other explanation. Stress? Unlikely, given the general proficiency of your work and your deliberate remove from the dramas of hospital politics. It could be personal, but you maintain very few social relationships." He pauses, and for a moment he seems almost unsure. "Did you want to eat alone? I could—"

"No," she says quickly. "Don't go." His eyes widen slightly in surprise, and she bites hard on her bottom lip. "I mean, you don't have to. I don't mind."

His posture shifts, his feet bracing against the floor so he can stand, and she finds herself resigned – whatever he wants from her tonight, he must not think it worth the price of her company. She knows him too well to be insulted; Sherlock likes her well enough, in his distant, ruthlessly pragmatic way, but his patience quickly runs thin. She doesn't mind, really – she's grown accustomed to living within the limits of others.

Whatever he reads in her face in that moment stops him, just before he stands. His elbows settle again on the edge of the table, and he looks down at his half-eaten bowl of stew, his expression a careful blank. "Is the food here always this bland, or have I simply caught the kitchen on an off night?"

"It's not so bad," she says, though it is. "Be glad it's not the Sunday Night Special."

He picks up his spoon. "Oh? What's the Sunday Night Special?"

"Whatever food's leftover from the week before, with broth and extra dumplings."

He doesn't smile, but there's something like amusement in the slow arch of his eyebrows. She thinks of it as his I suppose you're not entirely useless expression; it makes her face flush with a heat that's two parts indignation and one part pure pleasure. She looks resolutely down at her bowl and takes a tepid bite. The beef is stringy, hard to chew – when she finally swallows, she glances up to see him eating again, his left hand neatly in his lap. He spoons his stew toward the outer edge of the bowl, just as her grandmother had. Molly doesn't once hear him slurp.

"I'm identifying remains tonight," she says. "There was a bus collision this morning, and it had a full tank of petrol."

He glances up, eyes alight. "A bus collision? Which route?"

"45 to Clapham Park."

"Ah," he says. "Dull." He turns back to his meal, the heat of his attention gone as quickly as it'd come. She wants to ask why one bus explosion might be duller than another; she refuses to give him the satisfaction.

"I don't know," she says. "It's keeping me rather busy." She takes a short, bracing breath. "Too busy to help with any of your experiments."

"No matter," he says blithely, without looking up. "I'm between cases." Suddenly he stills, snaps up the pepper pot from the centre of the table and shakes it over his stew in three sharp, precise twists of his wrist. Then he reaches across the table and does the same over hers. "There," he says, setting the pepper back on the table with a satisfied clink. "Try it now."

"I don't think—" she begins, but he gives her a pointed glare and she relents, taking a small, reluctant bite.

He smirks. "Better, isn't it?"

"I suppose," she says, and takes another bite; it's almost edible now. "I sort of liked it bland."

He rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "I will never understand," he says, "why people insist on lying to me. You, at least, usually seem to know better."

Her hand clenches into a fist in her lap, white-knuckled and stiff. "You think you know everything about me, don't you?"

Sherlock pauses, his spoon halfway to his mouth, and meets her eyes. "Yes," he says, without the slightest hint of apology. "I do."

They fall into silence, eating quickly as their food grows cold. The radio in the kitchen hisses with static, but beneath it Molly can hear the music. Another song she almost knows.

She looks up and sees a lone security camera fixed on their table, its lens glinting in the half-light like a single, unblinking eye.

34

In the ancient world, the gods played dice for the lives of mortals.

Jim and Molly Moriarty play chess.

"And again," he says, tutting as he takes her second rook. Rolls it between his palms. "Molly, dear. You're not paying attention."

The March wind rattles the windows of her flat, a staccato accompaniment to the rain ringing against the roof. "I am," she says, advancing her remaining knight. "I'm just lulling you into a false sense of security."

Jim grins. "Devious."

"What can I say? I'm a fiend." She taps a finger against the edge of the coffee table, watching his face as he studies the board. She wonders if he knows how often she lets him win. He mustn't; if he did, he would refuse to play.

His forehead furrows. "Stop staring at me. I'm thinking."

She folds her legs beneath her on the rug and leans forward, over the table. Her elbow knocks into her mug of tea and sets it wobbling. "I think we should talk about consequences."

He sighs, curving his back until his chin rests on the edge of the table. "You always want to talk about consequences. It's one of your more disgusting habits." His next move is an aggressive advance of his queen, a blunder of blind arrogance and irritation. "Do your worst."

"Ta. I think I will." She takes her move, easing her knight into place. "Sherlock has our name, now. That changes things."

He straightens his back again, frowning down at the knight. "Your pet cabbie's fault, not mine." He touches the ridged crown of his queen, considering. "The name is nothing. He's no closer than he was before."

"You're underestimating him again."

He raises an eyebrow. "And you're gagging for him like a bitch in heat."

She folds her hands in front of her and gives him a cold, steady smile. "Hardly the only one, though, am I?"

Toby chooses that moment to leap onto the coffee table, his long tail twitching as he delicately topples two of Jim's pieces with a white-socked paw. Molly scritches him under the chin, smiling as a low purr rumbles through his chest.

"Good boy," she says softly. "Good cat."

The muscles of Jim's jaw clench. "Sister dearest, your walking autopsy-toy is in my face again."

"I think the phrase you're searching for is animal companion." She gently lifts Toby off the table and into her lap, but he wriggles out of her hands and slips under the table to sniff Jim's knee. "Look, he likes you."

"Well," Jim says, "I've always had a way with animals." He offers Toby a finger to smell, and the cat nudges it once before biting hard into the soft skin at the web. Jim curses, cradling his hand to his chest. "That little – fuck, I'm bleeding." Toby's pink tongue curls over his teeth, licking away blood, and Jim lunges for him.

Molly stops the blow, her fingers closing tight around the bones of his wrist. "No," she says, her voice perfectly even. "I don't think so."

Toby escapes down the dim corridor to her bedroom, tail swishing behind him; Molly doesn't relax her grip on Jim's arm. He looks at her, his mouth twisted in a moue of fury that spreads slowly into a smile. There's nothing like affection in his eyes. "Darling girl. You really should let go now."

"You're stronger," she says, because he is. "Make me."

He hesitates, and for the first time in more than twenty years she sees it, written as plainly on his pale, familiar face as the lines around his eyes and the curve of their mother's chin.

He's afraid of her.

Good, she thinks, and lets him go.

The front door buzzes; Jim hops to his feet, hands tucked too-casually into his trouser pockets. "That'll be Sebastian. He should have news for us."

"Gosh," she says, leaning back against the base of the sofa and folding her arms. "How exciting."

Jim buzzes him into the building. "Careful, Mol. Your bitter womanly disdain is showing."

She scowls. "He's a pig."

"He's a useful pig, and you know it." Jim leans against the doorframe, one ankle crossed nonchalantly over the other. "Someone has to handle the mundane side of things. Better a city boy with the imagination and moral resiliency of a cheese danish than you or me."

"I like mundane," Molly mutters, not entirely truthfully, still scowling as a man's footsteps (long stride, deliberately easy pace) echo in the hall outside her flat. Then the footsteps stop, and someone knocks a quick shave and a haircut on her front door.

"Moron," Jim says, almost affectionate, and undoes the locks.

"Bloody tsunami out there," Sebastian Wilkes says cheerily, shaking his umbrella out on her carpet. "Thought I might drown between the taxi and the front steps – it's positively pissing." He tosses his rain-soaked coat over the hat rack and smoothes the crisp lines of his suit. "You two look cozy. Downright domestic, I'd say. If I didn't know better."

Molly sighs, stretching her legs out under the coffee table and pulling a pink sofa pillow into her lap. "Hello, Sebastian. Tea's in the kitchen."

"Just the thing for it," he says, and grips Jim's hand in a brief, manly shake. He frowns. "Hold on, old boy. You're bleeding."

"Only a nip," Jim says, smiling. Showing teeth. "Mol's in a bit of a mood; I'd stay out of biting range if I were you."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sebastian says, giving Molly a wink before he squelches his way into the brightly-lit kitchen. As soon as his back is turned Molly sticks her finger down her throat, silently pretending to gag.

Charming, Jim mouths, and sits above her on the sofa, his knee pressed to her shoulder. Fingers brush through her hair, briefly tangling.

Sebastian returns from the kitchen, carrying a chipped tea mug with the words 'Pathologists Do It Over Your Dead Body' written along the side in neat block print. He eases into the red paisley armchair beside the sofa, attempting a casual sprawl; the loose spring beneath the cushion soon puts a stop to that.

"You have such unique taste in interior design," he says, edging forward in the old chair as he hides a wince. "Delightful, really."

"He means cheap," Jim says. The toe of his £900 leather shoe nudges her thigh. "In case you missed it."

Jim doesn't care much more for money than she does, but he often pretends to. People understand greed – they find it comforting. Obvious. Men like Sebastian are untroubled by violence, so long as it's done in the name of business; each death is marked as a necessary expenditure, accounted for and then forgotten. In the four years since Jim found and hired him, Sebastian has arranged the deaths of fifty-six people. He's well paid for it, and Molly's never seen him express anything like hesitation or regret.

Men like Jim adore men like Sebastian. They're so terribly convenient.

She pokes Jim hard in the ankle, and his foot jerks away. "So," she says, giving Sebastian a carefully patient smile, "you have news for us?"

"I do, though I doubt it'll come as much of a surprise, knowing you lot." Sebastian takes a sip of tea, hiding the wry twist of his mouth. "My old pal Sherlock Holmes has deciphered the Black Lotus' code, impaled their finest assassin with an ancient Chinese circus apparatus, and recovered an empress' trinket worth approximately nine million quid. General Shan, understandably put out by the whole business, has gone into hiding. She's expecting you to contact her in…" He glances at his watch. "Ten minutes. My sniper is already in place."

Molly goes still. When she speaks, her voice is perfectly steady. "The Black Lotus is my client, Sebastian. I wasn't aware you were involved, much less scheduling account terminations on my behalf."

Sebastian blanches. "I thought—"

She turns her head, fixing Jim with a cold look. "Brother mine, please tell me you didn't set Sherlock on one of our most profitable clients and then somehow neglect to mention it."

Jim shrugs. "You gave him a cab-driving serial killer – I figured it was my turn to wave something shiny in front of his nose and watch him scramble after." He pauses. "And technically Seb hired him, not me. So you should really be shouting at him."

Molly's fingers clench in the thin fabric of the pillow; a seam pops. "Shan is a client, and it's your fault her operation's been compromised. There are better ways to deal with this than assassination."

Jim gives her a dangerous, knowing grin. "Let me guess: some sort of sisterhood solidarity thing, is it? Not a lot of powerful women in the London underworld – do you two meet up on alternate Thursdays for mani-pedis and just-us-girls bikini waxes?"

Her breath hisses through her teeth. "Jim—"

"Do you go out for Appletinis after and talk about boys?"

She pushes herself to her feet, jostling the table and sending the chessboard into chaos. Her fists clench at her sides, but her voice is cool and even. "You know why I'm angry, and you know it has nothing to do with Shan, or the money, or Sherlock bloody Holmes. You did this without consulting me, Jim. You shut me out of it deliberately, and I want to know why."

Jim's grin flickers for a moment, exposing the void beneath. "And I, Molly dear, would like to know why you gave that cabbie your face and your name before you sent him out to play puzzle for your favourite detective." He tips his head to one side, politely curious. "While we're asking questions."

There's a silence. The sound of rain against the windows and cars in the street below.

Sebastian sits back, smoothing his silk tie with one hand. "Well. Holmes causes trouble wherever he goes, doesn't he? Freak hasn't changed a bit."

Jim stands, hands slipping into his pockets. He stares down at Sebastian, hollow-eyed. "Something to think about, old boy – if Sherlock Holmes is a freak, then what does that make me?"

Jim takes her laptop from the kitchen table and walks quietly to her bedroom, his footsteps soft against the carpet. He closes the door behind him, and the flat is silent again.

"Christ," Sebastian murmurs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. Molly reconsiders her long-held contempt for his sense of self-preservation – his fingers are trembling.

"He's fond of you," she says. "When he finally does kill you, he won't hire it out. He'll do it himself." He looks up at her, eyes wide, and she gives his hand a comforting pat. "More tea?"

General Shan's voice crackles from the other side of the bedroom door, distorted by cheap laptop speakers. Molly half-listens from the kitchen, rinsing out mugs of cold tea; when she shuts off the tap, she catches fragments of Shan's familiar, subdued speech. Exposure, she hears. Police involvement. Could not have anticipated.

Sherlock Holmes.

The bedroom door opens, and Jim leans out. "Phone your man, Seb. Our association with General Shan is at its end."

Sebastian pulls his mobile from his pocket, but he hesitates just before he lifts it to his ear. Hesitates, and looks to Molly.

She nods, and he punches the number three on his mobile. The sniper answers immediately. "Time to earn your money," Sebastian says, his voice even. Almost light. "Take the shot when you have it." He rings off, and Jim grins.

"I love it when a plan comes together." He blows Molly a kiss. "You took one for the team tonight, Mol. I'll make it up to you, I swear." He slips back into the bedroom, and she hears the gentle sounds of the keyboard as he types. Hears Shan say, I will not reveal your identity. You have my word.

"She thinks she's talking to me," Molly says quietly, to herself. "She thinks—"

The sniper's bullet shatters a window before finding its target. Molly knows both sounds well (breaking glass and the hiss of bullet through bone) and she flinches, before she can stop herself. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Sebastian do the same.

She turns on the tap again and holds a mug beneath the water, fingers stinging slightly with the heat. Jim steps up behind her, and his long hands bracket her hips. He hums a little, off-key – Only the Good Die Young, she thinks. Or maybe Uptown Girl. He's always had a weakness for Billy Joel, but it all sounds the same to her.

She sets the mug down in the sink. "How's your hand?"

He sighs into her hair. "Terrible. I might die."

"You might." She tugs his right hand from her waist and pulls it forward, under the tap. He rests his chin on her shoulder, watching as she gently washes the dried blood from the tooth marks between his fingers. "It's not deep," she says. "If you keep it clean, it won't take long to heal."

She feels his chest expand as he inhales, and the full press of his ribs against her spine. The heat of his heartbeat aligned with hers. "I have another game planned," he says, his voice soft in her ear. "My best one yet."

She swallows. "For Sherlock?"

"Who else?" He pulls away, and a chill slips into the space where he'd been.

She carries three fresh mugs of tea into the sitting room and sets them down beside the abandoned mess of the chessboard. Sebastian scoops up the black queen, tossing her once into the air. "Pity," he says. "Who was winning?"

Molly and Jim smile the same smile, hands folded carefully around the warmth of their mugs. "I was," they say, and together they take a drink.

34

Two days before the explosion in Baker Street (the explosion that begins the game) Molly knocks on the front door of 221b. Mrs. Hudson answers.

"Hello, love," she says, eyes bright and welcoming as she struggles to match face to name. "Mary, isn't it? Sherlock's little friend from the hospital?"

"Molly, actually, Mrs. Hudson. Molly Hooper." She holds up her red and white biohazard container. "I've come for the left hands Sherlock borrowed for callus and musculature analysis a few weeks ago. Is he here?"

"I'm afraid not, dear. Belarus, last I heard." Mrs. Hudson leans close, as if imparting a confidence. "For a case, you know. Murder."

"Anything interesting?"

She pulls back with a sigh. "Probably not. He'll be a terror when he comes home, mark my words. Dr. Watson said he was glad to see the back of him when he left, but you know how men are. Always pretending to feel more or less than they do." She breaks into a wide, sunny smile. "I can let you in though, love. Anything to get those fingers out of the ice box."

In the end, Mrs. Hudson just gives her the keys (bad day for my hip, dear – don't like to risk the stairs if there's no need) and Molly goes up to the flat alone. It's neater than she's ever seen it – Watson must have taken Sherlock's absence as a rare opportunity to clean, clever man – and a bit dull in its hazy afternoon silence. Resisting the temptation to browse through Sherlock's bookshelves, she makes short work of the remains in the freezer, dropping the fingers and other remnants of muscle and bone into biohazard bags and disinfecting everything they've touched. She itches to read his notes on the experiment (a study prompted, no doubt, by John Watson's own left-handedness and occasional ambidexterity – she's seen Sherlock watching) but she'd rather leave behind as little evidence of her visit as possible. Better chance of him forgetting she was ever here at all.

She closes the door and eases soundlessly down the stairs. Her lock picks are in her pocket, but with Mrs. Hudson's key ring she's inside 221c in a matter of moments, shutting the door smoothly behind her. She takes a photo of the empty flat with her mobile, sends it (As requested, you lazy arse - M), and slips on a fresh pair of medical gloves. Opens the biohazard container and looks inside.

Carl's trainers are a strange weight in her hands – lighter than they should be, as if the years passed have left them somehow fragile. She remembers the day he bought them, the day he finally wore them to school after saving his pocket money for months. She'd never seen him so happy.

I don't understand, she'd said, feeling lost. A little left behind. They're just shoes, aren't they?

Maybe, he'd said, and bent to kiss the tip of her nose. Her temple. But I think they must be more than that. I think most things are.

Most things are more than shoes? she'd asked, baffled, and he'd laughed, squeezed her hand and pulled her close.

Molly liked making him laugh.

She places the trainers carefully on the water-stained carpet, the toes pointing toward the door. They look a little absurd, really, an old pair of shoes alone in an empty, rotting room. Jim was right – Sherlock will love it.

She packs up her things and locks the door behind her. She can hear the television from behind the closed door of 221a, high, strident voices and meaningless noise, and when she knocks it goes suddenly silent. "Come in, dear!" Mrs. Hudson calls. "It's unlocked."

Mrs. Hudson's flat is warm and well-lit, and clusters of framed photos decorate every table, every wall. Ghostly faces smile from behind the glass, men and women with Mrs. Hudson's wide eyes and delicate chin. In a few she glimpses Mrs. Hudson herself, in her youth – dressed for a wedding, for her commencement, for a journey abroad. In a bathing costume and a man's heavy coat, standing on a lake dock and shielding her eyes against the sun. A long shadow touches her bare feet – a tall man's shadow, arms raised as he holds the camera.

The Mrs. Hudson of the present sits on her overstuffed sofa, Connie Prince muted on the telly. She looks up from the embroidery in her lap (a flowering tree, with a string of words half-stitched beneath) and winks. "Cup of tea, love? Just about to have one myself, so it's no trouble."

"No, thank you, Mrs. Hudson. I just wanted to return your keys." She drops them into the glass dish on the mantle of the fireplace, and another photo catches her eye – Mrs. Hudson in a banquet hall, sitting beside a tall, fair man in a well-cut suit, his arm loose around her shoulders. She smiles into the camera; his pale eyes are fixed on her.

"My Harry," Mrs. Hudson says, her voice light with affection. "Doesn't do him justice, but then he never was a man who liked having his picture taken. He preferred the other side of the camera."

"He was a photographer?"

"Oh no," Mrs. Hudson says, chuckling as she returns to the embroidery in her hands. "An enthusiastic amateur at best, bless him. Very enthusiastic, when the mood struck him."

"You must miss him."

"He was my husband," Mrs. Hudson says, and smiles down at her work.

Molly knows that this should be the end of the conversation, that she's expressed the appropriate amount of interest and sympathy and that it's time to change the subject or take her leave. Instead she says, "How did he die?"

Mrs. Hudson shakes her head, her easy smile undimmed; her needle slips neatly along the leaves of the tree, drawing a long line of red thread behind it. "Lethal injection, dear. About three years ago, now." She looks up. "In America, of course. He was rather famous at the time."

Molly stares at her. This, she thinks, is what happens when you leave Jim in charge of research. "Your husband was Harry Hudson, the Butcher of Orlando?"

Mrs. Hudson seems almost amused. "You've heard of him, then."

"I took a professional interest in the case," Molly says, which isn't a lie so much as a vastly misleading truth. "Anyone in my field would've. His victims—" She stops, remembering crime scene photos and pathologist's reports. The trial. "You gave evidence against him."

"I did." She sets her embroidery aside and shifts on the sofa cushion, turning to face Molly fully. "Do you want to ask me why?"

Molly stiffens, feeling oddly caught out. Exposed. "I know why," she says. "He killed seven people, and he would've killed more. You had no choice."

Mrs. Hudson watches her evenly, hands folded in her lap. "You make it sound simple, love. I think you know it wasn't." She pats a spot on the sofa beside her. "Sit. You'll give me a crick in the neck, making me stare up at you like that."

Molly sits, keeping to the edge of the cushion. "Mrs. Hudson—"

She smoothes her dress over her knees. "Most people assumed he beat me, you know. Not that there were any signs of it, mind you, but once they learnt what he'd done to the others…you can hardly blame them for jumping to conclusions. After all, sadistic serial murderers are rare, but men who enjoy giving their wives a smack—" She shrugs. "I never saw much point in correcting them."

Molly frowns. "He never hurt you, then."

"Never so much as raised his hand." Mrs. Hudson looks away, her lips pale and pressed thin. "Before the trial I told him that I'd hired Sherlock, that between what I knew and what Sherlock had found the case against him was all but decided. I told him I'd betrayed him." She meets Molly's eyes. "And he said, 'If anyone gets to murder me, darling, I'm glad it's you.'"

There's a silence. Connie Prince makes mute, grotesque faces on the telly, abusing a dishwater-blond young woman in a knit dress. Molly looks down at her lap. At her fingers curled into fists. "You still loved him."

Mrs. Hudson's hand covers hers, warm and soft with age. "Of course I did, dear. That's why I killed him."

Mrs. Hudson takes up her embroidery again, her thin-branched tree of green leaves and heavy blossoms the colour of blood. The saying stitched beneath is unfinished, and of seven tangled words Molly can read only three – heart, and home, and ours.

Her mobile buzzes in her pocket; she doesn't need to look to know it's him.

34

The night of the explosion in Baker Street, Molly wakes in the dark. Her bedroom is breathlessly cold; citylight shines pale from the open window, casting long, shifting shadows.

Jim sits silently on the edge of her bed, his face turned to the wall.

He's stripped down to his shirtsleeves, his collar creased and unkempt. She studies the stiff line of his shoulders in silence, and for a moment she considers simply closing her eyes and slipping back into sleep.

Instead she reaches a hand toward his, murmuring his name.

She's slow and half-drunk with cold, too slow to resist when he seizes her throat in a crushing grip and pins her hard to the mattress, his knees bracketing her hips like a vise. His free hand forces something cold and long and bitter into her open mouth; it slides past her teeth and she gags, twisting her fingers in his shirt, struggling against him until she hears the click of the safety. Feels the gun jerk against the roof of her mouth.

She goes still, and in the light of the window she sees fear like a fever behind his eyes.

The hard grip of his fingers slides down her neck, gentling to a caress that eases low on her chest, over the furious beat of her heart. "I'll do it," he says, his voice a warm, wavering breath against her cheek. "You think I won't. You think you're different to the others, special, but you're only bone, Mol. Bone and muscle and blood, just like the rest of them. You think I need you, but I don't." The gun twitches against her tongue, and the warm weight of his body settles over hers, a seal of heat over her belly and breasts. "I'm not like him. You can't hurt me."

She chokes on the sour burn of adrenaline at the back of her throat, adrenaline and helpless fury and the slick, acrid taste of clean metal. His knee slips between hers, and she feels him hard against her hip. Her fingers fist in the sheets, her heartbeat echoing like a pulse between her thighs.

He bends to her, his lips brushing her hair. "He didn't kill her, Molly. She killed herself, and I know because she made me watch. Sat me down at the kitchen table with a plate of chocolate biscuits and told me to be good while she held a semi-automatic to her temple and pulled the trigger." He watches her, eyes bright in the darkness. "Do you want to know what her last words were?"

She touches his side – a slow pressure of her palm. Yes.

"She said, 'Watch carefully, Jamie my love. This is how you murder a man like your father.'"

He's crushing her, grinding the air from her lungs with his weight and his unflinching stare and the twitching, insistent heat of his cock, and in that moment she is coldly certain she'd prefer the bullet to this slow suffocation. This paralysis. She covers his hand with hers and slips her finger over the trigger, tensed to pull.

Jim stops breathing, caught in a sudden, perfect stillness. "You wouldn't."

I am my mother's daughter, she thinks, and proves him wrong.

He wrenches the gun from her awkward-angled grip at the first twitch of her finger, and the muzzle slices open the inside of her cheek as it jerks from her mouth. The gun hits the floor, skidding across the carpet.

Jim kneels over her, wide-eyed and breathing hard. She takes his hand and spits a bloody shard of white molar into his palm. "Crap," she says, the word harsh at the back of her throat. "Now I'll have to go to the dentist."

"You almost shot yourself," Jim hisses, his fingers clenching around a fistful of blood and spit. "Have you completely lost your mind?"

"The irony," Molly says, rolling her tongue over her broken tooth. "It'll hit you in minute. Just let it come." Her hands are trembling – strange little tremors that run up and down the muscles of her arms like hammers playing on piano wire. Like someone else is striking the keys. Jim's shaking too, and somehow that's hilarious – the best part of a joke she still can't quite follow. She butts her forehead up against his and for a moment they shake together, skin against skin. "I always thought you'd kill me," she says. "I never thought you'd use a gun."

He turns away, hiding his face as he slips off the bed and closes the window with a sharp snick. "I wasn't going to kill you."

"No," she says, "and I never let you win at chess."

He laughs, scattershot and pitched painfully high, and looks out the window, down at the street below. His palms press pale against the glass. "I don't know how I'd live without you, Mol," he says, to the dark. "I don't know how I'd breathe."

"I think you'd learn," she says, and reaches for his hand. She kisses him once, close-mouthed and slow and sour with blood, and they sit together until the sun rises – fingers intertwined, each simply breathing in the other's silence.

He dies five days later.

34

Waiting is the worst part.

She sits alone in the girls' toilet, perched on the counter between two paper-clogged sinks. Her feet swing in the empty air between the counter and the blue-tiled floor, and she imagines she can feel a slight twinge in her right leg, just above the knee. A phantom pain from an injury long healed, still written on the bone. The mirror is cool at her back, the lights dim, and she closes her eyes. Listens and waits.

A long corridor away from the pool, and still the air stinks of chlorine. She'd like to hate Sherlock for choosing this place; she'd like to hate him for anything at all.

She doesn't.

The door creaks open, and Jim slips inside. He eases between her knees, leans in with his palms flat on the counter, framing her hips. Looks up into her face with pupils blown dark and wide. "Molly," he says, and she can't hide the delicate tendril of want that coils through her at the sound, twining and green and rooted deep. She loops her arms around his neck and falls into him, off the counter and into his arms. He laughs into her hair, pulling her close until she can feel his heart like a hollow beat against her chest.

"Stupid boy," she says, swallowing hard around the jumping pulse in her throat. "You knew he'd bring the gun. He could've killed you."

"He couldn't have. Not without splattering his dear Dr. Watson red across the walls." He pulls back and cups her cheek in one hand. "It was glorious, Mol. I wish you could've seen it."

His hands are clean, she thinks, unable to stop the realisation before it reaches her eyes. If Sherlock were dead, he would've wanted to touch – I'd see it on his hands. He'd want me to.

Jim sees the relief in her face. Feels the quick hitch of her breath.

His grin turns skeletal, wicked and empty and wide, and his fingers clench around her chin. "It was a very dramatic little encounter, if I do say so myself. Very well staged, and excellently cast. Sherlock performed his role admirably enough, but I'd say the daring Dr. Watson was our surprise breakout star. Such heroics – it was positively inspiring." His thumb brushes the lower curve of her lip. "I'd plans for a sequel, but now I find myself tempted by a big finale. Better to end a story like this with a bang, don't you think?"

She eases his hand away from her face. "This game is over, Jim. Let him go."

"You know I can't." He steps close and bends to her, drawing her in until his forehead rests hard against hers, a sweet, startling pressure she feels like an ache between vertebra, an electric charge along her spine. "It has to be done," he says, his breath warm at her lips. "He's too close. He sees too much."

"He doesn't see me." She leans into him, and he takes her weight. Holds her steady and still. "You do."

"We all have our weaknesses," he says, and leaves her standing alone in the girls' toilet, her hands empty at her sides. The door swings closed behind him.

She moves quickly after that. Kicks off her shoes and runs silently for the nearest stairwell, panting a little as she climbs past the upper level risers above the pool and into a shadowed alcove in the high curve of the ceiling.

"Seems we're improvising a second act," Sebastian says from his claustrophobic crouch behind one of his snipers. He edges closer to the wall and she ducks down beside him, her toes slick on the dusty floor. "I don't suppose you had anything to do with this?"

Jim confronts Sherlock far below. Their faces are luminous in the rippling light of the pool, and Jim spreads his arms wide as he laughs, arrogant and beautiful and mad. "A bit," she says. "He thinks I'm in love with Sherlock."

Sebastian turns, his eyebrows raised. "Aren't you?"

Sherlock's gun is pointed at Jim's chest, a clean shot to his heart, but as Molly watches he lowers his arm, aiming for the plastic explosives between them.

Jim smiles.

Molly isn't in love with Sherlock Holmes. She never has been. "When you have the shot," she says, and the sniper nods once. He fires.

The first bullet takes Jim in the right leg, just above the knee. He falls hard onto tile and clutches at the wound, his fingers slick with blood, his scream as brutal as it is brief. He lifts his head, teeth bared in pain, and looks up into the shadows. She stands, a slim shape in the dark, and wonders if he can see her. She hopes he can.

"Again," she says, and the next shot shatters the bones of Jim's shoulder.

John Watson staggers to his feet, his doctor's instinct too powerful to contain, but Sherlock stops him, holds him back with the simple pressure of his arm. They stand together, watching as Jim pushes himself up on one unsteady elbow. As his blood pools dark beneath him, spilling over tile until it reaches the place where they pulled Carl's corpse from the water twenty-one years before.

Even through the distance and the darkness, her brother's eyes meet hers. She reads the shape of his lips. "Darling girl," he says, and the sniper's final shot punches a neat hole in the space between his eyes.

The body slumps to the floor. There's a silence.

"My shift at the hospital starts in an hour," Molly says, and Sebastian and the black-masked sniper stare up at her, their eyes wide and white in the dark. "I should go."

"Molly—" Sebastian says, and there's something odd in his voice, some tone or tenor she is suddenly unable to interpret or define. She looks down at him, and he doesn't say any more.

She drops quietly down from the alcove, knowing Sherlock's keen eyes will catch the movement. Let him, she thinks. He won't reach me in time. Before she disappears down the stairwell, she looks back at the body. Meets its empty, open stare.

She never thought it'd feel like winning.

It does, a little.

34

It's just after dawn when they bring the body into Barts morgue.

The bag is the type they always use when they send a corpse from a crime scene – black, heavy, sterile. She stands beside the autopsy table, gloveless, and touches one finger to the tag on the zip. The handwriting is messy and familiar, the careless scrawl of some forensic tech she's never met. Unidentified Male, it says. Met. #165, GSW.

When Sherlock arrives twenty minutes later, she's still standing beside the table, the bag unopened. Her hands are bare and empty at her sides.

"You had him sent to me." She tries to sound as if she's been crying, but her voice is steady. Toneless. "A bit insensitive, even for you."

Sherlock slips off his gloves and tucks them into the pockets of his coat. He hasn't slept in days, but he looks poised, almost serene; she only sees his exhaustion in the bruises beneath his eyes. "On the contrary," he says. "I thought you would appreciate the gesture."

He steps up to the other side of the table, the bag between them. He reads the tag. Unidentified Male. Met. #165.

"I gave them his name," he says. He looks up. "There's no such person, of course."

She can see the shape of a face beneath the thick fabric of the bag. The shadow of a nose and chin. "Of course," she says.

Sherlock's eyes are on her face; she can feel him watching. He should be looking at the bag. At the body. He isn't.

"Would you like me to open it?" he says.

His voice is low, patient, laced with an alien yet unmistakable kindness. He has never been kind to her before; it's infuriating. "No," she says, and reaches for the zip.

She doesn't know how Sherlock expects her react, doesn't know how to imitate the appropriate level of grief or horror. The body is still dressed, its suit ripped apart at the shoulder and the knee, fabric tacky with drying blood. The face is blue-pale – the high, perfect forehead marred by the entrance wound of a single bullet.

When she looks away from the corpse Sherlock is standing at her shoulder, a dark shape at the edge of her vision, looming close. His gaze draws hers, and their eyes meet.

The electric intensity of his focus, the hunger of it, the light like joy in his eyes – it would look like love on another man's face. Molly swallows, the taste of bile sharp at the back of her throat. "How long have you known?"

"An hour. Maybe a little less." He pulls a manila file folder from inside his coat. "After John and I left the pool, I made some inquiries. Lestrade has an old friend in Dublin's organized crime division. He was kind enough to send us this."

He takes a piece of paper from inside the file – a photograph, black and white and blurred by the ink of a cheap office fax machine. Still, she can see their faces – a boy and a girl, sitting together on a narrow staircase, knee to knobby knee. The girl's head rests on the boy's shoulder; she stares into the camera lens, her eyes narrowed against the flash. The boy looks at her.

Beneath the photograph someone has written, February 1988. Children of Professor and Elizabeth McKean, at the scene of their mother's suicide.

She takes the photo; he lets her, his gaze half-lidded and intent. "Cartoonish as your brother's behaviour was, it gave me more than enough data to begin an investigation. His accent led me to Dublin, obvious, and a casual but telling mention of his father suggested that he was unconsciously mimicking a parent or mentor with similarly violent habits. I simply asked for a list of powerful men in Dublin's underworld with sons born in the mid-seventies."

"James McKean never existed," Molly says, her eyes still fixed on the photo. On the pale blur of their faces. "You won't find any record of him."

"Nothing official, no. But no one can be erased completely." He takes the paper back, slips it into the file folder. "Lestrade's friend remembered you – both of you. He took that photo twenty-two years ago, and he's kept it in his personal collection ever since." He pulls a second piece of paper from the file. "He also had this."

Sherlock gives her a letter written in her mother's handwriting. Molly takes it, and the flimsy facsimile paper quivers in her hand.

Molly, it says,

I do not for a moment imagine that you will ever read this. If your father or brother find it first, they will certainly destroy it; if it is found during the police raid, the Garda will confiscate it as evidence – as a confession. Which, in truth, I suppose it is.

It is not guilt that impels me to confess, of course, as I have never indulged in that particular weakness of intellect, but I do feel a need to unburden myself – to speak honestly of my life before I bring about its end. I have lied out of necessity since I was a child, but I have never enjoyed it. I learnt early that the world was an unforgiving place for a mind like my own, and so I hid myself from it. I believed for a long time that I was alone.

Your father saw through me from the first. I could not hide from him – nor, in my youth and thoughtless innocence, did I want to. He knew me for what I was, but I never saw fear or revulsion in his eyes when he looked at me. He never thought me somehow 'less' because I lacked those sensibilities – those weaknesses – to which mankind clings with such blind sentimentality. I thought he was like me, and by the time I learnt that those same weaknesses spread through him like rot, it was too late. My life had been bound to his.

I could have killed him, of course. He almost certainly would have let me; even if he'd resisted, I can be quite resourceful in that area when the mood takes me. But strong emotion can act as a powerful paralytic, and my hatred for your father is stronger than any emotion I've ever known. Years later it baffles and overwhelms me still, sustaining me through an endless parade of wasted days spent without hope of challenge or occupation. For him I have lived a life unworthy of me, and I intend for his punishment to mirror his crime.

Your father loves you, little one – loves you more than the power he will kill for, or the silent strings of numbers he worships like a god. You are his heart, and if I were to do as I wished – if I sliced you open as he watched, gutted you like an animal and let you fade before his eyes – then my terrible hatred would find its satisfaction, and I would have my peace.

But I cannot. Your father is weak, but he has given me a son with a mind in true complicity with my own. I have taught James what I can, and burnt away those thoughts and impulses that would leave him vulnerable to the corrupting influence of smaller minds. He is the best I can make him, and still he needs you. I will not leave him alone.

So you and my boy will live, Molly, without me and without your father. He will lose a beloved wife, two precious children, and whatever petty amount of power he has amassed – his pitiful hill of a kingdom. He will lose everything in one night, in the time it takes the sun to rise. That will have to be satisfaction enough.

Take care of your brother. He is all I leave behind.

Mum

Molly lowers the letter and sees her brother's face. The grey stretch of skin over his skull and the deep stillness beneath. Someone has closed his eyes (John Watson – short, kind fingers and respectful silence) and she has a sudden, consuming urge to touch the delicate skin of his eyelids. To slip her fingers past colourless lips and trace the ridges of his teeth.
She can look inside, now. There's nothing to stop her.

The sound of her blood rises like a roar in her ears, like white water and the piercing hum of the florescent mortuary lights. She chokes, struggling for breath in a suddenly airless world, and when her vision clears she's on her knees on the cold, polished floor, her hands braced against the steel base of the autopsy table. Sherlock crouches beside her, close enough to touch. Watching her with wide, unreadable eyes.

"The sniper was acting under your orders," he says. "You're responsible for your own brother's death."

The band of pain constricting her chest tightens, but she's breathing again. She holds her hand to her throat and feels the shudder of muscle beneath her palm. The bird flutter of her pulse. "Yes," she says. She meets pale eyes and feels their pull. "I bet you want to know why."

Slowly, he takes each of her hands in his. Long fingers circle her wrists, curling around the bone. "Molly McKean," he says. "I should have remembered you."

"Yes," she says. "You should have."

His fingertips settle over her pulse, calluses rough against the flushed skin at the inside of her wrist. She can see him counting, calculating beats per minute. Establishing a baseline, her heartbeat at rest. Imprecise, she thinks. It will corrupt his data. He must read her reaction in her face; his grip tightens, not quite hard enough to bruise. "Did you poison Carl Powers?"

"You know I didn't."

His eyes narrow. "The bombs were his – you have no interest in that sort of spectacle, and you're too rational to risk so much for so little. The cabbie?"

"Mine." She leans into him, bracing her weight against his hands. "You're asking the wrong questions. You do that, you know. You always have."

A flicker of irritation, quickly swallowed by the tidal pull of his curiosity. He drinks in the sight of her, the unwashed sheen of her hair and breathless flush of her sunless skin. She must look almost beautiful to him, now – a puzzle yet to be solved. Something luminous in the dark. "You most likely saved John's life tonight. John's life, and mine." His thumb brushes the lines of her palm. "Why?"

The cut in the inside of her cheek stings, half-healed and still tasting of blood. She feels the gun against the roof of her mouth, sometimes. The burn of it at the back of her throat. "Watson wasn't meant to be the final hostage, not originally. It was meant to be me, strapped in fake explosives." She licks her lips. "Do you know why?"

He nods. "He wanted to see how I'd react if he threatened someone I knew. Someone who cared for me, but for whom I felt no particular emotional attachment. He thought I'd choose the game over you. He thought I'd let you die, and he wanted you to see that." He goes quiet, searching her face. "Why did he change the plan?"

She gives him a small, brittle smile. "Because he found your weakness, and he decided to free you from it. I think he thought he was being kind."

Sherlock swallows; she watches as his throat works, blue-pale and vulnerable above his collar. "Are we like him, do you think?"

She slips her fingers inside his sleeves, around his wrists. Feels tendon and muscle and bone as he leans into her, her equal and opposite. Weight against steadying weight. "Not yet," she says. It doesn't feel like a lie.

They separate and stand. Her legs buckle a little as she straightens; she doesn't want him to catch her, and he doesn't try. She leans against the autopsy table and looks down into Jim's bloodless face. The bag is still open beneath him. His hands are wrapped in plastic, secured at the wrists with two pink rubber bands. A voice recorder and a tray of glinting stainless steel tools wait on the table behind her.

She's always wanted to see his heart. To hold it in her hands.

Sherlock stands at her shoulder. "Would you like me to stay?"

She nods once, and he strips off his heavy winter coat. His suit jacket. He walks to the other side of the table, rolling his shirtsleeves to his elbows. Together they ease the bag from under Jim's body. Sherlock sets it aside, and Molly tugs on a pair of medical gloves. They look at each other, Jim between them.

"When we're done here," Sherlock says, "I'll give you twelve hours. When those twelve hours are up, I'm telling the police everything I know."

"And they'll tell you that even consulting detectives need some sort of evidence to get a conviction."

The corner of his mouth quirks in something like a smile. "I suppose I'll just have to take on the case myself, then."

"I suppose you will." She lifts her chin. "Make it four hours. I wouldn't want to start with an unfair advantage."

"Four hours is absurd. Six."

"Five."

The quirk of lips spreads into a grin. It fits awkwardly on his long, fine-boned face, genuine and sharp. "Five it is." He snaps on a pair of gloves. "I hope you're as clever as you think you are, Ms. Moriarty. I don't intend to hold back."

"Relieved to hear it, Mr. Holmes. Neither do I." She reaches behind her and hits the record button on the voice recorder. "Barts morgue, 7th April, 2010. Forensic autopsy of Unidentified Caucasian Male, Metropolitan Police referral number one-six-five. Preliminary examination suggests death due to cerebral laceration from a single penetrating gunshot wound to the forehead."

She touches her fingertips to the round, red-rimmed hole between her brother's eyes. Learns the shape of the wound through the second skin of her glove. Her other hand slips into his trouser pocket and finds a single piece of brown paper, tightly folded and worn at the edges with age. Moriarty, it says, again and again, a cipher written in a child's hand. An invocation. She drops it into the breast pocket of her lab coat, carrying it over her heart.

She inhales deeply through her nose. Her lungs expand and contract. She breathes.

"All right," she says. "Let's begin."