So this is just a little continuation of Curious Case (if you haven't read it, it doesn't matter too much, it just would help to explain why he is suddenly OOC) cause I couldn't let go of the story completely, but couldn't drag Curious Case out down a different alley way. Thanks for reading!

Torture.

Pain lanced through his abdomen, fire circling his head as he thrashed against invisible bonds, straining against non-existent restraints.

Her voice called to him.

He whimpered in his sleep, hands reaching for the comfort of her slight frame in his arms, landing on a plump, healthy body in the bed where she had lain.

He woke up.

The acute pain of loss stabbed through his heart as he remembered she was gone.

The soft, warm body beside him was not the body of the woman he loved. No, she was laying cold in a box, decomposing at a steady rate, maggots almost certainly having had eaten what little flesh was left on her.

The woman beside him stirred, interrupting his mournful thoughts.

"You know, if you'd let her, she'd be good for you." Her soft voice teased him, her big dark eyes, that the woman who lay beside him's eyes so resembled, twinkling at him mirthfully as she smiled.

She was beautiful.

She stood in the corner of the darkened room.

Clothed in her usual lab coat, hair pulled back severely into her ponytail again, he feasted on the sight of her even as he berated himself for indulging in such weakness.

His entire body yearned for her.

He carefully escaped the bedroom, making his way to the bathroom to splash some cold water onto his face, to wake him up from this waking nightmare.

She called out to him as he went, her ghostly form following him silently, eerily, a soft glow seeming to envelop her as she moved gracefully. Far more gracefully than she ever had in life.

"Sherlock, please, don't push me away. You know that your mind palace has created me for a reason." Her voice seemed loud in the echoing chambers of his mind, for he knew that only he could hear her.

Only he could ever hear her.

"I can't. You can't keep being here..." His voice, low and hurting, broke the silence that pressed upon him, the self imposed silence that he enforced unless alone or on a case. The pain he had kept trapped inside for months leaked into his voice, finally finding a weak point in his mental defences and pouring out in a torrential stream of hurt, loneliness, loss and abandonment.

He wished she was there.

He wished more than anything to be with her.

Death seemed almost a pleasant concept now, an end to the monotony of his day to day life, something to make his pitiful existence mean something.

They'd say he died of a broken heart.

They'd be right.

He had considered drugs, to numb the constant, aching pain of her loss, but she had come to him, in his palace, slapping him like she had so many months ago. He hadn't touched the drugs.

The pain served as a reminder, kept his mind sharp and focussed. Cases took a quarter of the time now, even the eights or nines.

He wished he could have told her that he loves her.

I know you do, silly. I wouldn't want you rushing off on a bloody suicide mission though!

She rested her hand on his shoulder intangibly, so he almost thought he would feel her soft warmth seep into him, but all around him swirled instead the cold night breeze that signalled his despairing solitude.

"I don't want to live like this. Everything is both sharp and dull, painful and coma inducing, I feel as though I am already dead. I need you, Molly!" He choked back a small sob, forcing his composure to return.

Small, feminine hands landed on his shoulders, rubbing circles in a bid to be soothing. He stiffened instantly. Forced a smile onto his face and tried to be softer, to hide the pain.

"Go back to sleep, Janine. I have a case that's puzzling me, so I'd only keep you awake if I went back to bed." He shrugged her hands off, looking apologetic in the face of her pout and shooing her out of the room.

That wasn't very nice, Sherlock. She only wanted to comfort you.

She looked at him, a sad, disapproving smile quirking the corners of her mouth up, arms crossed over her chest.

"I don't want her." He collapsed into his armchair, leg sprawled across one arm.

No, but you need her. Stop moping and get this done, for John's sake, for Mycroft's, for Britain's. Hell, do it in my memory. Just please stop this, Sherlock. Stop this now. I need you to focus.

She slapped him. He almost convinced himself that he had felt a ghostly hand skim his face gently before reason blocked the sentimental reaction and forced his mind back onto the case.

Magnussen. Slimy, disgusting, cruel in the same way as a child bullies others, or burns ants with his magnifying glass.

He turned Sherlock's stomach.

"Sherl, won't you come to bed? It's cold without you." He stiffened at her pet name for him, loathing her whilst committing himself to his role as the doting boy friend.

"Of course. I was just thinking. I'll be right along now." He made no effort to leave the chair or even look at her, searching his mind palace for something elusive that had been hovering on the periphery of his consciousness for a number of days. Every time he had been close to letting it solidify, something had interrup-

"Sherl? Come one, you've barely slept. Let's go to bed."

She pulled him up roughly, pinching his bum as she pushed him out of the room.

She winked at him, dissipating like smoke on the wind, leaving him again with a sense of longing, emptiness and abandonment.

He slept fitfully for the remainder of the night, tormented by scenes of Molly, bound and gagged, struggling against Moran and Moriarty, Molly crying as she was burned repeatedly, himself crying helplessly as he watched from the sides, unable to help her in any way.

So yeah I really would advise anyone who hasn't read The Curious Case of Miss Molly Hooper to read it, it will make this make more sense, since I will be referring back to it periodically.