12. "I'm Glad You're Here With Me."

"If you say you're sorry one more time, so help me, I'll kill you."

"You don't mean that," I spat, after spitting blood on the floor.

Mandy and I were strapped to chairs, side-by-side. We were both taught a lesson, while Moriarty watched. Mandy's old cuts from Sebastian were reopened, fresh and bloody. My marks were all over both arms and my stomach. All bled. None were deep to cause fatal bleeding. They were just deep enough to cause pain.

"I told him because I thought it'd keep you safe!" I hissed to her.

"How is this safe?!" she screeched hysterically. "We still got punished! Whatever you're trying to do, it's not working, Rachel! We need a different plan!"

"What other is there? If we go against him..."

"We're already going against him!"

"We're pushing back very little."

"We're pushing back just enough to get our asses handed to us!" She shook her sweaty head. "I wish I'd never met you."

I looked at her in horror. "You don't mean that either."

"Let's see," she started, "if I hadn't met you, we wouldn't be in this damn mess! I could be with Taylor back in Maryland! I wouldn't be part of this mess that's really your mess!"

"Oh, so this is my fault?" I grunted. "You chose to be friends with me!"

"If you'd known this would come back to bite you, you should've just pushed me away! I would've thanked you for it eventually!"

"Stop it!" I shouted, stomping my feet. A fresh wave of pain shot up my spine. "He wants us to tear each other apart. He wants us to be tortured."

"Do you know what torture is, Rachel?" Mandy spat. "Because I don't think that you do."

I cackled. "This man held me against my will the first time I came to London. And that was after he tried to kill me. He could have, but he didn't. He made me put explosives on people. He made me a puppet of his to bend to his will. He walked back into my life just as quickly as he left it. He has made me paranoid from the moment I found out what ugliness he bared. I always have to watch my back because of him. Even in death, he made me paranoid!

"You may have been tortured physically, Amanda, but nothing beats having to watch your back when you don't have to. The man found a small spot in my brain and hasn't left." I squinted my eyes, feeling the hot tears.

Mandy said nothing for the longest time, and I was catching my breath from the long rant that I just gave.

"I-I'm sorry, immensely, that you feel I'm the reason you're being put through this hell," I stammered. "I know nothing that I say can reverse this, but you're my best friend, Amanda, and I love you. I would never want to see you get hurt, whether it be by someone else or me." I choked out a sob. "I swear to you, if I could make things different, I would."

Mandy shook her head. "You said that he didn't break you, but I think he did. It's just a crack, and it's going to grow. But we can fight back. We need to take a stand."

"Mandy, the point of surviving is to not die. I don't want to die. I know you don't. We've both got bright futures ahead."

"We've got to be smarter about how we're surviving."

I hung my head. "Mandy?"

"Yeah?"

"As bad as this is gonna sound, I'm glad you're here with me. There's no other person I'd rather suffer with than you."

"Not even Bayley?"

"You're my best friend, he's my fiancé."

Mandy looked towards the door. "So, when do you think they'll let us lick our wounds?"

"I'm hoping soon. I'm starving." I wiggled. "And I need a good shower."

"Same here." She threw her head back. "Do you think he'll get Sebastian to go after Irene, now that he knows?"

"I have a bad feeling that he will." I sighed. "I hope she's prepared to outrun an assassin. He seems like one tough bastard."

"Believe me, he is. I personally think he went soft on me the first time he tortured me." She chuckled darkly. "I can't believe I said that so nonchalantly."

"Welcome to my world."

* * *

"What was Moriarty saying, about Sherlock and you?" Mandy asked me later.

We were eventually released from the torture room. Both sore and beat up, we'd limped out and stripped, showered, and took it easy and walked on glass for the rest of the evening. We didn't bother to eat despite our stomachs growling. We felt nauseous.

"Just something to stir shit up," I murmured. We were both in the library of the mansion. "He likes to do that, screw with people's minds. Seems to be a talent of his."

"Is that how he got to you the first time?"

I swallowed. "Yeah. He put on a very convincing act, made me believe I loved him. I loved an act, Mandy. God, I was so stupid." I smacked my forehead lightly. "And then Bayley was the person who shot me in London on Moriarty's order! I have crap luck with men, don't I?"

"Not necessarily. You found a good guy in Bayley. Not the most honest of men, but still an overall good guy." She offered me a timid smile. "In all of this craziness, you managed to find someone."

"It's because of this craziness that I did, in a way," I thought out loud. I looked around the room. "Moriarty said he had ears everywhere." I sniffed. "It drives him nuts to hear about Bayley."

"I don't think talking about your fiancé will give you an edge over him, Rachel. That's not playing a mind game, that's just being annoying."

"It was a thought. Besides, who knows? He could've been bluffing about the 'ears everywhere' thing."

"I guess we'll never know." Mandy pursed her lips. "Do you think we're allowed in the kitchen?"

"Guess we'll find out."

Mandy and I made our way to the kitchen. Surprisingly, we walked in without meeting any sort of force against us. We scrounged through the fridge and the drawers. Most of the cutlery was dull, so there was no chance of using it as weaponry.

Eating in this kitchen felt almost normal, despite feeling like crap and looking like cutting boards. We both ate our food slowly, looking towards the entranceway, waiting for Moriarty to pop up and intrude on us. We were left alone.

"I guess there could be worse things," Mandy said, looking at her cuts with interest. "I could not have a tongue."

"Don't remind him. He might try and cut it out still," I told her worriedly. I ate the crust of my sandwich. Feeling a little better, I threw away the paper plate into the trashcan. "I say we make the night easy on ourselves and try and sleep."

"Sounds like a plan."

I took my slow time up the steps to the upper level of the mansion. I found my room before shutting the door and locking it. So far, I'd had no intrusions. There was no other way besides the door to get inside here, being the windows were barred, like they all were in this place.

I almost forgot my engagement ring wasn't on my finger when I went to mess with it. I sighed deeply. Irene, I hope you helped them try and find us. We can survive, but we're not sure how much longer. We don't know what kind of game he's playing out there, but he's playing a rather...tame one in here.

A tame game was never a good sign.