Epilogue

            I wanted to be anywhere but here right now. I would prefer death over this if it meant I could escape it all.

I had never made it to serving my sentence in jail. Well, I sort of had. I served very little of it. I was broken out of jail. Normally, many prisoners would consider it a good thing. I mean, it was a thing that rarely happened. To have it bestowed upon you would be a gift.

 I would have been ecstatic about being free from that barred hell had I been taken by anyone else but those two. I had tried to escape them too, wanted to lock myself back in my cell, but I didn’t get to. It was just the two of them who really went in to retrieve me; they had a few helpers to distract authority while they snuck in for me.

It’d been months since my abduction. I wouldn’t be surprised if police gave up and deemed me dead. I wondered if the news reached Spencer and if she started another search party for me like the last time I had disappeared on her. I would appreciate her efforts, but they wouldn’t be effective. If the police couldn’t find me, there was no way Spence would.

I was a lost cause, hidden from the world with no way to get out. I was trapped; I didn’t realize how long I really had been until now.

 Now I knew how John Watson felt while Logan was putting him through hell. I was in his shoes right now, barely alive. I was weak, tired, dehydrated, hungry, and I reeked. Who would have guessed that Logan would have found him of all people? I’d never known he had existed, Jim had never mentioned a word of him.

            When I’d been introduced to him, it hadn’t clicked with me right away. My visitor in the hospital hadn’t been something out of my head, he had been real. It had turned out to be him, not the person I’d thought it was.

 He also got me thinking, as time went on: had they screwed with my head? Had one been with me the entire time, or had they constantly switched off without me realizing? True, he’d said that he didn’t know me and had never seen me face-to-face before, but he could easily be a good liar like his twin, so I doubted him on it. To make things worse, the first time I met him, I found out their names were very identical. I wondered if their parents were that insane or stupid to name the pair that or the twins decided to do that on their own.

            I shivered, craving warmth. I craved a lot of things right now, but they were mere fantasies. Funny how daily things for some could become luxuries for others. I’d never fallen so far into hell in all of my life. I blamed myself for it, I started digging my grave. I didn’t expect to dig so deep, though.

            “It’s time again, Raine,” Logan sang lowly. I groaned, curling into a tight ball on the cold floor. I should have been used to it by now, but I wasn’t. I never would be. “Come on, you know the routine.”

            “J-just kill me,” I whimpered. “I-I’ve been asking for d-days now.”

            “Sorry. I would oblige, but he won’t let me. He wants you just barely alive.” He picked my head up by my hair. I gave a pathetic yelp.

            “Let me guess, the only w-way I’ll get my wish is i-if he kills me,” I muttered.

            “I think he’ll end your misery soon, my dear. He admits nothing exciting is happening. Apparently torturing you is becoming boring and redundant for him.”

            “Tell him to change things up then if he feels that way. He won’t hesitate to get dirty.”

            I flinched as a knife blade flicked across my cheek. It was adding another mark to the many others on my face. “Don’t tempt him, because you know he’ll come in. He’ll go mad with it, you won’t survive him.”

            “It’s not a goal of mine to beat this,” I panted. “Unless you’re deaf, I’ve wanted to die.” I coughed up a little bit of blood. I spat it on Logan’s shoes. “I can see why Jim liked you; you didn’t give in to your victim’s wishes. I bet that’s why James likes you, why you’re with him.” That was the only way to keep my twins straight: Jim had been the one to use me and dropped me when he knew I was something he couldn’t afford to have, and James was the only remaining Moriarty who was slightly darker than his brother.

            “You forget the fact that I worked with his brother.” A slice into my forearm.

“Cut me anymore and you might as well butcher me.”

“Don’t tempt me.” A thin slice across my collarbone.

“Bastard.”

“I told you I’d get you in the end, Raine. Did you think I was bluffing?”

“A man like you, bluff?” I scoffed, hacking again.

“No matter how many times I stick this into you, I get a new rush every time.” A creepy smile played on Logan’s face. “You could be up in my list of favorite victims, Raine. You’re definitely more fun than my past few, they were sobbing messes. It’s hard to choose an ultimate favorite, because none of them really stand out. You all do the same: beg for mercy, cry, try and fight back. I can admit you’re one of my longest lasting victims, but then again, that’s only because of James. With the exception of John Watson and yourself for the moment, you’ve all ended up dead at my hand. You might not, though, if he comes in here.”

            “Let him, then,” I challenged feebly. “Let him come in and finish me off. It’d make my day!”

            “I guess I’ve come to make it, then,” said the all too familiar Irish voice.

            Logan backed away from me just as James came into the room. His nose wrinkled, like it did every time since this place started to get a foul smell. All of it was from me. A large part was my body; the rest was my blood along the walls and the floors. For someone who looked like a clean man, Logan sure didn’t clean his torture chambers.

            “You can stay if you like,” James told Logan. “I don’t mind spectators; it makes the experience more enjoyable that way. It won’t take long, though.”

            “I’ll hang around. What else do I have to do?”

            “Select your next victim?” I snapped.

            James picked me up by my throat. I didn’t bother to fight him on it, I’d tried many times before and the result was always the same: a head smacked into a wall. It was times like this where I wanted a smack to the head. Maybe it could make me forget all that I was going through right now.

            “Too bad Logan didn’t let me have you for a bit before he went to work. I could have had so much fun with you. I still could. You wouldn’t fight me that much if I tried.”

            “I might surprise you,” I snarled.

            “In the condition you’re in? I don’t think so.” I lost whatever courage I had in his soulless eyes. Just staring at James made me transport back in time, a time where Jim Moriarty still existed. “If you cleaned her up, she’d be beautiful,” James noted, examining me as though I was a prized animal. “Jim always did that with you, didn’t he? Showed you off in your best? Made you feel like you were important when really you were nothing to him?”

            “You’re just like him; you like to talk to your prey just before you kill them.”

            “I’d think we’d be similar, we were twins,” he boasted. “Too bad I never got to meet you when you were on our side, Ms. Whitmore. We would have gotten along nicely, I think.”

            “Eh, I bet you would have ended up dead too.”

            James grinned devilishly. “I don’t think that’s quite true. I guess we’ll never know. I hate to say goodbye to you. Unfortunately, you’re no longer fun to play around with.” He looked over his shoulder at Logan. “Want to join in, or do you want to do it?”

            “Do you want your hands to get dirty?”

            “Yes. Unlike my brother, I don’t mind it, though I do like sending others to do my dirty work on occasion.” He laughed. “Just let it happen, little viper. Don’t try and fight it.” I shuddered at the old pet name James’ brother had given me. He’d given me a lot of pet names; all of them had had no meaning behind them.

            Just as Logan and James closed in on me, I closed my eyes. I wished I was unconscious right now, because one of them playing with me was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine what horror they’d unleash on me when they teamed up against me. The possibilities ranged from simple to extremely horrifying and twisted. If my body was ever found, I hoped I was nothing but remains. I didn’t want anyone to see what torture I had endured, no eyes deserved that sight.

            “Just let it happen.”

**It's a rather...grim ending, I know. But I never saw Raine coming out of this alive. I mean, would you think you were safe if you murdered Jim Moriarty?

And, I really hope you liked the twist I put in at the very end, it was something I'd wanted to do from the beginning. Some parts of this book I wanted to do originally, others just happened to fit in nicely as I wrote.

But don't fear, though this book may be technically over, there's still one chapter left. Let me explain.

I wrote two endings to this fan fiction, and you just read the second of two that I had written. I had to have a friend of mine help me choose which one to be the original ending, but I couldn't bring myself to delete one epilogue. So, as a treat to you all, I posted an alternate ending. And no, it will not mean that Raine lives in it and therefore we have a sequel. This book I planned to have stand alone.**