- c h a p t e r   t w e n t y   t h r e e -

Emma was out of the hospital, again. Of course, that meant that she had to be inside of the hospital again in order to get out. She'd been given instruction on how she could get off of an alcohol addiction without getting into another bout of withdrawal - and she would be following those directions, even though most of her motivation had nearly died and shriveled away along with her.

Several weeks passed by with the same monotony and boredom as always. Perhaps she managed to get a few kind words from John, who wished to make sure her condition was remaining well, but other than that nothing had changed. It was almost as if she'd never nearly died for the second time in her life. If that didn't manage to change her life, then she most likely would never get any difference.

Dr. Thompson had been rather upset with her, unfortunately. She always denied it when Emma accused it of her ("I am not upset with you, I am just concerned with what you have done and want to make sure you do not know it again"), but the tiny head shakes and the frown which always perched on the tips of her lips made it clear what her true feelings were.

Perhaps she was upset with her failure in supporting Emma, but it didn't matter. Emma knew she'd managed to make another person upset, and now she had follow through and figure out what she'd done and how to make sure she didn't do it again. If this didn't cease, she'd end up creating a chain of disappointments. Then again, she'd already managed to do that for the past two decades.

What Emma truly needed was a distraction - a distraction which wouldn't dwindle, a distraction which would stay constant and exhilirating and always manage to move her forwards instead of forcing her to create something negative. The only problem was that she never thought she could find this very distraction. She'd tried spending more time with Florenz, more time working with her ribbons, more time playing the cello, more time trying to sketch. Nothing.

As if it were some sort of temporary replacement for the distraction she so desired, she soon became addicted to John's small visits. Their tiny conversations ended up being the only thing she managed to look forward to, even though they became few and far between as soon as it became clear she wasn't about to collapse on the ground in a fit. Nevertheless, she would always try to reach out for it whenever the chance came along.

Then again, he didn't come along all that often. Most of the time, he disappeared for days on end - not surprising, considering that he had a pregnant wife to take care of and a job which demanded an awful amount of his attention. Emma knew she was being selfish trying to get him simply so that someone could pay attention to her, but selfishness was far from her greatest vice.

One day, however, she spotted him walking out of Sherlock's flat looking somewhat shaken up. Although she could not place the reason why and she was in no state to figure it out, she decided that she might as well attempt to make contact with him in this moment. After all, he might end up vanishing for Baker Street for a handful of weeks and her life would return to endless monotony.

For several seconds, she found herself hesitating. He wasn't coming to Baker Street to see her, after all. She might just be a bother to him, always hovering about him like a fly whenever he appeared at his former flat. But, then again, this wasn't about what John wanted - Emma needed to speak to him.

"John, hello there," she said, allowing a smile to curl across her lips despite the way she still felt somewhat under the weather. "Haven't seen you much for a few days - but it's because you and Sherlock are on another case, yes?"

"Yes, indeed," John agreed. "Sherlock never fails to find a case, and he never fails to bring me along. I suppose I manage to help - he certainly gave a glowing account of me back at the wedding. You know, he was-"

"I was at the wedding, John," Emma said, breaking eye contact with him for several moments. She supposed her disappearance from the after party and her near invisibility during the rest of the wedding must have allowed him to forget she had even been there.

"Oh," John said, knowing he'd made a mistake that would be difficult to go back on now that it had leapt from his lips.

"Good news," Emma said, immediately attempting to change the subject before he ended up leaving. "I got a job. Nothing all that special, mind you, but it will have to be enough for me to get by. I'm a waitress...again. All over again. But it'll be better than nothing, I suppose."

"Any job is better than no job - I know, from experience."

"Oh, do you?" Emma said, making a large display of the way she lifted her eyebrows. Somehow she felt like John couldn't possibly fathom just how intense her dilemma was no matter what he'd been through, but she didn't want to say such a thing out loud.

"Indeed - it was a while ago, when I just moved into London, but yes. Took me a while to truly settle down. I had to get an awful lot of money from Sherlock's cases, I'll admit."

"Well, at least you had a flatmate who was guaranteed never to kick you out even if you couldn't afford to pay your share," Emma said. "I'm all on my own for now."

"I'm sure you'll get through it, especially now that you're doing a waitressing job. It'll help you greatly in the end, I'm sure of it."

"I just don't enjoy waitressing very much," Emma replied, scrunching up her nose. "Not the most entertaining thing, having to work with all those bratty customers...but yes, I'll get by. I suppose."

"I'm sure you'll get by. You did get a job, so...I suppose you're still doing well, then?" John asked.

"Well...I finally understand what a physiological addiction is, so I suppose you could say that I'm doing well," Emma said, shrugging her shoulders up. "I know what not to do - I plan to not die for quite a while. That's my goal."

"Good goal to have, always," John said. He seemed as if he were about to start drifting away from the conversation, something which Emma couldn't bear to let happen. This was the one good part of her weeks, and she couldn't very well just let it walk away. He might disappear for ages, and she couldn't bear that.

"I know, isn't it?" Emma quickly chimed in. "I suppose I haven't been doing a very good job of it so far, but I'm hoping that I can live better once I manage to get through the alcohol problems. I mean, I'm sick of feeling sick all the time. I'm ready to feel normal once again, mostly because I know I'm capable of it. If I can even remember how feeling normal feels, because I'm not so certain that I can."

"I'm sure you will once everything is said and done. You should work on getting off cigarettes after you get through your alcohol addiction," John said. "I'm sure you're going to feel a whole lot better when it comes to it. You'll be healthier, happier - I'm sure of it."

"That's still a long way in the future," Emma said, grimacing slightly. She'd begun to rely on her cigarettes the way she'd once used her whisky, and she felt certain that trying to throw that away would end up leaving her with nothing left to help her through.

"Well, it's always a good thing to know it could happen some time in the future," John said. "And I promise you, it will work out. It will work out better for you when it comes through."

"I suppose you're right," Emma said, heaving her shoulders in a shrug. She realised very quickly that she was losing John no matter how much she grasped for it. She needed to draw him in once again, and quickly. If she didn't, then he'd end up slipping right between the cracks between her fingers.

"You know, Sherlock got himself a girlfriend," Emma quickly blurted out, knowing that this was bound to capture John's attention before he walked back to meet his pregnant wife once again.

"Yes, I actually do know that," John said, turning back around to face her fully. Even though this wasn't the result Emma had been expecting, she certainly wasn't about to push it away. "Janine. But I don't really know much about their relationship - Sherlock didn't care to explain it at all when I was with him."

"Well, it's not like I talk to him often, but she is over quite a lot," Emma said, glad she'd managed to push the conversation forwards if only for a few more minutes. "I suppose she seems nice, but she doesn't seem...I don't know, she doesn't seem like the kind of person Sherlock would be interested in. At least, not in that way."

"But, really, what kind of person would Sherlock be interested in?" John asked. "He's not really shown any romantic feelings towards anyone, at least not as far as I can think of at the moment...well...you know what I mean."

"He's a robot capable of feeling love - perhaps he truly is bringing us to the future. How incredible is that," Emma replied dryly. Of course he couldn't be feeling such passionate emotions towards someone.

"I don't know what to think of it. I know he's not a robot, at least. I just didn't think it would come to this. Unless, of course, they're both robots," John said, joking around. But Emma dived into another thought process before he could finish speaking.

"I mean, she is hardly anything like Irene Adler," Emma said, allowing the words to spill from her mouth before she'd even realised they had formed within her mind. "I can understand why he would be interested with Irene, but this woman...she seems so unbelievably normal. And he's so...not."

"Maybe it's an opposites attract sort of thing," John suggested. "But the more I think about it, the less it seems to make sense to me. I just never thought he'd get himself wrapped up into a relationship like that."

"I never thought he'd get himself wrapped into a relationship, period. And yet, here we are, standing about and talking about it as if it's gossip."

"It kind of is gossip, if you think about what we're saying to one another at the moment," said John, giving a slight shrug. "We're just talking about their relationship even though they might as be in the room right above us."

"Well, yes. But it's not like they'd be listening to us. And...it might just be me, but there's something very off about their relationship," Emma noted. "And it's not just because they're a strange match. I don't see much of their interactions, but what do I manage to hear is always rather strange. How is it that Sherlock even managed to get so close to someone so quickly?"

"I don't have a clue. I mean, they've only known one another since the wedding - and that wasn't all that long ago, to be honest. And yet Sherlock seems infatuated with her from what I can see."

"Infatuated," Emma agreed. "He's certainly infatuated with her. And, no offense to her, but she doesn't seem like the sort who would get someone infatuated with her from a few conversations during a wedding. Especially not like Sherlock."

"Have you talked to her in the past?" John said. "I've had a few conversations here and there, but not much. I mean, if she's here all the time then you most likely had some conversations with her...at least, more likely than I have. So, have you talked to her?"

"I've barely spoken to her at all," Emma said. "No, wait, that would be a lie - I haven't spoken to her at all. The only opportunity I would get to talk her is the few moments before Sherlock opens the door and sucks her into his flat, and I can't exactly get everything together to go speak to her."

"Hm. I might have to talk to Mary about her - she was the one who got Janine to come. Maid of honour at the wedding. Certainly we're missing something about her, otherwise it wouldn't make sense for Sherlock to become so infatuated with her."

"Or perhaps we're missing something that has to do with Sherlock," Emma suggested. "But somehow I feel like it's the former. Who knows? He's impossible to figure out, most of the time."

"That much is true," John agreed.

"I will say I know one thing about the two of them - they are awfully loud. I don't know what they're doing up there - and I don't want to know, trust me - but I can always hear them giggling away no matter what."

"Giggling," John repeated, nodding several times. "Somehow that doesn't seem like the sort of thing that Sherlock would do."

"Exactly!" Emma exclaimed. "He doesn't giggle. He never giggles. And suddenly Janine skips into his life and he's giggling more often than he plays that bloody violin when it's dark out."

"He still does that, then?" John asked.

"Of course. It's like breathing to him. He does it all the time, I swear. But...not quite as much any more, now that Janine is here so often."

"Interesting to know. You forget about that sort of thing after you stop living with someone for a few years."

"Somehow, if I ever manage to scrape up enough money to move somewhere better, I don't think I'll ever manage to stop hearing that screeching violin. I'll probably end up sleep walking and playing my cello in the middle of the night and they'll have to kick me out."

John took a moment before laughing, unsure of whether he was meant to do so or not. But when he did, it was a genuine laugh. He actually cared about what Emma had to say, somehow.

For a moment, Emma allowed herself to recall how she'd gone out with John several years ago. It felt like another era, another life - so much of her life had changed since those days, and yet it seemed strange to point out. At this moment, she could never see herself in a relationship with John - and it wasn't just because he was married with an expectant wife.

She might as well have died and ended up reborn - she wasn't the same at all.