- c h a p t e r   t w e n t y   s i x -

Emma, if she hadn't been carrying several objects within her hands, would've crossed her fingers upon approaching Sherlock's hospital room. She wanted to hope that he was asleep and get luck on her side - if he was asleep, then she wouldn't have to carry on a conversation with him.

At least he was alive, she supposed. She'd gone into quite the destructive spiral when it came to finding out he was dead. Then, of course, he turned out not to be dead - it was a miracle, that much was certain. No one had expected him to survive such a wound. The bullet was just out of place, enough to be fatal in almost every case except Sherlock Holmes, of course. He was the one exception to the rules, as usual.

She wished she didn't have to be so near to Sherlock at this particular time - she hadn't come to terms with what happened herself, and therefore it would be difficult to set eyes upon him because she'd been so devestated over his death. She never wished to admit it, but he would likely siphon it out of her.

As soon as she took a single step into the room, however, it seems her prayers about him potentially being asleep went entirely unnoticed. Sherlock wasn't exactly sitting up straight in his hospital bed, alert and ready to leap into action at any given moment, but he certainly was miles and miles away from being unconscious.

"Damn it," she whispered to herself, not bothering to think if he could hear her comments or if they were more or less impossible to hear from his angle. At this point, it didn't really matter all that much.

Emma avoided his eyes which scanned across the room and focused in on her and what she was bringing in to the room. While he wasn't nearly as frightening as Magnussen, she still loathed the way his eyes managed to remove her outer armour as if it were made of paper and could simply be peeled away.

"You're bringing a rose for me?" Sherlock asked. It was the simplest answer to what was going on, even though it did have some gaps. Emma was carrying a rose, and therefore it would make sense if she was bringing in such a thing. He couldn't think of precisely why she would do so such a thing, after all.

Emma ended up scoffing at such a thing. Sherlock's judgement must have been clouded from all the painkillers pumping into his bloodstream. Certainly he must understand that such an idea was ludicrous, after everything the two had experienced with one another.

"I couldn't come up with something so elegant," Emma said. "Why would I bring you a rose, anyways? I don't think you deserve a rose from me. After all, I already tied my ribbon for you."

"Ah, yes, of course," Sherlock said. "You believe you've already shown me enough kindness for the two of us to be even for the next century. I suppose I should be glad that I am not in debt to you at all."

"Not in debt to me at all," Emma echoes, rolling her eyes. "I didn't think you would consider my tying of a symbolic ribbon something which put you in debt to me. I suppose I would be wrong in that respect, of course."

(She nearly continued speaking, ready to go off on a tangent about how Sherlock always managed to cause her to be wrong in just about every respect, about how she was always wrong and he was always right and that was simply how the word worked...but instead she stood there, poised and prepared for Sherlock to give his response.)

"I suppose I should have known you wouldn't get me a rose, of course," Sherlock said, giving a dry laugh. "Why would you have any reason to give me a rose?"

"If I'm the delivery woman, then I suppose I'm the one to give you a rose," Emma said. "There has to be a sender, though."

"It's from the Woman, then," Sherlock noted. "She wouldn't dare appear here herself, so she sent you in her stead...but, of course, that means you must have been in contact with her to begin with. I thought you would have banished her from your mind and life entirely."

"The Woman? Oh. Yeah. That's what you call her, isn't it?" Emma said, grimacing slightly. "I didn't think about that much. I always get caught up with my own name for her...and not Irene, I always mess up her name."

"I see," Sherlock said, although it sounded like he didn't care much about whether he could see it or not. He didn't care much about how Emma saw Irene even though she was the only who actually "saw" much of the Woman any longer.

But Emma paused for a few moments, consumed by her thoughts of this current situation. She hadn't made any plans to actually speak about Irene to Sherlock at this point in time, entirely because she thought she wouldn't have to. These were the words she would specifically wish she could manage to plan out before speaking them out loud.

Now. She had to figure out something to say for the sake of common courtesy. It wasn't as if Sherlock respected it all that much, but that was beside the point.

"I don't call her Maddie any more, but sometimes I forget to call her Irene," Emma said. "She'll always be Maddie in my head. She's my Maddie, your Irene."

"My Irene? I would hardly say I have any ownership of her. And I would also say that you do not have any ownership of her either - she owns herself, completely and utterly."

"You know what I mean," Emma said, shaking her head as if to shake her silly words away. "The point of the matter is that we look at her at two very different ways. And I'm sure she looks at the two of us in two very different ways."

Emma looked down at her fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing she'd set her gaze upon for ages. She'd walked right into the conversation and now was desperate to find herself a way out of it all. It seemed that the only thing she could do, however, was continue the conversation until it naturally found its own end.

She raised her gaze back up, but not to look at Sherlock. Instead, she started staring at the rose she'd delivered to Sherlock to begin with, knowing that she could say something about it.

"A single rose," Emma sighed. "It's almost poetic. I wonder if she would do the same thing for me if I ended up in the hospital."

"I hope that is not you attempting to say that you expect you will end up in the hospital after narrowly escaping death."

"You know that's not what I'm trying to say," Emma scoffed. "And anyways, it's not like I'm the only one who's ended up in a hospital. Or the only one who has narrowly escaped death."

"You mean that I should consider all of my narrow misses to be equivalent to yours?"

"I don't know about 'equivalent,' but yes. I was talking about you, Sherlock. You're trying to make it seem as if I think I will end up in this God foresaken place when you're in just as much danger to come back...if not more."

"If you say so."

"Well, I must say...congratulations, Sherlock. You've joined the I nearly died twice club. And there are only two members, just you and me."

"The I nearly died twice club," Sherlock echoed, obviously resisting his desire to roll his eyes around. The effort wasn't worth it when it came to whatever strange words ended up rolling from Emma's tongue.

"Yes, exactly," Emma continued to push. "I almost died once by my own hands, and then I almost died from alcohol withdrawal. You heaved yourself off a rooftop and then got yourself shot. The chances say we should probably be dead."

"The chances tend not to apply to me, in case you haven't noticed."

"Hm," Emma said, not gracing Sherlock with a complete response as she still felt quite a bit of animosity coursing through her. But, of course, her mind ended up spinning with too many comebacks that she couldn't help but let one of them spill from her lips.

"I suppose human things don't really ever apply to you, do they?" she said.

"I thought you might have some sort of a better response than that typical reply."

Emma took this as her opportunity to begin gathering herself up, knowing that she could just head out at this point and never have to look back at Sherlock.

"I guess I should be leaving now, yes?" she asked.

"Not yet. I was wondering...did you ever really tie up my ribbon, or was that simply a mistake you made when coming to the wedding?"

"Yes," Emma replied, refusing to make full eye contact with him for the moment. "A bit of both, perhaps. It just ended up working out well for me, I suppose. At least, I think i can certainly tie it up now."

"I suppose you specifically made your words twisted in an attempt to confuse me," Sherlock said.

"It's not as complicated as you might think," Emma replied, giving another shrug as if that would help to clarify the intricacies of her emotional behaviour to Sherlock. "I tied the ribbon in my hair just to figure out I should've tied it an awfully long time ago."

"How long ago would that be? The wedding day, or..."

"Before the wedding day, of course," Emma said. "The fact of the matter is that you're always going to make me angry and upset about myself, but I have learned to live with it. I was waiting for a day when you didn't make me feel so horrible, but then I realised I was starting to get used to it."

"I don't actively try to make you hate yourself. That's something you end up doing by yourself," Sherlock replied.

"You think I haven't figured that much out?" Emma asked. "I shouldn't be surprised - I know you think I'm an idiot."

"I think everyone is an idiot, most likely because everyone is."

"Compared to you, yeah."

But as Emma let his words sink in, she couldn't help but roll her eyes and hope she could think the situation through for a moment longer. What was he really trying to say? That pain medication he was on certainly had to be doing something to his genius mind, contorting his thoughts and words into something strange.

Unless, of course, he actually meant what she was interpreting his words as. It seemed impossible to even consider, and yet...

"If you're trying to make me feel better about myself - and I don't know why you would ever want to do such a thing, you never want to make anyone feel any better about themselves - then you might as well stop. It's not going to work. I am too far gone to be fixed with any of this."

"Fixing you?" Sherlock said, letting out a small snort of sorts. "The only person who would even attempt to 'fix' you would be that therapist of yours, and only because you pay her to do so."

"I don't know why you're trying to bring me into this! I don't have anything to do with this, this is about the rose and you being not dead. I have nothing to do with this."

"I could have sworn that all you ever wanted was attention. I thought that was part of your histrionic personality disorder. You want attention, and I gave some of it to you. I even tried to help you realise that I'm not directly targeting you."

"Oh yes, you're not targeting me by pointing out my flaws as if they were tattoos on my skin!" she exclaimed. "And then you tell me that I can't be fixed? What does that even mean?"

"I don't see what you mean."

"I'm a human being, every human being has mistakes, every mistake can be fixed," Emma replied. "I could've sworn that's how it works."

"Then you could've sworn incorrectly," Sherlock replied.

"You think you're such an expert on human beings and everything we do," Emma said. "And I don't understand why I seem to be the model for every human, and yet more flawed and messed up than the rest of them."

"You're simple to read, and that is precisely why you make a good model for all human beings. Your flaws are not only plentiful, but they're all fascinating enough for me to further look into them, unlike some people's dull ways of existing..."

"Listen, this isn't supposed to be about me," Emma sighed, pushing forward once again. "I only came here on M...Irene's word. That's all I came here to do. I thought you were going to be asleep, for God's sake."

"You evidently thought wrong. Was there any source which informed you that I was going to be asleep? There is no reason for your thought process as far as I can see."

"And yet you wonder why I wish I didn't have to talk to you," Emma said, heaving her eyes into an enormous roll. Even though her irritation was far from a pleasant feeling, she made sure to let it take over more of her. If she remained irritated, then she wouldn't have to think of the deeper set emotions which threatened to overtake her.

"Is there any reason for you to linger around here?" Sherlock asked, wondering what exactly it was which caused her to remain firmly planted in place before him.

"There isn't any reason to linger around here," Emma said, heaving out a sigh. "I'm just standing here and causing all sorts of annoyance, I'm sure. Sorry for causing so much pain to you, Sherlock. The kind of pain your morphine can't dull."

"Why are you leaving now?"

"Because I should have left ages ago, Sherlock. I didn't come here to talk to you, I came here to place a rose and a card on your table. The only reason that I stayed is..."

"Is what, Emma?" Sherlock asked.

Emma fidgeted for several moments, attempting to look through her own thoughts closely enough in order to figure out why she'd allowed herself to stay for this long to begin with. There were small excuses, yes, of course. But small excuses didn't make sense in this particular situation.

"I'm heading home again," Emma finally said. "I'll say hello to Mrs. Hudson for you, even though I know you never asked. Just so you know, I'm glad that you're not dead. Right now, though, I wish you were asleep."

"You can wish all you want. Wishing won't manage to change a thing, I'm afraid."