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"Where's John?" Emma said. "I want to talk about the case with him."

"You might find that it's more productive speaking to the actual detective on the case rather than his assistant."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Emma said, letting out an exasperated sigh. "Just tell me where John is."

"He's out to get milk," Sherlock said, not even looking in her direction.

"Again?" Emma said, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, you two apparently live off of milk but you never have it."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "It's not just milk. It's implied...never mind."

"I'm not smart enough to understand, am I?" Emma said, crossing her arms. She looked in the opposite direction, lifting her nose up to try to make herself feel stronger in the situation. With a moment of silence, she made a decision. "He won't take too long," she said. "I'll just stay and wait for him to get back."

"What do you really want to talk to John about?" Sherlock asked. She wouldn't be sticking around just to talk about the case, that was for sure.

Emma realised that she had no way out of this scenario without literally dashing off. With pursed lips, a roll of her eyes, and hands on her hips, she took a step forwards. "I'm sure you can probably tell by the shoes I'm wearing, but I'm supposed to have dinner with Leon tonight. You remember, the cello teacher who was going to ask me to be his mistress."

"I couldn't tell by your shoes, I could tell by your makeup," Sherlock said, blinking a few times.

Emma put a hand on her face, letting out a sigh. For such a genius, he was lacking quite a bit of common sense. It was like he had no idea of anything remotely social.

"You must be too afraid to go," Sherlock continued.

"I'm not afraid of Leon. I'm not afraid of him asking me about the whole mistress thing, either."

"No," Sherlock said. "You're afraid of your answer. You're afraid that you're going to say yes."

Even at this point in knowing Sherlock and all of his deductions, Emma found herself shocked. "How could you possible know that? It's like you're reading my mind, I don't-"

"It's so easy for you to conform to whatever people want from you simply so that they will like you. You want Leon to continue liking you, so you'll change to be what he wants, which is his mistress."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Emma said, getting defiant. Even if she was standing up in high heels and he was sitting on a chair, she felt like a tiny ant on the floor about to be crushed.

"I think you know exactly what I'm talking about," Sherlock said. As he got up out of his chair, Emma now felt like a mouse. He was a hawk, about to swallow her alive. "Everything about you, it all fits together. You're easy to manipulate, but there's more to it than just that."

"I don't want to talk about this," she said. "I'm just waiting for John-"

"Shut up, I'm trying to think," Sherlock said, cutting her off.

Emma just closed her eyes as if she were watching some sort of horror movie and she could make everything disappear. She was afraid regardless, afraid of what new secrets Sherlock would expose to the open.

"No one knows the real Emma Newman, not with all of the alterations you've made," Sherlock said. "I'm not even sure you do."

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she managed to keep her composure. "I'm surprised you've been thinking about me so much," Emma said, being completely sincere. Her mouth seemed to be caught in some sort of amazed frown.

"I haven't, not really. The matter is, it's all predictable. Everything about you, Emma Newman, is predictable."

"That's what you always say. Predictable. Like it's the only thing that I am. But it's not. I'm also attractive. That's all that I really have going for me," Emma said in a matter-of-fact manner, but with sadness echoing through her voice. This had been engrained into her head for a long time.

It was like she had no control of the words coming out of her mouth. Sherlock had unlocked a box overflowing with Emma's inner thoughts, and it was all coming tumbling out at once. He had been waiting for this to happen for a while.

Emma almost that Sherlock would say something at least somewhat reassuring to her, but of course he did nothing of the sort. No "there's more to you than that." But at this point, it didn't matter to her anyways. She was spilling everything out.

"When I was young...one of my first boyfriends..." Emma let out a puffy little sigh. She looked away from Sherlock, putting a hand on the top of a nearby chair and running her fingers across it. "He took my virginity and then broke up with me right afterwards."

Emma stopped running her fingers across the chair and instead started squeezing it in a moment of stress. "But before he broke up with me he said this. 'Emma Newman, you will never be good for anything more than this.' And then he just left." She shook her head. Sherlock continued staring at her. She evidently still had much more to say in this matter.

"At first I didn't want to believe him. I fell into an even deeper pit then I was already in. Imagine what saying something like that would do to a girl who had no sense of self-worth to begin with. I tried to turn to some other side and get smart," she said, forcing out a laugh.

"I started playing the cello. I started drawing. I was hoping that it would help me get away from the idea that I was destined to be a prostitute," Emma explained. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

"When the whole 'smart' thing didn't work, I decided to embrace what that ex boyfriend had said. I drenched myself in perfume. My personal dress code was always two inches above or below the official school one. I flocked to tight shirts, skirts, dresses, everything."

With a slight quiver in her voice, she added, "I still do." She quickly recollected herself and continued. She was surprised that Sherlock had paid attention and not made a sound the whole time. Emma did a quick check just to make sure that he wasn't sleeping or something. He wasn't. He was fully awake and alert, and focused on her.

"That's it," she said, realising that he wasn't going to respond. She thrust out her arms in exasperation. "That's Emma Newman. I guess you see it all now!"

"Well, not everything," Sherlock said. "But far more than enough for now." With a short sigh, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Even though she should have seen this coming, it gave her entire system quite a jolt. Something in her snapped, but she kept it within for the moment.

"What would you say if I told you I wanted to kill myself, right now?" she said, her voice sounding less sad and more angry, angry at the world for making this all turn out in such a way.

There was a moment of silence. Then Sherlock spoke up with just a single word.

"Don't."

"Don't," Emma repeated. "Is that all you have to say? I don't think you believe me. But I do...I really do want to kill myself right now," she said with hardly a hint of emotion in her voice, but sparkles of tears in the corners of her eyes.

She sat down on the couch and started tapping her fingers rapidly on a chair, not looking up. Sherlock just watched her, unsure of what she was going to do. Suddenly Emma started walking away. Sherlock realised very quickly that she was headed towards the kitchen.

"Emma, don't," Sherlock said again. This time, he started coming after her.

"What? How do you know what I'm planning on doing?" Then she stopped herself for a moment and let out a sharp little laugh. "Huh. What am I saying? You're Sherlock Holmes. Of course you know what I'm doing." Then with a flip of her blond-brown hair, she continued making her way to the kitchen. If there were random pieces of dead bodies strewn around in there, there had to be a sharp knife as well.

"I'll just be another one of your suicide cases, but I'll be an easy one. Predictable, like you said."

"Don't do it."

"What, Sherlock? Are you going to beg me not to kill myself? Because that doesn't work." Her voice got quieter. "I would know. It didn't work the first time I tried."

She continued, not willing to stop talking about this. It was far too important for her to just stop at that moment. "Molly knows," she explained. "Molly's my best friend...but I'm not hers. She's the only reason why I'm alive now. One stupid day, I was this close from killing myself. She stopped me. But she's not here now."

Before letting Sherlock reply, she began to make her goodbyes to leave. "I'll be heading to my flat now," she said. "We'll see how everything goes tomorrow. I'm sure you've already figured out what I'm going to do though, even though I haven't because I'm just so damn predictable all of the-"

Sherlock shifted closer to her, and almost immediately Emma's breath caught in her throat. She was halfway tempted to stumble backwards, but she forced herself to stand her ground. The strangest thing about it was that he was so...pretty. Her eyes were transfixed on his face as the light fell on it in just about the perfect angle.

But the thing was, Sherlock just kept on getting closer and closer. She didn't know what was going on or what to do about it. Emma did the only thing she knew how to do. She stood there and was a spectator of it all. She felt almost seconds away from having some sort of out of body experience.

There were simply too many thoughts and emotions for her to comprehend anything. Her mind started to produce all sorts of outlandish explanations of what could be going on, why it could be going on.

She just tried to ignore it all, suppress her thoughts. All of the frenzy to just simply understand would end making everything sour. Emma blinked a few times, feeling like everything she was watching was in slow motion. Then Sherlock lifted his hand and promptly blacked her out with a single punch.

- - - - -

Emma woke up, her eyes bursting open as if she had been jolted awake or something of the sort. At first, her surroundings were a little blurry. She tried to reach her arms out to stretch, but she found that she couldn't move her arms. Or her legs. As a matter of fact, she could hardly move anything.

A wave of panic overtook her. She had no clue what was going on. She let out a scream but then she realised that there was a gag tied around her head.

Was she being kidnapped? Emma didn't know. Everything was taking too long to come back into focus. When her vision finally cleared, she saw that she was sitting in 221B. Emma tried to breathe deeply and calm herself. She had to figure out what was going on.

She tilted her head down and saw that she was tied down to a chair. Her heart started racing yet again and her mind was reeling. Now Emma had completely lost any focus she had. She started struggling, shaking the chair back and forth. She was making noises as she moved back and forth, the chair just by itself tapping out an uneven drum beat.

She was starting to cry, she was so freaked out. Had Emma taken a moment to think a bit more rationally, she probably would have figured out what was going on in an instant. But of course, that was not her way. Panic fluttered like a flock of birds within her and she lost all sense.

Any other time, she would have found this extremely embarrassing. But when you're in that kind of panic, nothing else comes into your mind. Thus Emma continued her racket and movement in the hopes that something would come in and explain what was going on.

Like it was a miracle sent from Heaven above, John Watson walked through the doors of 221B. Emma almost immediately froze, just in case he was the one who had kidnapped her and tied her up like this. But his response soon made her think different.

"What the Hell is going on here?" John said, immediately rushing over to her.

Emma tried to speak, but the gag prevented her from making any understandable sounds. It all sounded like a big bunch of whimpers strung together with the occasional inflection change. John came over and undid Emma's gag. But he didn't untie the rest of her, wanting to know exactly why she was in the chair before he let her go.

"It's Sherlock," Emma said, her voice breathless as she finally was able to speak again.

"Well, I kind of guessed that," John said. "Looks like his handiwork."

"John, you have to get me out of here!" Emma shrieked. She started struggling again, shaking back and forth and making a lot of racket.

"Woah, woah, calm down!" John said. "Why are you tied down and gagged in the first place?"

Emma kept on rocking the chair back and forth for a minute, but then as she thought she began to slow down. "I'm not exactly sure," she said, tilting her head and staring off into space. She hadn't taken any time to think about exactly why she was tied up, just that she was.

But now as a strange sort of calm came back to her, she began to realise why she was tied up. Emma realised that she couldn't tell John, she just couldn't. That was more than embarrassing, that was personal.

She decided in the end to just skip over the topic entirely, changing it to something else. "Thank goodness you came back," Emma said, breathless from all of the "excitement" she had just experienced. "I was wondering why your grocery trip was taking so long!"

"Grocery trip?" John said, scrunching up his nose.

"Yes..." Emma said, blinking a few times. "Sherlock told me that you were going out to get some more milk..." Her voice sort of faded away as she realised she had nothing more to say. Instead she just sat down on the wooden chair that was beginning to make her bottom numb and stared up at John.

"I was out on a date," John said. "I don't know why Sherlock didn't just tell you that, I thought he knew...ah, whatever. He doesn't care much about these kinds of things. He doesn't even keep track of any of it, so that's led me into trouble with several of my girlfriends."

As Emma listened, she felt a strange sensation within her. Everything in her head seemed to be fighting with her heart, which of course was common, but this was different. Why had Sherlock kept the fact that John was out on a date from her? How many girlfriends had John had, anyways?

"It didn't go very well," John admitted, letting out a little sigh.

There was another moment of silence. John soon realised that he had to start untying Emma, which he began to do as she used up her energy to think rather than panic.

"So you don't have a girlfriend," Emma asked. The feelings churning within her were a mix of relief, terror, and just pure exhaustion. It made her feel either like she should start running around in circles or that she should just collapse on the floor with her face down. Both of them were looking rather appetising, but also rather embarrassing. Instead, she just kept sitting there with her eyes fixed on John.

"No, I don't," John said.

"Good," Emma replied. When John gave her a strange look and stopped untying her, she revised her words. "Good that you know it's not going to work out early on," she said, nodding her head. But she felt her face starting to flush.

A/N And thus Rain made a pun sort of thing for her title! Ah, yes. I really enjoy this chapter, moreso than I should. I will say that it has changed significantly since the earlier drafts...but I like it far better this way. I dunno about you guys, but still. Heh. Well, if you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing this, vote and comment! Thank you!