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

Sherlock and John were back at New Scotland Yard, which was far from surprising. It was almost as much of a home for them as 221B, as strange as that was. The former army doctor tried not to put too much thought into that; a police station being their home.

This precise trip wasn't for anything in particular, at least not in John's mind. Sherlock hadn't explained much of anything to him before coming along. Now that they had arrived, he still hadn't explained much of anything. John was getting rather irritated, so he decided to inquire upon it.

"Sherlock, what exactly are we here for? Is there something new for the case."

"Nope," Sherlock replied, popping the 'p' at the end of the word.

"Then, what are we doing here?"

"There's only one other reason we'd be here at New Scotland Yard, one other reason that isn't pertaining to any case."

John found himself somewhat puzzled, but he attempted to think about it nevertheless. He stopped for a moment, trying to put all of his focus on figuring this out. Finally it came to him: "Emma?"

"Indeed. You should know, John," Sherlock said, continuing to walk forwards. He knew that John would rush to his side no matter what. "Emma is cheating on you."

"What?" John said, genuinely surprised. Just as Sherlock had predicted, he increased his pace so that he could catch up.

"It's fairly obvious. I thought you would have noticed yourself, but evidently that is not the case."

"Fairly obvious?" John replied, letting out a slight nervous laugh. "What do you mean by that?"

"Stay to the side," Sherlock instructed. "I'm going to speak to Anderson. You'll see."

"Anderson...?"

"Just watch."

John obliged and walked over to the side, trying to act casual. He had learned to trust Sherlock on these sorts of things, no matter how strange they initially seemed. Anderson didn't seem to be dangerous, after all. He was just a foul man who worked in forensics.

"Did you have fun with Emma last night, Anderson?" Sherlock said, calling out to him. The man turned around and approached the consulting detective, already scowling slightly.

"Emma?" Anderson replied, scrunching up his entire face in disgust. "Why would I want anything to do with her?" He proceeded to insult her, using words that would have most likely made her start to sob if she had been near enough to hear.

"Well, you can tell me that." A hint of a smile began to appear on Sherlock's face as he started making deductions. "Her hair is on your jacket, to start off with. Then, this is not the first time I've smelled perfume on you. But Emma is always drowning in that particular scent: Chanel."

"You know, right now I'm wondering why you can identify perfume by its scent," Anderson said, attempting to divert the conversation.

"Because it's often necessary for cases," Sherlock replied, completely missing the derogatory tone Anderson had been using. "As well as cigarette ash. You'd find that as a forensic investigator, you'd be better off knowing this same information.

Anderson remained silent, raising his nose up in the air. He didn't want to listen to Sherlock putting him down once again. He had heard more than enough of that in the past.

But John, watching from the side, was willing to hear more. Any doubts he had on Sherlock's ideas were now gone. Emma had indeed cheated on him, and with none other than Anderson. He couldn't understand it no matter how he tried to wrap his head around it.

When Sherlock went to go pair up with John again to go confront Emma, he found that his blogger had vanished. Instead of worrying about this, he decided that he could go ahead and confront her by himself.

He walked to Emma's desk, standing up straight to be as imposing as he could muster. He was very unhappy with her at the moment for what she had done - but he would treat that in a far different way than John would.

"Come on, Molly," Emma said, a phone pressed up against her ear. "There has to be someone over at St. Bart's who's single. You dated someone in IT, right?"

Emma rolled her eyes as Molly was chattering away on the other side of the line.

"I don't care if he ended up being a serial killer, Molly. Yes, I've heard of Moriarty. I swear, not everyone in IT over at St. Bart's is going to be the biggest criminal in the nation. I don't see why you haven't gone out with any of the others yet."

Sherlock approached her desk, but she didn't take any notice of him. She was far too wrapped up in the conversation with Molly, after all.

"Molly! Please! It's all in the past now. Doesn't matter at all - aren't I dating John? That's not important right now. I called you to ask a question and you haven't answered it all. Sometimes you're just no help."

Her focus on the call broke as soon as noticed Sherlock's footsteps in front of her. She raised her gaze up to him, taking a deep breath.

"Anderson, Emma? Really?" Sherlock asked, holding his hands behind his back. "I know you could do so much better than him."

Emma blinked a few times. Although Molly was still trying to talk to her over the phone, she ignored it for the moment. "I'm glad you think so, Sherlock," she finally said. She stared at him for a moment, hearing her friend asking her what was going on.

"Not now...I have to go," she said, allowing her words to run into one another as she spoke. We can talk about it later. I have to go now. It's important. Goodbye."

Emma heaved out a sigh and clapped the phone down on her desk, showing that her call was over, at least for the moment.

"If you excuse me, I'm trying to do my job," Emma said, keeping her face as straight and serious as she could muster.

"No, you were trying to manipulate Molly to find you a date and she refused. All anyone had to do was listen and they would know that." Sherlock moved slightly closer to her and she just moved her gaze up to make sure she was still looking at his face.

"Leave me alone."

"Who's the one playing games now?"

Emma took a deep breath and dropped her gaze to the desk. "I told you to leave me alone."

"It's obvious why you're doing this."

"Is it really?" Emma said, slamming her phone down on the desk and standing up. She was breathing heavily, emotions already beginning to overtake her. "I don't you think you understand a damn thing about me, Sherlock. Sure, you can read me like a book, but that doesn't mean you understand anything. You don't -"

The words got caught in Emma's throat for a moment. She was flying on pure emotion that wasn't meant to just randomly come out. "You don't know." Emma shook her head, sending her ponytail flying back and forth. "You - don't - know."

"The motivation behind your actions doesn't matter at the moment," Sherlock replied. "What is of importance is the fact that John deserves much better than you."

"Oh, I want to kill you so badly right now!" Emma hissed, the words coming out of her before she could think about them for more than a second.

"Ha!" Sherlock laughed. "Get in line, you're not the first."

"Oh, I'm not, am I?" Emma said, anger rushing into her voice. It was beginning to make her flustered, make all of her words tangle before they even got close to her mouth.

"Well, I -" she faltered as she forgot what to say, too many ideas popping into her head at once. "I hope that one of them kills you," she finally said lamely, wishing she could have found something better to say. She let out a little puff of a sigh, blowing up a piece of hair that had fallen in her face.

Sherlock began to turn away, preparing to leave Emma in her pitiful state. But this gave her a few moments to think, and allowing her to think was a dangerous thing. Thoughts that she had suppressed to focus on other things rose back up, and suddenly she found herself at a conclusion.

"Actually, I don't hope that one of them kills you," Emma called out, watching as Sherlock turned around to face her again. "I know what's going to happen. You're the predictable one for once."

"And what is that?"

"All of this is going to get to you one day. All the horrible things you've said to people, how much you've made them hurt, it's going to go straight to your head. Sherlock, you will kill yourself. Just you wait. It'll happen. I know it will."

"Hm," Sherlock said, raising his eyebrows in somewhat of a mocking fashion. "Interesting that's what you think."

"No, I know it'll happen. I know it. I can see it, I can tell, I know!" she protested, slamming her hand down on the desk for evidence. But by this point it was clear that she had lost this battle. That was not a surprising result, but it only served to devastate her even further. Emma was on the verge of tears, on the verge of destroying everything in her sight.

Simply, she didn't know what else to do to release the tension inside of her.

Sherlock watched with a straight face as her inner struggle continued to fight itself out. She was just about to let herself snap and do anything to rid herself of the pain when a new voice entered her ears.

"Hey, hey, hey," Lestrade said, trying to come and calm Emma's rampaging storm. As soon as Emma spotted him, she shook her head and sat down. Her mouth shut tightly, she turned her gaze back towards the ground. She wasn't going to talk about this, not at all. She'd probably end up getting fired, and that was not something she could afford.

"What's going on here?" Lestrade said. "Emma, what's wrong?" He didn't step too close to her, but instead stopped and crossed his arms.

"If I were you, I would just ignore it," Sherlock said, finally speaking once again. "She'll get over it soon enough. Just a warning, though - you'll have to get used to this sort of thing if you decide to keep Emma in the job."

Lestrade shook his head, as that had not explained anything about what had happened to rile her up so badly. He was about to inquire further about it when Sherlock made his decision to leave. The D.I. was left standing there, unsure of what exactly he was supposed to do.

Sherlock turned around and began to walk away, fixing the collar to his trench coat and stuffing his hands inside of his coat pockets. Emma, in an impulse, picked up the stapler on her desk and made a move as to throw it at him, but then she stopped herself before anything flew through the air.

She was not going to be able to focus for the rest of the day, and probably not the rest of the week. Her thoughts were ruined, stuck with Sherlock. As she stood there, holding the stapler in her hand, her grip and stance weakened.

Lestrade, stunned by Emma's sudden odd behavior, again was unsure of what he was supposed to do. He watched on as she weakened until she finally collapsed back into her chair, her arms slamming onto the table in the process. She buried her head into her arms and began to sob.

Now Lestrade really didn't know what he was supposed to be doing.

"I hate my life," Emma said, her voice muffled by the fabric of her sleeves and her skin. "I hate it. I wish it was over, because it's not worth it."

As she spoke those words to no one in particular, she heard the snickers of some of her coworkers. She suspected it came from Anderson and Donovan, they were they most likely people to do such a thing. It was just a reminder of why she wanted her life to end. But as she attempted to de-stress in any way possible, the sound of footsteps leading up to her desk caused her to look up.

"John?" Emma asked, rubbing the tears out of her eyes. She glanced down at fingers to see the telltale sign of eye makeup smeared across their tips. This only served to add to the stress that she was facing.

"Yes, it's John," he replied. "And I am thoroughly pissed with you right now."

"He told you, didn't he?" Emma said, a gasping sob escaping her. There was no need for her to name who she was talking about. It was just automatically known between the two of them.

"Of course he told me," John sighed. "I didn't believe him at first, but then I remembered how often he's right. Everything added up, Emma. I didn't want to believe him, but I had to. Now you've practically admitted it."

"I haven't admitted anything," Emma retaliated.

"You might want to. I'm sick of your lies and cover up stories. I just didn't realise how many of those you had until this point. I was turning a blind eye to all of it just because I cared about you."

"Don't say cared," Emma said, her voice clipped. "That makes it sound like it's something that's already over."

"It is something that is already over," John said, fighting keep himself from lashing out.

"But I didn't lie and use cover up stories," Emma protested. "I don't...I don't remember ever doing any of that."

"Then what did you do? Why did you do it, Emma? That is all I want to know right now."

Emma felt loads of excuses coming up towards her tongue, all of them truths but none of them seeming quite right to convince John that she was innocent. Yes, she had cheated on him with several people. Yes, one of those people had been Anderson. That was just how the stars had aligned.

But she felt as if it were something that she needed to do. John's attention had been waning from her, and Emma couldn't possibly stand such a thing. She needed someone else to give her attention and by going out with other people she was able to find what she needed. That was all.

John would never listen to any of that. He was far too furious to do such a thing. She wanted to explain herself, but it would never make sense. It only made sense in her head, not in anyone else's.

"I did it because I had to!" she said. "I - I had to."

John stared at her in disbelief. In all of the things she could have possibly said to prove her innocence, this was what she had chosen.

"You know, you're sort of like Harry," John finally said.

"Harry? Who the hell is Harry?" Emma snorted. "Now you're just making things up to change the subject and make me feel stupid, aren't you?"

"No," John replied, wrinkling up his nose. "I'm talking about my sister."

"Well, that's not good," Emma said, trying to keep her face straight. She had cried more than enough in the past few minutes, and she had no intention of going through that again. There was only so much embarrassment she could handle before cracking.

"No, it's not good. She's a liar, and a drunk who can't hold down a relationship."

"Which is like me," Emma whispered, the dots connecting in her mind. "That's all I am, all I'll ever be. A predictable lying drunk who can't hold down a relationship."

A/N And you wonder why I have a love/hate relationship with this woman. Anyways, I'm hoping that we can find a way to get over our hatred for her sometime soon. She really is, well, the title of this chapter. But I still kind of love her anyways. Oh well.