- c h a p t e r   n i n e -

Knocks were a common sound at 221B Baker Street, usually being the precursor to a new client or perhaps an assassin trying to make their way in an innocent sort of façade. But at the moment, Sherlock wasn't going to be letting anyone in, or getting up. He was working, finally having made it back to his Mind Palace in the silence. 

Of course, John was not in such a state and wanted to be polite. He had waited for his flatmate to get up for too long already before realising that Sherlock was in no mood to do such a thing. Well, of course, the doctor should have known. It was very difficult to swing your feet off of the couch and on the floor to walk a few steps and twist open a doorknob. No wonder!

With a roll of his eyes and a bit of a sigh, John opened up the door. "Oh, Emma!" 

"Hello," Emma said. She looked rather excited, rocking back and forth on her heels slightly as if she were a child about to announce something very fascinating-to them, anyways. "May I come in?" she said, raising her eyebrows. 

"Yes, of course," John said. He opened up the door fully and allowed her to walk in. 

Sherlock didn't take more than a few seconds to roll his eyes. There went his train of thought with the perfect silence that had engulfed the room. There was no such thing as perfect silence when Emma was around, of course. She just couldn't seem to function without speaking loudly and quickly. 

With a bit of a sigh, Sherlock had finally gotten back up to his feet again. He made a beeline to the side of the room, where his violin was leaning against the window. He had gotten an idea to fix his new little problem. All he had to do was carry the violin back to his seat, and then he would be set.

"Guess who's your new downstairs neighbor?" Emma said, a smile plastered right on her face. But soon the smile faded away to show her deep in thought. "Wait, downstairs neighbor. That doesn't sound right."

Before Emma could start trying to figure out what the correct wording of this was supposed to be and inevitably take forever and end rambling for a good while, Sherlock cut her off by playing a quick chord on his violin as loudly as possible. He caused both his flatmate and the woman to give a flinch at the sudden shock of it.

"Well then," Emma said. She had been hoping that there would at least be some positivity by the consulting detective about her living so close by, but there was obviously nothing of the sort. She hadn't been that confident that it would turn out that way, but at least she had hope. Now she knew never to deal with that again.

"How are you enjoying 221C so far?" John said, trying to make some sort of conversation. He knew that Sherlock would be far less likely to cut him off, and maybe if he used that he could manage to carry on speaking to Emma even with his irritated flatmate so nearby.

"There's a good bit of mold down there," Emma said, wrinkling her nose. Of course, the first thing she said about it ended up being a negative thing. It was so typical of her. "Maybe that's why it was so cheap."

John, although he knew that this might not necessarily be such a good thing, replied,"I think I remember Mrs. Hudson telling Sherlock and I that she was having trouble getting someone to take 221C for that very reason."

"Lovely," Emma replied. Of course, this was very sarcastic. Now she was starting to feel a little sick to her stomach. She wasn't sure exactly why mold was such a bad thing, but she didn't exactly want to find out. "Just perfectly lovely."

"Well, is there anything I should know about living in this area of Baker Street?" Emma said sweetly, crossing her hands in front of her. Everything about her at the moment was too sugared and perfected to be real. It was almost sickening.

Again, instead of giving a verbal response, Sherlock began playing on his violin. If Emma didn't have such high regard for stringed instruments (her beloved cello was safely packed away from the mold downstairs), she probably would have stomped on over and cut the strings and broke the bow. That is, if Emma could actually muster up the courage to do something like that. 

Emma was a person of strange ambitions, none of them she actually achieved. All those fantasies of fighting back and actually taking charge for once would have just faded away into her sadness and distress all over again.

When there was finally a break in the decidedly rather impressive violin playing, she tried to start up yet another topic. "I hope I can get the Internet set up soon," Emma said. "I haven't been able to chat to Madison for days."

"Madison?" John said, doing his best to try to keep up with Emma's conversation. "I don't think you've ever mentioned a Madison before."

"She hasn't," Sherlock added in. Before Emma responded to John, she just gave the man with the violin a look and then sighed.

"It's not a big deal," Emma said.  "She's just a friend, a friend I met on the Internet and talk to...on the Internet."

Sherlock started playing the violin again, hoping to stop Emma from saying anything more. He just wasn't in the mood to hear her ramble on for any longer. Even if she did continue to speak, she would be drowned under the sound of the stringed instrument.

For about three minutes, no one spoke. An outside observer might have thought that they were all listening to Sherlock's violin music, but the truth of the matter was that they were actually just waiting for it to stop so that they could speak again. Emma liked to think that if she were strong enough she might have taken the bow out of his hands and snapped it in half just to make him stop. 

Luckily enough for her, Sherlock did eventually stop on his own. By this point Emma had gotten enough time to think about what she wanted to say next. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't something that would be pointed towards John. 

"About the case," she said, now finally directing her full attentions toward Sherlock. "I think I might have found something at Scotland Yard."

Sherlock wrinkled up his nose at this, noticing a bit of a discrepancy in what she was implying and who she was. "You're just a station enquiry officer. You don't have access to any sort of papers that would be useful."

When Emma looked away, her face turning a bit red, it became completely apparent that she had just gone ahead and taken the papers she needed for her case instead. She had assumed that since it had to do with her father and such it wasn't that big of a deal. 

"Theft from a police office," Sherlock said, rather amused by this. 

"It's all about my father," she said. "They had been collecting some of it in order to try to figure something out about how he apparently murdered some guy." She rolled her eyes slightly at this. She still couldn't understand how it made any sense, her father killing someone after he died. 

"This might actually be useful, then," Sherlock replied, raising his eyebrows. 

"I think that the letter might have something to do with it," John said. "I know you don't agree," he said, looking towards Sherlock, "but Emma and I both think that it could be important."

"Oh, John," Sherlock said, leaning his head back and sighing. "You don't have to team up with her even though you know I'm right about the letter."

"No," John said. "I honestly think that it's important."

Emma was silent during their little bickering match, crossing her hands in front of her. She knew that she should probably get going soon, she still had a lot to do. After all, she had just moved into 221C, and that had taken up a lot of her time. With a sigh, she realised that she sort of had to leave. There was a strange mix of wanting to stay and at the same time just wanting to bolt out, so she managed to pull out a bit of a compromise. She would walk out like a normal person. That wouldn't be too hard.

"I'm going to be in my flat," Emma announced. "If you need me." Under her breath, she added on, "Which you won't." The negativity in her mind was just too grand for it to be ignored. But then she went ahead and walked to the door. There was just about pure silence as the two men watched her open up the door and walk out. There was something sort of strange about that, and it distracted her.

As she closed the door behind her, she accidentally slammed it shut. Wincing at the sudden boom, she bit her lip and walked away. Her heart was still beating heavily from the shock of the sound. It made her feel like she couldn't focus on anything, like she needed to just sit down and try to relax. That's exactly what she was going to do, after all.

Of course, Emma was truly just bringing herself downstairs to give her a place to be alone and get drunk. Her hand slid against the stair rail as she tried to think about this whole building becoming her home. It was so strange and foreign to her after everything. Even though the constant flickering of lights had gotten very annoying, she had just been starting to get used to that other flat.

She finally made it all the way down, the entire ordeal seemingly taking longer than she would have liked. It was like everything was just doing its best to make her feel off. Well, at least everything was doing a good job. 

As she opened up the door to her flat, she couldn't help but think that it didn't look like her home. She was still in the process of moving, boxes thrown everywhere. To her, it felt more like it was some sort of hotel room that she would end up leaving in a few days. But it wasn't, she was tied down to stay there for a long time, especially with her job. 

Already feeling exhausted, she headed off to her bedroom. When Emma spotted her cello across the room, she realised that she could not resist the urge to play. With her moving, and having a new job, and just the stress of being in London and trying to adjust, she had hardly had the time to actually sit down and play her cello. Leon would be upset with her for not doing anything, after all.

Now Emma was even more motivated to pick up her bow and start to play. Leon had announced that he would be coming to London soon, and Emma assumed that he would want to see any progress she had made on the cello. Of course, that wasn't the only thing she was planning to do with her former teacher, but it was an important thing.

She set out an old piece of music in front of her, one that her muscles had forgotten how to perform. It was a rather pretty song, at least in her opinion, but it hadn't been enough for her to remember it. It didn't matter, after all, she remembered it being a pretty simple song that was easy to grasp.

She knew that she hadn't properly played the cello in quite a long time, due to all of the stress of moving and adjusting to a new place...and all of the new people who came along with it. Then, of course, there was a new job as well. Emma was having trouble handling it all, and thoughts of the cello just didn't come into her mind often, even though she tended to use it as a sort of way to calm herself.

With a deep breath, she began playing quietly. She very quickly realised that it was completely out of tune. She winced at the sounds that it squeaked out. Already she was starting to get frustrated with it, but she just tried to keep herself calm and fix the problem. All she had to do was focus.

Almost like it knew she was trying to keep herself level, her phone went off and made her jump. Emma reached over and pulled it out to see that she had just gotten a telemarketer text. With a roll of her eyes, she just threw the phone on the ground as hard as she could without damaging it. She wasn't going to work with that.

Now that she was just about distraction free and her cello was capable of producing good sounds, she flipped her hair and straightened up her back so that she could play correctly. Of course, Emma made sure to take a few more deep breaths and get herself in the zone. If she even had a zone to be in to begin with.

But as she began to play the notes as written out on the page, she found her fingers fumbling and not arranging properly. Maybe she just had to play it slower. But when Emma finally hit that balance between speed and accuracy, she was going to pace of a snail and the song didn't even really sound like music at that point.

"Forget this," Emma said. She nearly slammed her cello against the wall, but she wasn't going to risk damaging the expensive instrument. She knew that the reason everything sounded wrong was because of her and not because of it.

The one thing about Emma's cello is that it was given to her by her mother. The two of them had never had a very good relationship, that much was true. But the stringed instrument was some sort of strange bond between them. 

Frankly, Emma loved the instrument. The cello was pretty much the only non-clothing item she owned that was truly in good condition. Everything else was a complete mess, but the cello was still pristine, without a scratch or a bump. It had been like a friend to her, in a strange way. She couldn't talk to it or anything like that, but she could take out her feelings on it all the same. 

When she was younger, it had been the one thing she had attempted to do that she felt that she really succeeded at. She had never quite been sure about what it was that made the cello so attractive to her. Maybe it was the slightly melancholy and wistful sound that it gave to every song that was played across its strings. 

But at the moment, the cello was just another part of her pain. Emma sat on the bed and crossed her legs, holding them against her chest. She stared over at the instrument, running her eyes over it. It was almost like she was trying to will it to come to life or something. It was either that, or she wanted it to spontaneously combust. 

Maybe she wanted to spontaneously combust. But she tried to rid herself of those thoughts by picking up her phone from the ground. She realised that while she had been attempting to play, she had gotten an actual text from a legitimate person.

She looked down at her mobile, allowing a smile to curve across her face. Leon Burrows had sent her another text. How fitting that her former cello teacher would be texting her, after she had just been playing on her cello. Of course, she had also quit in a huff when she didn't sound good enough on the instrument.

The night of their dinner was coming soon, very soon. Emma liked to think that she had no clue what was going to happen, except that she did know what was going to happen because Sherlock had predicted it all. 

Why did she have to be so damn predictable?

A/N I honestly can't believe I'm already this far in the story, that just seems strange to me! But I'm getting through it, I really am. I'm quite excited about the next chapter, and you'll just have to wait and see why. In case you're wondering what the title is all about, I'm referring to the fact that Sherlock played the violin and Emma played the cello in this chapter. It's kind of like a little Baker Street orchestra or something, heh. Well, thank you for reading, and please vote and comment! Every bit counts.