- c h a p t e r   e l e v e n -

"I think we need to call Emma or something," John said, walking over to the coat rack. "She left her jacket here last night. I'm personally surprised that she left it here. It's rather cold outside at night, especially this part of the year."

Sherlock didn't seem to be paying attention. He was thinking again, as always. It wasn't surprising to John, not one bit. He decided just to carry on the conversation, even if Sherlock wasn't listening. There was a chance that Sherlock might just tune in.

"I'll go ahead and call her up right now. Got it?" Sherlock made no reply. John just shook his head slightly. "Good."

He had gotten used to it, but the fact that Sherlock just ignored him sometimes still made him feel annoyed. John walked over to the phone, but upon realising he didn't have Emma's number memorised he took out his mobile instead.

The call took a good while to connect. When it finally did, it went straight to voicemail. John left a quick message explaining what had happened. With a sigh, he hung up and then put his mobile away. Sherlock was still completely silent, although he didn't appear to be thinking in his usual manner.

But the silence was soon ended. There was a sound of uneven steps coming along through a nearby area. There was a strange pattern of short steps and then silence, all tapping out a very uneven beat. There was a yawn coming from the same direction as well, so both Sherlock and John looked over.

Emma walked out, tilting a bit from tiredness. She had come from the direction of Sherlock's room, and evidently had just woken up. Her hair was all ruffled and her makeup a bit smeared, giving the appearance that she had just enjoyed a good night's sleep.

She almost seemed to be glowing when she smiled despite all of this. Something had made her very, very happy. Emma rubbed her eyes a bit, scrunching her face. When she took her hands away she blinked in the morning light.

"Thanks for the wake-up call, John," she said. Then Emma held a hand up to her mouth, stifling a yawn.

John looked over at Sherlock, who didn't meet his eyes. Then he looked back at Emma. Once more at Sherlock again. Then back at Emma.

From what John could see, Emma had been sleeping at 221B Baker Street. If was correct, she had been sleeping in Sherlock's room. Something very strange was going on.

"Well, good morning to you two," Emma said, but she was having trouble speaking because she was smiling so much. She even laughed softly a few times. As Sherlock and John looked on at her, she started bouncing her hands against her legs. John thought that it made her almost look like she was flapping her arms like the wings of a bird. She looked extremely happy, so he assumed this was what she did. The question was, why exactly was she so happy?

"You two are being rather quiet today," Emma said, looking down. She was acting kind of shy, kind of meek. It wasn't like anything either of the two men had ever seen from her before. For John, it only added to the mysteries. This was where John would have loved to have some of Sherlock's deductive powers so that he could figure it out. From what he could see, something had happened that had made Emma extremely happy and Sherlock wasn't saying a thing about it.

"Oh, you two are just staring at me and I don't know why!" she cried, but then she let out a little giggle. Emma could not stay upset for more than a few seconds in this state. "It must be my hair," she said.

Emma rushed over to the mirror and the two men's eyes followed her there, even though they remained silent. "Oh, it's definitely my hair. It's a mess." She ran her fingers through it a few different ways, trying to get it to look better. Of course, her hair didn't look all that bad to begin with, so nothing really made that much of a difference.

Emma turned around for a moment to give a little smile to the two men and then immediately cleared her throat and turned back to the mirror. After she continued to mess around with her hair a bit she finally just sighed and let it go.

There was nothing more that she could do to make herself look any better, not without any sort of tools. Emma needed her makeup, a hairbrush, a comb. She certainly wasn't going to go around looking for it in 221B. She wasn't sure just what she would end up finding if she did something like that.

"Well, John," she said, looking over to the shorter of the two men in the room. "Thanks for the wakeup call again, anyways. I don't think I would have ever woken up if it weren't for my phone going off. I mean, it's already past 11." She let out a laugh as the rest of the room remained wordless. She was given the opportunity to keep talking, so she was going to take it. Emma had always wanted to keep going on and on, even though it always seemed like they weren't exactly listening. Sherlock and John just stared at her as she spoke, mostly.

"It's kind of a funny story, I think. I mean, I was just sleeping there with my arms and legs just sticking out everywhere as peaceful as could be." John looked at Sherlock again, hoping that at least something would show up in his friend's face. But sure enough, Sherlock was too robotic to let that show. He was focusing on covering something up, which John could only assume was the answer to his questions.

She picked out her mobile and checked the time. She made a bit of a face at it, seeing that the time had just flown away from her.

"Well," Emma said as she bit her lip. "I guess I better be going. I have things to attend to, you know." Her eyes flickered between Sherlock and John, back and forth. She was expecting, hoping for some sort of response to it. Emma wasn't sure what she wanted them to say, just for them to acknowledge something about it. When both of them remained quiet and continued staring at her, she just smiled a little and looked down.

"Goodbye, then," she said, letting out the hint of a laugh. She raised a hand up to have a little wave and then sighed and turned around to leave. She walked straight out the door and then made her way back to 221C. As soon as John heard her door open and close, he knew it was safe to speak again.

"Sherlock, what was that? Why was Emma sleeping in 221B?" When Sherlock refused to respond to John yet again, he got angry.

"Sherlock, answer me. I'm sick and tired of talking to myself here." He looked over to see his flatmate looking at something on his phone. One could practically see the cogs in the sociopath's mind simply turning away.

Finally Sherlock uttered some of his first few words of the morning. "I believe we have a murder to go investigate," he said.

- - - - -

When Emma looked down at her mobile, she nearly had a heart attack spotting who was calling her.

"Leon," she said. Her voice was falsely cheery, knowing that she had completely forgotten about him and ditched him for dinner the previous night.

"Emma? Oh, good, I thought something had happened to you. Speaking of that...why didn't you show to dinner last night?"

"I was a little...tied up," she replied, smiling slightly at just how true that sentence was. But the happy look soon faded away and Emma felt a terrible mix of anxiety and shame. There was just too much going on at once.

"Can you explain a little further?"

"It's a long story."

"I have time."

"No, you really don't," she replied, forcing out a laugh. "It's a really, really long story."

"Then how about we discuss it over a meal," Leon suggested.

Emma stopped breathing for a moment. Ignoring her silence as if nothing had happened, he continued speaking.

"It's already a quarter to twelve, we might as well go out to lunch," Leon replied.

"Lunch?" Emma said, finally squeaking out a reply.

"Yes, lunch. Ever heard of it? Well, I won't be here in London forever, and I really want to see you again-"

"I'm on my way," she said, taking the jacket she had in her hand and putting on one sleeve. It was a bit of a gymnastics exercise to get it all on while still talking to Leon, but somehow she managed to pull it off.

"I haven't even said where we're going yet," Leon replied with a slight laugh.

"Oh...yeah. Sorry." After a short conversation deciding this, Emma found herself on her way to Leon. She was slightly scared, slightly excited, and more than slightly conflicted inside. This was either going to go very well, or it was going to crash and burn.

About an hour later, Emma found that it was definitely a crash and burn situation.

"I know why you wanted me to come here!" Emma hissed. "I know what you wanted to ask me. A friend told me what was going on," she said, hardly aware of the words coming out of her mouth.

"What are you talking about, Emma?" Leon replied, a bit put off by her behavior. "And what do you mean, a friend told you what was going on?"

"He's clever, okay? He told me what you were going to ask me. And no, I'm not going to be your mistress, especially with you having a soon to be Mrs. Burrows!"

Leon sat there in shock for a moment, about to go ahead to make some sort of lie to cover everything up. But he realised he had no way to turn. He had been counting on the fact that Emma would be blissfully ignorant of the whole marriage aspect and what he was going to ask. He was planning to go ahead and bend his words and make her think that everything was clean.

But he just gave a sigh now, saying, "How could this friend of yours know all of this?"

Emma closed her eyes for a moment, recalling Sherlock's words. "You'll find that they way people talk over electronic communications says a lot about their personality as well as their motivations," she said, putting all of her focus into getting his words back into her head.

"That makes no sense," Leon said, shaking his head. "You can't just figure out all of this stuff over a text message!"

"He can," she said. "I hate it, but he can."

There a was a moment as Leon began to connect several dots in his mind. Emma was always afraid when this sort of thing began to happen, as it usually led her into some bad situations.

"Is there something going on between you two? Is that why you're acting so strange right now?" Leon said, tilting his head. There was a slight sly smile on his lips, once that made Emma fidget around in her seat a bit.

"Are you kidding me?" Emma said. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or to burst into tears. "No, no! You don't have any idea what's going on."

"I can guess," he said. "What's that folder?" he asked, rapidly changing the subject matter.

Although Emma had been keeping it in plain sight, she had been hoping that it would have passed by unnoticed. Of course, this could not possibly be the case. She could try to make some sort of cover for having it, but she wasn't sure what to do. "It's nothing," she finally said. By that point it was far too late for that to seem even a bit legitimate.

"Have you been drawing again?" Leon asked.

Emma lifted her head up and closed her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I remember those little drawings that were always spread across the sheet music," Leon continued. "I have a feeling that this folder you keep on carrying around with you has those drawings as well." He began extending out his arm, reaching for the folder she had absentmindedly set down on the table.

"No, no no no!" Emma said. But she reached out too late. Leon already had possession of her folder and all of its contents. He had been right about the drawings contained within. As if that wasn't already embarrassing enough, it also contained the documents she had rather illegally obtained from New Scotland Yard about her father.

"Oh, what's this?" Leon said, pulling out a picture. Emma's stomach immediately clenched as she saw it. She tried to think positively: at least it wasn't going to get her arrested. "This must be your friend who was magically able to figure out everything about me over text message."

He looked at it for a moment where Emma was considering asking if it was any good. But she knew better than that.

"Wait a second," Leon continued. "I recognise this guy. It's Sherlock Holmes, that detective who keeps on popping up all over the place. You fancy him, don't you?" Suddenly he had a lightbulb moment. "That's why you've been acting so strange lately!"

Emma wasn't willing to deal with this any longer. "I'm not interesting in Sherlock Holmes," she said. "I'm interested in his flatmate, since you're so fascinated with that. I'm most certainly not interested in you, not anymore."

There was a moment of silence at their table, one that made Emma simply want to get up and run away. She had a feeling that Leon wasn't responding just to make her feel uncomfortable. But soon enough he ended up speaking up again.

"You're just too good for me now, aren't you?" he said, shaking his head.

"That's not-I didn't say-" Emma tried to pull together a coherent sentence, but it was all in vain. She just shut her mouth and looked down at the table, hoping for some sort of distraction to get her out of this.

"Oh, I got a text," Emma said. She wanted to make it clear that she wasn't simply trying to avoid conversation with Leon after everything, that she had actually received something and was replying to it.

But as she picked up her mobile and scanned over her new text message, she found herself rising up and out of her chair, stumbling over her shoes a bit. Her eyes were momentarily glued to the screen as her breathing began to get heavier.

"I...I have to go," Emma said, stuttering slightly. She looked back at Leon, rather afraid of what his response was going to be. Almost immediately, she snapped her gaze to the mobile screen again, her eyes fluttering in disbelief over the words sitting on the screen.

"Oh, of course," he replied. "You're so busy with Sherlock Holmes and his flatmate that you can't even spend a single lunch with an old friend."

This was enough to rip Emma's eyes off of her phone and back on Leon. "You really think you're still my friend after everything today?" she said. "Well."

"Maybe we could still be friends if you just stayed for a few more minutes," he replied.

"No, no. I have to go now. This is concerning my father's death, it's important. He was murdered and there's been a new...I have to go right now."

"Emma, really?" Leon said. "First you ditch me last night, and now you're running away today."

That was the final straw for her. She had been pushing down her anger and letting it all compress and build up within her, but his words had just released it.

"Shut up, would you?" she said. With an impulsive decision pulsing through her mind, she picked up her drink and splashed it onto his face. It didn't matter if she got kicked out of the restaurant, she was leaving anyways. At least she could turn around and see Leon dripping wet, embarrassed as he should have been.

Biting her lip again, Emma scurried out of the restaurant. For once, a murder scene seemed far more appetizsng than a restaurant. That's where she was headed to, after all.

Someone else had just been murdered by her father, right there in London.

A/N I find Emma hilarious. Maybe it's just me, but you know. There's just something about her that cracks me up time after time. She's got a bit of comedy to her...or at least, that's what I hope. Anyways, I'm glad to have gotten this chapter out! Sorry for those of you reading this because I won't be updating next week...but thank you so much for all of the reads and votes! This is by far my most successful story. Now, if you would only comment...