Ashes, Ashes

Silver Linings

- c h a p t e r   t h r e e -

Emma started counting how many days she would've spent at a desk at New Scotland Yard if she hadn't quit. It took her five of these days to even start worrying about the possibilities she might've ended up making a horrible mistake. Francesca's words from her first announcement she'd quit were now coming back to her.

Perhaps the entire idea of leaving the job had been flawed at best. Now Emma found herself with very little to do during the day. Her gut reaction was to go out and shop - but she'd realised rather early on that she wasn't actually in possession of enough money to buy what she wanted. For long expanses of the day, she ended up sitting alone in her flat, waiting for some sort of inspiration to draw.

She still hadn't gotten to see John nor Mary, and Sherlock hadn't suddenly become any kinder to her. Emma didn't expect any sort of change out of nowhere, but she still hoped for it.

At least she'd gotten to speak to Mrs. Hudson. The majority of their conversation composed of Emma thanking her for taking care of Florenz and how he'd been acting over the time she was gone. Simply, there didn't seem to be much of anything else to talk about. Mrs. Hudson seemed afraid to say anything wrong, so she barely said anything at all.

The weather outside maintained a rather grey atmosphere, only adding to Emma's less-than-satisfactory mood. She couldn't look outside in hopes for something light to make her feel even remotely better. No, she was stuck with whatever she could scrounge up from within the house.

With her lips protuding outwards in a slight purse, she glanced around the flat. Nothing. Nothing seemed remotely interesting to her, not even the cello or her drawing utensils. Emma just didn't feel like making music or attempting to make some sort of sketch.

To her, it seemed like everything was both horribly dull and also simply something she wasn't interested in. She didn't want to go through with anything, as it all seemed like it would just be an enormous waste of her time and energy.

She reminded herself of that stupid old saying - "every cloud has silver lining." She'd been told what it meant time and time again, but she just didn't understand it. In a literal sense, she certainly didn't agree that it was the case - if a sky was completely cloudy, not a single cloud would have any sort of shiny metallic outline.

That applied for problems in her own life as well. If each problem and obstacle was supposed to be represented by a cloud, then she definitely had a sky clogged up with grey. She'd never be able to count just how many she'd piled up due to the fact that there was simply too much of it all for such a thing to be done.

Simply, Emma couldn't do it on her own. She'd just about trained her eyes to only see the bad in the world around her and figure out how it affected her. In that way, she was blinded to absolutely anything else that could end up helping her or at the very least getting her mind off of the less pleasant things that tended to float through her brain from time to time.

What she really needed was to speak to someone - and certainly not her therapist, who would just end up trying to act as if she understood what was going on and actually wanted to listen to the problems Emma was going through.

One person in particular immediately ran through Emma's mind. Now that she'd figured something out, the answer seemed obvious - she could pick up her laptop and go online to chat with Madison. One of the things she'd missed most while being stuck in the psych ward was getting the opportunity to talk to her online - and now she didn't have to miss it any longer.

With a sudden burst of speed, she ended up booting up her laptop and the chat system in record time. She immediately drew her eyes over to Maddie's name, seeing that she was indeed on. Emma didn't waste a single moment before beginning the chat.