Ashes, Ashes

Cat in a Bag

- c h a p t e r   s e v e n t e e n -

The wedding arrived in Emma's life like a cloud passing over the sun - she'd seen it coming from quite a long way away, but now it was finally making a full effect on her life. All of the rain it had been holding back was being released in a torrential downpour and there wasn't a thing that Emma could possibly do about any of it.

It approached and leaped on her out of nowhere and she was helpless to do nothing but simply go with whatever came to her as time went on. She thought to herself that it wasn't much different than when she was younger and did only what she felt like doing in the moment - she couldn't manage to find control of many things.

Soon, she hoped, this would end up flipping around as if she'd found a light switch and flicked it on. Until that point, however, she was more or less moping around the Watson wedding...and that was most certainly not something that made anyone wish to speak to her.

She could at least say that she'd found the proper outfit after all the struggle she'd been through. It seemed like an incredibly foolish thing for her to have worried about now that it was all through. There was so much unnecessary suffering brought together simply because she wanted to look impressive, because wanted to strut in on expensive stilettos and a designer dress.

What Emma quickly realised was that this wasn't a party, nor a fashion show, nor anything else that required her to impress people, make them wonder who she was. Those who gave a damn about her already knew who she was and those who didn't would not give her a second look after it all.

The whole point of this outfit was to attract people to her - she wanted it to be a beacon, something that would inform people that she was an interesting person, someone worth talking to and caring about after everything. If anything, however, it managed to make her blend even further into the background of the wedding.

There were so few people who mattered at a wedding, Emma realised. There was the bride and the groom. There was the maid of honor and the best man. Just about everyone else were there to make them look better, to show how they had such wonderful taste in friends and how lovely their family was.

How Emma had managed to fit into that role completely - she'd spent so much time trying to impress others that she ended up doing nothing but adding into what other people wanted to do and see at a wedding. But at the same time, she thought that feeding into that "hivemind" meant that there would be others who would care and help her.

She'd done it all so that she wasn't going to be alone.

Now, however, she was alone. She was lonely like a spare cloud hanging sadly at the very edge of the sky, depressed by the fact that it was surrounded by incredibly bright shades of blue that everyone else admired so greatly.

There were very few people at the wedding that she recognised, and even fewer that she felt she could carry on a proper conversation with. In an earlier part of her life, she would've been right in her element. It used to be second nature for her to strut up to any given person and start chatting without a care. What had changed?

She tried not to let the facts of the situation set into her skin - if that were to happen, she believed she'd fall into quite a bit of despair. What little she could glean from her current situation made her feel very saddened - she wished it didn't have to be so complicated for her to speak to others, for it to be so difficult for her to interact even in small amounts.

She could still part her lips and speak, of course. Emma's biggest problem was finding someone who would legitimately listen.

Molly. She could talk to Molly. Honestly, she couldn't think of the last time she'd talked to the pathologist from St. Bart's Hospital. She would prefer to say it was because their paths hadn't crossed, but a good amount of that was due to the fact neither made a conscious effort to communicate with the other.