A/N: Enjoy Chapter 4! I know it is a bit shorter, it is intentional.
Chapter 4: Painting the Stars
Emma turned her CD player on and cracked her neck. It was five in the evening and her grandparents had gone out to dinner. Emma had claimed she was not hungry, but the truth was she wanted to paint. She had already had a sandwich in the kitchen and was now staring at a blank canvas in the corner of her bedroom.
It had been a week since that first meeting with Sherlock in the teashop. Since then she had seen him every day there after school. She would work on homework while he read or worked on his individual studies. He had told her that he was not in school, though he had attended University for a short time. He was studying whatever interested him. Every day he would show up with a different textbook that he would proceed to glance through and store the important information from.
Emmaline had not yet started on his painting – the painting she had promised him of the starry night sky. She got the feeling that he really did not care whether she ever did it or not, but it was important to her to give it to him.
She sighed, the brush limp in her hand. She was not sure how to start the painting. She closed her eyes and let the song that was playing wash over her skin and make her mind fuzzy. She found it better for her when she did not have to think, and just painted what she felt.
She dipped the fine brush into the dark blue paint and made her first stroke. Emma smiled, biting her lip. She could already see where this piece would end. She grabbed the stool she had taken from the kitchen and sat on it in front of the easel, grabbing a piece of charcoal for later.
The dark blue needed to be placed just right, to meld with the other eventual colors. She grabbed the fine charcoal pencil in her right hand and began faintly outlining the shape of a woman in the paint-free middle section of the canvas. Emma begrudgingly admitted to herself that she probably should have done the woman first, but she shrugged.
When the lines were just right, the woman sculpted the way she wanted, she grabbed a finer paintbrush and dipped it in a lighter blue paint jar. She filled the woman's skirts with color, giving her body and shape.
After that was done she sat back to see how the piece was coming along. She cleaned one of her brushed and dipped it in the black paint, painting the woman's corset-clad back.
The woman's skin and hair she painted white with overtones of the light blue of her skirt train, and the sky surrounding her. Emma stuck her tongue between her lips as she concentrated on the melding of light blue and dark.
After two hours of work, she leaned back. The woman in the sky was done; now she just had to paint the stars. Emma turned her head as her favorite song came on the CD player. She smiled and put it on repeat. This was just what she needed to listen to, to paint the stars.
"How many special people change? How many lives are living strange? Where were you when we were getting high?"
Emma picked up her finest brush and dipped it in the pink paint. She made tiny circles in the train of the woman's dress, starts tumbling forth from the skirt to fill the night sky with their beauty. Emma waited for the pink to rest before adding tiny flecks of white.
She smiled to herself, taking in the painting. It was not exactly what she had promised Sherlock, but it was beautiful all the same. Emma looked at the picture of her and her mother on her nightstand.
"I'm painting again mommy; I'm painting again." She whispered to the photograph.
Her mother's captured smile made Emma's heart soar. It was almost as if she was here, and really was proud of Emma's work. Emma signed the bottom corner in black paint and took her brushes off to the kitchen to clean them. She could hear her grandparents on the front step, probably just having gotten back from dinner.
Emma set her brushes against the sink and slinked quietly back to her room. The canvas sitting in the corner of her room brought another smile to her face. She had not painted since before her mother died, and here was a completed work just waiting for its owner.
She turned the light off and crawled back into bed; tomorrow was Saturday and she could give the painting to Sherlock at the café.
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Sherlock stared at the painting sitting in his living room. He honestly had not expected Emmaline to ever paint something for him. His eyes traced over the different blues intermingling in the sky, and the light pink stars that appeared to be twinkling.
She was good – it was very well done. The ethereal woman holding her skirts as stars tumbled forth from them to fill the darkened sky with their twinkling forms.
Sherlock would have to decide where to put it up. Just because he lived in a tiny flat with hardly any furnishings to speak of and only remember, important information did not mean he could not appreciate good art. He did not really understand the point of it, or the sentiment behind it, but he could tell if it was well done or not.
He leaned back in his chair and tightened the belt around his left forearm. He grabbed the needle from the coffee table in front of him and carefully slipped it into his vein, pressing the plunger. He sighed happily, letting the belt slip as he took the needle out.
Colors danced happily across his mind as his head lolled to the side. Sherlock had not had a case or a puzzle in nearly two weeks.
"My mind rebels at stagnation." He had once told Lestrade.
Apparently, the Detective had not taken his words to heart. Lestrade had told Sherlock he would not be allowed to help if he was still using, but as Lestrade was not using him anyway, Sherlock could care less.
The morphine swam happily through his veins, calming his mind and working its way out to his fingertips and toes. A giggle burst forth from his lips before he spilled out of the chair and fell face-first to the floor. He felt ready to deduce, to solve crimes. If only he had something to do!
Sherlock sighed happily and rolled over on the floor, staring up at his ceiling. For him, this was the most fun a Saturday evening could be. He giggled happily and lolled around on the floor before turning over onto his stomach and promptly falling asleep, the belt still loose around his arm.
A/N: The song she is listening to is Champagne Supernova by Oasis. Great song, go check it out. Please review and tell me what you think so far.
Please also remember that this is Sherlock ten years before he met John so he is going to be a bit different than he is on the BBC show. I am writing him as if some of the things that have made him a bitter cold man have not happened yet, other things have.