A/N: How long ago did I say I was gonna write this? Like, a million years go...anyway, here it is, my first Sherlock story, a Moriarty/OC :P. It's difficult to know where to place this story in relation to the series. I would almost consider it slight AU. But we'll see when we get there. I hope you enjoy. :)

The Curious Misunderstanding

Chapter One

/

I was drunk, and not that fun, giggly, tingly, I-wanna-dance-and-then-I-need-French-toast-with-whipped-cream drunk; walking home shortly after last call had become a baaaad idea: the street seemed endless, the fog in the streetlights was thick, and the more I dug around for my phone in my purse, the more bottomless my purse became. Luckily I was wearing flats and not my heels or I most definitely would have fallen, broken my ankle, and passed out in the street.

I recalled the conversation I had with Nigel only a few hours before, how he told me to go home and let it all out, do whatever I needed to do, whether it was smoke a lot of weed or cry my eyes out or devour a couple of pints of ice cream, or rip the manuscript in half and burn the pieces, whatever, whatever it was that would help me through it - just so long as I was at home, where my landlady was close, where the landline was available. And of course I, like the idiot I am, opted out of junk food and my warm, cozy little flat with the big green chair in front of the little telly and my bed piled up with throw blankets for a tiny, seedy, smoke-filled pub sucking down rum and Cokes and sour jacks and stale pretzels and letting my thoughts melt away with the crappy music from the jukebox.

In reality my flat was only a few blocks away from the pub, so I turned down the bartender's offer to call me a cab; mistake. Mistake.

I was dizzy and my stomach began to churn and gurgle with nausea; my steps were less than steady and my eyes were less than dry. Truth be told, I'd started crying as soon as I left the pub. It'd been bottled up all day, just waiting to come out, and as soon as I was out in the darkness, down it came, steady streams of hotness, though I was able to keep from sobbing too loudly. As I walked, I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket and pressed it against my cheeks in a fool's effort to dry them; I had to get home at some point that night, and the added tears to the drunkenness wasn't helping the cause.

And yet I couldn't help it. I simply couldn't help it.

I began to walk more briskly, or at least as briskly as I could, as the air suddenly seemed to grow cold, and my stomach started to gurgle, and I realized much to my immediate relief that I was only a few blocks away from my flat.

I turned a corner and came to a slow halt as I beheld something on the sidewalk not fifteen feet away from it. Although the street was dark, I could make out an ever darker shape, large and elongated, and as I stood there staring at it, trying to figure out what it was, I took in the shimmering glints of broken glass, and even drunk as I was, I realized just what the fuck it was. It was a body.

I gasped and ran forward and collapsed to my knees, way too harshly onto the concrete, and after a wince, I caught myself against the sidewalk by planting my palms down firmly on the cement right next to the man, planting three fingers directly into a small pool of spilled blood. My purse fell right onto the body and toppled to the sidewalk on the other side amongst the shatters of broken glass.

"Sir?" I said loudly, reaching out to put a hand on the shoulder of the body and roll it onto its back. The fabric between my fingers was dark and quite fine, almost like silk. "Sir, are you okay?"

His head lolled towards me, and even with my vision impaired by stinging eyes and inebriation, I looked down upon a lovely man's face with the most pristine features, almost boyish in appearance, really, with dark brown hair astray and his pink lips open just the slightest and the longest, thickest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a man resting peacefully on his cheekbones. I was too inebriated to check for his breath with the back of my hand against his mouth and instead pressed my ear hard against his chest, listening hard for a heartbeat, and gasping way more dramatically than I should have when I heard just the slightest lub-dub.

"You're alive," I told him, as if he was conscious and could respond to my observation. "Oh thank christ, you're alive."

I sat up on my knees and looked over him, able to stay still for a moment before my head began to spin and I had to catch myself before crashing to the sidewalk myself. My knee brushed a shard of broken glass but I barely felt it as I reached for my purse, over the body, and held it upside down to dump its contents; everything came out: tampons and my wallet and a water bottle and my manuscript - fucking everything except my damned mobile! I frantically sought through my scattered belongings amongst the broken glass, glancing at his face as I did it.

"Don't worry, mister," I slurred. "I'm gonna call an ambulance. We'll get you to hospital right away!"

There was no answer, but of course I wasn't expecting one. The wind began to sweep his brown locks across his forehead and I really had to pull my attention away from him to search for the bright blue of my phone case against the dark mixture of cement, broken glass, and blood. For a moment panic really surged through me as I thought maybe I'd left it at the pub - though I didn't remember looking at it while I drank after getting off the phone with Nigel - but it seemed like the only other reasonable explanation to its misplacement.

I groaned and looked back at the man's face, wondering if he had a phone on him that I could use to call the ambulance, though it didn't seem right to go rifling through his suit pockets. But the longer I knelt there by his side, the more agitated I got. "Sir," I told him, leaning right over him and basically bellowing it into his unconscious lovely face. "Sir, I gotta look in your clothes for your mobile, kay?"

It occurred to me that anyone walking by on a jaunty evening stroll through the London streets would have observed the whole scene and stopped in horror, maybe indignation; just this woman drunk off her ass fumbling around a body lying in a pool of spilled blood and broken glass, shouting in his face while he was obviously totally unable to respond. They might have called police to report some real weird activity...in which case I'd be able to get this poor beautiful guy the help he needed.

I took in a couple of hard, heavy breaths, trying to calm myself down a little as I pulled open his jacket and looked through it with fumbling fingers, but I couldn't feel anything hard resembling a phone or a wallet or anything, and the absence of anything helpful caused only further upset and agitation. I remember I was about to burst into sobs when I reached over his body once more and frantically searched for my phone amongst the rest of the crap that I'd let fall out of my purse. It had to be there somewhere.

"C'mon, goddamn it!" I said to no one in particular as my fingertips brushed glass shards and my keys.

And then I saw the light of what was obviously car headlamps directly behind me. I sat up and looked over my shoulder but could barely seen anything, blinded by the light, and as I held up one hand to block it out, I had to fall back and catch myself on my other hand against the cement. The car stopped directly in front of us and the lights turned off, and while I blinked to help my eyes adjust to the darkness, I heard a door open and close, and heard footsteps on the sidewalk coming towards us.

"Oh thank god," I said, and started to wave my arms around as though whoever it was couldn't see us. "Help me, help! You have to help!"

A man fell to his knees directly beside me, looking down at the unconscious man with a look of great horror and distain written on his face. He was a stupidly tall man, pale, blond, older, and it was only after he pressed his fingers to the man's throat that he sighed a little at relief that he was still alive and finally turned to me with a scornful look. "Who the hell are you? What happened?"

I was taken aback, appropriately. "I was just walking along and-and I saw him on the sidewalk here!" I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks and I had no idea whatsoever why I was crying. "I tried to call an ambulance but I can't find my fucking phone-"

"No!" The man insisted, right in my face, making me jump. "No ambulances, no cops! Who did you call?"

"I didn't call anyone, I can't find my fucking phone!" I held out my empty hands as if to emphasize this point.

"Shit," the man snarled under his breath, no longer paying attention to me, and then he got up on his feet and bent down, carefully managing his arms under the man's knees and then his shoulders. I watched the giant lift up the unconscious man as easily as he could have picked me up, looking up at him from where I knelt on the sidewalk, while fragments of glass fell off the man's jacket and between the folds of his trousers.

The blond giant looked down at me, scowling. "Don't just sit there," he spat at me. "Open the back door to my car, now!"

I don't know how I did it, given how I was a mess of drunk and crying and bleeding from my knee and fingertips, but somehow I managed to climb to my feet and make my stumbling way over to the black car parked on the curb, pressing my palms against the window to keep from falling right into it, and I pulled on the handle to the back door and managed to pull it open without falling flat on my face.

I watched the giant very carefully load the unconscious man into the back seat of the car, and I jumped back in surprise when the giant slammed the back door and looked at me quite severely, and then he pointed his finger in my face. "You don't repeat what you saw here tonight, you got it?"

It might have been because I was already crying, but I felt a fresh batch of hot tears fall over my cheeks, simply in terror; the man was terrifying. I held out my hands and nodded. "I won't, I swear, I just wanted to make sure he was okay!"

"He's gonna be just fine," the giant said. "But you don't repeat anything you've seen, you hear me? Say it!"

"I won't say anything!" I told him, sobbing. "I don't even know what I saw! Is he okay?"

The giant wasn't interested in anymore of my babbling; he must have seen how drunk I was and figured I really wouldn't remember what had happened, because the next thing I know he had completely abandoned me where I stood, rounded the car, got into the driver's seat and started it up. I had only a split second to jump back away from the vehicle before it peeled away from the curb and disappeared down the street.

I stood there for a long time, it seemed, just trying to comprehend what happened. I looked down at the glass and the blood on the sidewalk, along with the entire contents of my purse, and shook my head, barely able to understand that only a few minutes ago, there had been a man lying there, unconscious and bleeding. I looked back up to where the car had disappeared, but there was no trace of it whatsoever; it was completely gone into the night, along with the blond giant and the lovely man he'd jammed into the back seat of his car.

Sighing heavily, I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly aware of how cold it had gotten, and I went over to my purse to pick up all the shit I'd thrown all over the place and make my way home as soon as possible. It'd been a shit day, a real shit day, and finding the poor guy on the sidewalk and dealing with his grouchy friend hadn't helped it improve in the least.

I knelt down and gathered everything I had spilled on the sidewalk close to me and then reached for my purse and opened it wide to throw things into it. Still no sign of my phone, and I realized with another sob that I'd obviously left it at the bar and I'd have to go retrieve it the next day when all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and die.

When I had everything in my purse, I managed to sling it over my shoulder, grabbing my manuscript and then hoisting myself up to my feet, looking down at the thing in my hands and feeling the need to cry harder than I remember when it all came crashing down on me, once more; failed the defence. Could try again, but it'd probably be in a few months, probably six months. Maybe a year. It was all over.

I closed my eyes tightly and took a few deep breaths of cold, late London air, and then I started to walk back down the sidewalk, towards my flat, stepping over the spilled blood and the broken glass, giving it a last fleeting glance and remembering the face of the man I'd found.

On my way past a bin, I stopped to throw my manuscript inside as hard as I could, and then I shoved my hands into my pockets and proceeded to walk, as fast as my condition would allow, down the road the rest of the way home.

/

After somehow finally getting home and making a feeble attempt to put bandaids on my bleeding fingers and knee, you can imagine my dismay when I shimmied out of my jeans and realized my mobiel had been in my jeans pocket the whole damn time.

/

The plan was to curl up and sleep until I either starved to death or died from bed sores, whatever came first; sadly, I was only about five hours in when my phone started to ring and I, like an idiot, answered it on impulse, reaching for it blindly with my hand and then pressing it to my ear without bothering to check the caller ID. "Hello?"

"Hey kid," said my Dad over the phone, in a rather gentle and sweet tone. "Didn't wake you, did I?"

"No, no..." I lied, though I was sure he could hear the sleep in my voice. He didn't approve of people sleeping past nine o'clock in the morning. "I'm just...hanging about."

He made a small sound in his throat, not quite disapproval, more sad than anything. "I just got off the phone with Nigel. He told me what happened."

I withheld the urge to groan loudly. Instead, I just huffed a bit. "That was nice of him," I drawled, sarcastically. "I would have liked to break the news to you myself."

"Well, this way you don't have to," he said, and I could hear the smile behind his words. I knew what he meant, too; if he hadn't talked to Nigel, and Nigel hadn't told him what happened, it might have been days or even weeks before I gathered the courage to tell Dad the truth about what happened. "Anyway, how are you doing?"

My pounding headache and sudden heartache could attest to that just fine. "Well, I was about to slip into a coma until I died before you called."

There was a pause on the other end, but I could almost feel his sad smile. "How about a nice big breakfast out before you slip into that coma, hmm?"

The thought of a big fry-up and cups of English breakfast suddenly sounded too amazing to pass up; maybe I hadn't been as drunk as I thought I was. But my bed was so comfortable, and my head hurt, and I just felt like crap overall. I didn't think getting up was physically possible. "I don't think so, Dad," I told him. "I'm a little bit hungover."

"Breakfast is good hangover food," he said. "Come on, it'll do you some good."

I sighed and rubbed my face with my free time. "I don't think so, I'm just really out of it right now."

"Well, I'm parked outside your flat," he said, and I couldn't help the tiny exasperated sound that left my lips at that moment, and I could hear him snicker on the other end of the line too, the bastard. "I'll give you 20 minutes, but after that, I'm coming up."

He hung up before I could groan loudly into the phone; he probably knew it was coming.

/

When we sat down, the waiter came by and asked what we'd like to drink. Dad ordered black coffee, and I grinned up at the waiter. "Buck's fizz, please," and set my napkin down across my lap as the waiter wandered off. When I looked up, Dad was giving me a strange look from across the table. I shrugged my shoulders. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, and then he smiled a little. "I was going to say it was a little early, but..."

I shook my head. "Yeah, believe me, it isn't."

The restaurant was abuzz with activity all around us, weekday that it was, the dining room packed with happy breakfasters looking sharp and focused and intent on conversation and business ventures. It made me feel even more miserable, knowing I'd schlepped myself out of bed and thrown on jeans and a sweater I was sure was clean, didn't wash my hair, didn't bother putting on makeup...Dad was dressed sharply, as he always was; I bet the diners sitting around our table were looking at us thinking he was some sort of city official taking out a homeless girl for breakfast as part of some sort of humanitarian act, some sort of way to get back in touch with the people of the city.

"So," Dad began, leaning towards me. "What happened?"

I looked up at him and sighed. "I thought Nigel told you."

"He told me you failed the defence," he said. "But he didn't go into details."

I shook my head and rubbed my face. "I really don't want to talk about it."

He held up his hands as though I'd pulled a gun on him. "All right, fair enough."

I looked away from him, casting a low eye over the restaurant. Soft, grey morning London light poured in from the windows, and on the streets people were coming and going this way and that, talking to each other, engrossed in their mobiles, nodding along with their earbuds, or just passing by quietly, continuing their lives as they did, from day to day.

It was so hard to watch them and not know where I had to go next, what next step I had to take.

Across the table, Dad seemed to have picked up on my misery. He leaned forward so that we wouldn't be overheard. "Y'know I'm sure Nigel will convince the committee of a resubmit-"

I groaned buried my face in my hands. "Oh god, Dad, please don't. I can't even think about that without wanting to cry."

"All right, all right," he said, sitting back, and there was a sad, sympathetic look on his face, and a little smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Y'know it isn't over till it's over. There are ways these things can be mended."

I didn't want to scream at him there in the middle of the restaurant, but I was prepared to - but then he put out his hands once more, and placed them on the table. "That's all I'll say," he said.

I nodded. I knew he was just trying to help, like he always did. I just really couldn't deal with it. I couldn't hear it right then.

"What'd you do to your fingers?" Dad said, out of the blue.

I looked at him and frowned. "What?"

Dad pointed at my hand, a perplexed look on his face. "Your fingers, they're all bandaged up. You didn't burn yourself on the stove again, did you?"

I scowled and wanted to ask him what the hell he was talking about until I looked and realized to my surprise that yes, there were bandaids on two of my fingers, and then it all came crashing back to me, quite suddenly. The man on the sidewalk, the broken glass, the blood pool, the blond and his car and his snarl in my face...hadn't I dreamt it? I guess I hadn't.

"Paper cut," I told him, shrugging, and though he regarded me quizzically, his expression was quickly changed to that of disdain as the waiter set down my buck's fizz and I downed half the thing in one go.

/

When Dad dropped me off outside my flat, it was late in the morning, and after getting a crushing bear-hug, a kiss, and a promise that no matter what ever happened - he would always be so proud of me, I trudged up the stairs to my flat, feeling slightly better, but somehow still sick and miserable, feeling like above all people that I had disappointed, I had disappointed him, and that made the tears pinch in behind my eyes for the umpteenth time in the past 24 hours. I yanked my key out of the lock and was determined to wallow away the day in my pyjamas, with ice cream, bath water, and sadness.

That is until I closed the door behind me, and realized something was different.

Something was very different.

I'd been gone for hours, but there was a feeling in the air, a feeling that maybe someone was there in the flat, breathing the air, soaking in the light. For a second I stood at the door and contemplated calling Dad on his mobile and telling him to turn around and come back...but I was frozen in my stead.

I listened, but there was nothing, save for hte onise of the street below my windows. I looked around, but nothing was out of order: my desk by the window was covered with books, the cofee table with papers, shoes strewn about, the coat-hanger loaded with jackets and sweaters...I set my purse down and made my way cautiously into the tiny kitchen. The kettle sat on the stove, the little table was spotless, the window was closed...but I took the kitchen knife from the drawer and went about my flat very carefully, checking the linen closet, the bathroom and behind the curtain in the bathtub, my bedroom, under the bed and in my closet, but there was nothing, nothing was out of order, nothing out of place. The windows were closed, the door had been locked...and yet I could have sworn...I could have sworn someone had been there...

I shook it out of my head as I replaced the knife in the drawer and made sure the front door was locked. Guess I was more stressed out than I thought.

/

I drank overly strong screwdrivers in the bath and collapsed into bed in nothing but a towel. I was asleep in a matter of minutes.

I dreamt I was walking on the North side of the Thames along Embankment. It was black as night and the light in the lamps was bright, the air crisp and clear. As I walked, without another soul around, I noticed the lights in the lamps went out as I passed them; I would turn to look and London was swallowed into darkness behind me, but I continued on as though it was nothing, not a worry in the world.

I took my hands out of my pockets as I continued to walk, and hand grasped mine, warm and strong, a man's hand, but he grasped mine fondly and kindly, though securely. Though I never got a glimpse of its owner, I didn't feel the need; I smiled, and we swung our arms as we walked, hand in hand, with the light leaving the lamps as we went.

/