Work Text:
They hadn’t been seeing each other very long, just a month of proper dates, but 2 if you counted the teas and coffees that they shared, dancing around the obvious attraction that was between them. It might have only been, but he knew, it could only be her.
---------------------------------------------
As soon as he saw the coffin he knew, and he could have sworn he had felt his heart stop in that brief moment. Stepping up beside his brother, his worst fears were confirmed as he heard her name leave his sisters lips.
He took a step back, his blank mask falling firmly in place, his minds eyes turning inward and his thoughts whirling. If anything happened to her, well let’s just says his fake dead sister wouldn’t be such a fake dead sister anymore, if it was the last thing he did.
As he heard her voice as she picked up the phone, his throat threatened to close up. His fear for her, his anger at his sister, his desperation to tell her all the things that he never might get the chance to tell her, feel like they are chocking him, threatening to suffocate him.
As he listens to his brother speak with her, the only things that he can think are, it should be him telling her he loved her, and her telling him in kind.
-------------------------------------------------
He stared down the barrel of the gun that his little brother had pointed directly in his face. The same little brother that he had always tried to protect and keep safe; the one he would carry out in his arm deliriously high from drug dens; the one whose hand he would hold as his body shook and convulsed from the tremors of withdrawal; the ones whose tears he would dry and scrapes he would tend as his sister tormented him. The irony of it all; the one that he had always tried to keep safe; to keep alive and well would be the one that would end up killing him. Oh the things that he does for the ones that he loves.
He holds his brother’s eyes, silently telling him it’s okay, I understand, I forgive you.
“Not in the face though, please” he said with fake cheer.
Not in the face, he thinks. He can’t do that to her, wouldn’t do that to her. He would try and spare her any grief he could; he would not want for her to see him bloody and broken, but would rather her try and remember the smiles they shared, so no, not in the face.
“I’ve promised my brain to the Royal Society” he continues with false bravo.
“Where would you suggest?” Sherlock answers with a small quirk of his lips, his gun hand quivering slightly.
“Well I suppose there’s a heart somewhere inside of me” he says lamely, trying to bait his brother further.
Oh but a heart he did have, and he could feel its weight in the inside breast pocket of his blazer; a slightly tattered photograph that Molly had taken of them one night as they sat curled up watching old movies at her flat. His head was slightly bent, his eyes taking her smiling face in, while she beamed up at the camera.
“I don’t imagine it’s much of a target but- why don’t we try for that?” he continues, straightening his tie, bracing himself mentally.
Love, I guess truly is a defect of the losing side he thought bitterly as he welcomed death for those he loved.