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Sherlock blinks, a strange expression crossing his face like he couldn’t decide whether William were trying to trick him or genuinely didn’t know something he clearly seemed to think was obvious.
“Because I love you,” he says quietly, ducking his head before seeming to think better of it and looking up to gauge William’s reaction instead. He looked hesitant and guarded and perhaps just the smallest bit hopeful and everything clicks into place so neatly that William feels for the umpteenth time since he’s woken from the events at Reichenbach that he’d been a complete fool throughout the course of this entire ordeal.
'Why?’ was the first thing that formed on the tip of his tongue because while this revelation should shock him the only thing he can feel is the bitter cold feel of acceptance.
Sherlock loved him. It was why everything had gone this way, it was the unforeseen variable he couldn’t have ever possibly predicted in their game although he very well should have.
He should have seen it. He should have seen it because had it been anyone else— any other person staring his way as though he'd hung the stars in the sky— he would have.
He wouldn’t have missed the way Sherlock visibly brightens upon seeing him in the room, all those soft smiles granted to him that were glanced just out of the corner of his eye. He wouldn’t have missed the way Sherlock had thrown everything away in the life he’d built to instead haul the imposter William James Moriarty up from the roaring edge of Hell itself to hide him away from the accusatory gaze of the world to heal and recover despite all the sins blacking his hands and all the blood staining his skin.
“I see,” William says simply.
He couldn’t possibly take anything more.
He couldn’t possibly let someone who had seen all the flaws and all the ugly shattered pieces of himself stay here and look at him like that when the very first lesson he’d learned in his life was that people were liars.
’Why?’ he almost asks once again, but instead the book resting open-faced in his lap snaps shut, he stands from his seat, and he leaves the room without a second glance backwards.