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He had thought himself, for a long time, incapable of love. Some people simply are, after all, just as some people are incapable of whistling. And they are not all, as television would like for you to believe, cold-hearted criminals and mentally ill persons. There are people who cannot fall in love, in the romantic sense, and they happily carry on mutually consensual sexual relations and profound friendships and family bonds, and are for the most part perfectly ordinary, mediocre people. (Only for the most part, because in nearly every segment of the population, there are some who are cold-hearted criminals, of course, otherwise he'd be out of a job.) And there are people who cannot feel love at all, and they work alone, perfectly contented, perfectly ordinary. He had fancied himself one of those people. Except not ordinary, obviously. And not always perfectly contented. But not because of that.
Perhaps it was different in childhood, but it’s so hard to tell, to remember. He is sure that to love Father was- impossible, when he scarcely knew the man, when he saw servants more often than him. He felt nothing for him other than perhaps a dull to vicious resentment. As for Mycroft; well, perhaps he did love him after all, and he can remember, if he tries, moments of mutual affection, enjoyment in each other’s company. Perhaps he did love him. (Perhaps he still does.) But it was all buried under childish rivalry and more resentment and disappointment, when Mycroft was so clever and chose to waste it like that. (He will never make that some mistake of judgement, never again).
As for other moments, other people, other connections, well, there was Alistair, but it never occurred to him until too late to think of that as something even approaching love. Admiration, yes, but he was too sure of himself already by the time they met to think that love was something that he felt. He already thought himself incapable of it, and although there were moments of chagrin at this, at yet another way in which he was not ordinary, for the most part he did not mind. Sometimes he thought it an advantage. And he certainly wasn’t ever interested in love.
Irene, of course, changed it all. She altered him, maybe, or drew out something he had long kept hidden, even from himself, but there it was, inside of him, a feeling that seemed to reach leaps and bounds beyond such paltry ideas as love, the silly, trite sentiments one read about in poems and heard in old songs and watched played it over and over in banal television shows. Love. What a ridiculous idea. And yet it was the only word that came even close to describing what he felt. "Love" was merely a rush of chemicals, he had long since known that that was all there was to it, that even this was no more than that, but it felt like more. When he experimented with narcotics, he knew the rush was only chemicals in his veins, and that was all it felt like. Irene felt like more. It was painful, and lovely, and not just excitement and passion but also a content he had never felt before, a belonging, and he was certain he was forever changed, and she died.
Not really, of course. But he didn’t know it at the time. It’s one of the cruelest parts of it, truly, that he destroyed himself that way, he hurt himself and she wasn’t even really dead. All of it, for nothing. It would have been for nothing anyway, to destroy yourself for another is always meaningless, but it was even more so. Or less. Even less than nothingness.
It broke him, or did it? Was he already broken? And he’d never known, not truly, he had felt the raw, scraping edges of the broken pieces within him already, for so long. For all that he says he turned to the drugs for focus, he has always known it was also for the inchoate pain; but he had not known what that pain was, what caused it, until suddenly he loved, and was loved, until there was someone there trying to fill the cracks, put the pieces back together (or he suspects now that is not what she was trying to do after all, but again, he didn’t know that then), until someone tried to make him whole, and then left. Only when he had a sense of what being whole might feel like could he realize how broken he really was. Too broken for anyone to put together - certainly not Jamie Moriarty, who might be at least as broken as him - and certainly too broken to even begin to fix himself. So he broke himself worse, tore the pieces apart and threw them down and essentially stomped upon them, punishing himself and the world for the loss and the guilt and the pain and the mistake of letting himself love and the failure and all the other detestable, horrid feelings.
He thought he’d never love again. And, in some ways, he still thinks so. He will never love anyone the way he loved Irene again. He’ll never feel romantic love again. He does not want to. He does not trust himself to. He will be one of those people that do not feel romantic love, and that is a relief. Except of course there will always be that part of him that still loves Irene, even knowing she is not Irene, and he wishes he could remove that part of him, and he does not wish that, and he can’t do it anyway. But then, back then, grimly tearing himself apart, he thought he’d never love again at all. It was a mistake. It was weakness. It hurt and he was bad at it and he deeply objects to being bad at things and anyway, Irene must have been a fluke, one single, mistaken love granted to him in his life.
And while he was busy assuring himself that he couldn’t feel love, that he wouldn’t let himself. That he was perfectly fine being alone, that he was better being alone, that he was far too clever and independent and complete in his (broken) self to ever possibly need or want to connect to anyone in any way, Watson slipped in quite by accident. Only because the way he loved her was so very, entirely different from the way he loved Irene. He had shut the door that allowed Irene in, shut it and locked it and tore it apart with syringes, and he never knew that there was some other way in. But Watson seemed to find it without even looking, without even trying, without even really wanting to come in herself. She was just there, one day, she slipped into his- whatever silly, sentimental phrase you want to use, his heart or his soul or his mind. She moved in and made her home there and very decidedly stayed, much like she made a home in the brownstone (and perhaps that was why he was so afraid when she wanted to move out. Because he thought it would mean her moving out of him too.) There is something between them, something he has never been able to define, some unspoken kinship. The spark of the extraordinary within her, perhaps, leaping out to his own. Or perhaps it’s simply that she was lonely too, they were both terribly lonely, and they saw the loneliness in each other and it was a relief. Or maybe it’s just that Watson is a marvel and he recognized that and simply couldn’t help but love her, because really, if you ask him (not that he would ever actually say this out loud if you did ask him), he doesn’t understand how Watson is not loved by absolutely everyone in the world. She really ought to be. The far more confusing part is that she apparently cares for him in return.
He’s always been lonely. But he never knew that until very recently, after Irene, even, not until Watson and all the others she forced him to meet and see and care for, when he had spent so long carefully not caring about anyone. Caring for people, he has discovered, has many unexpected advantages - even simple things like “someone coming to look for him when he’s being held captive by a murderous secretary” - but it also has a good deal of disadvantages. He is very often not thankful for the knowledge of his own loneliness. Pain doesn’t hurt quite as much when one doesn’t know it’s there. The broken pieces still cut at you, but when one doesn’t know one is broken, one can’t helplessly long to put oneself back together.
But there was Watson, regardless of whether or not he wanted her to be there, and very soon he did want her to be. She was ordinary until he realized she wasn’t the least bit ordinary, and she had - has - no patience with his antics and scolds him for rudeness and rule breaking and boundary crossing, she demands respect and will only even begin to think about giving her own respect once one has responded appropriately, she wants to talk about feelings right up until they are her own feelings, she insists on being polite to people, and she kept - still sometimes does - trying to force herself into a mold of ordinariness that she simply does not fit into, and somehow these things about her that annoy him so very much, he also rather likes. She is also clever, so very clever, not as clever as him, perhaps, but closer to keeping up than most people, and she listens to him except for when he's not worth being listened to - which he supposes does happen every once in a great while - and no matter how many times he drives her away she comes back, and even though she can connect to people easily, in a way he never can, she was somehow lonely too, and he seemed to somehow ease that loneliness, and she chose- she chose to stay with him. She makes him a better man, something he did not even know was possible. She makes him want to be better.
Loving Irene was a sudden, total thing, a thing that swept over him and broke helplessly free. Loving Watson, it slipped in slowly, made a home around his heart, became a fixture there, and it softly alerted him to his presence, made him aware that Watson was an extraordinary person and he was extraordinarily glad to have her around.
He thinks, now, that he loves rarely, very rarely, but when he does love, he loves- deeply. Totally. It changes him, every time, becomes part of the makeup of who he is, possibly, quite probably, a permanent part. And just as he did not know before how to start loving someone, did not know he could start, now he does not know how to stop.
And he doesn’t- He doesn’t necessarily like it. It’s dangerous. It can hurt. It can be used to hurt him. How many cases has he solved now, where someone was killed by their lover? For love? Because of love? Because they loved the wrong person, because it would hurt someone else who loved them if they were killed, because they stopped loving someone, because they did not love enough, or loved too much, or loved in the wrong way, or because their love was mistaken, misunderstood, misused? Love is dangerous.
And people leave. People leave so much. Is it him, is there something wrong with him that people are always, always leaving? Such a childish question to ask, and even more so to answer, because so often the answer seems to be yes. Mother left before he can even remember. Father was always leaving, just as soon as he came he was leaving again. Mycroft left him in those horrid schools. Irene left, disappeared, died; then came back and left even more irrevocably, by turning out to have never existed at all, and Moriarty too left, went away to prison. Alistair died, taken away by the drugs. Mycroft nearly died without even telling him and then left (and it was his fault). And then Watson-
Well, perhaps it was an overreaction to decide that her wanting to leave the brownstone meant she was leaving him, but considering his history, considering that it had begun to seem inevitable that everyone would leave, considering how afraid he was to be alone again, considering that he doesn’t know why she’d stay anyway, for Watson to leave seemed natural, and like it could be the most painful loss of all. It was perhaps not so passionate a love as the one he had for Irene, but a far truer one.
So he left first, he left more, went farther away, and by then, he was quite resolved to not love anymore, to be careful about it this time, to let no one else into his heart who could hurt him and be hurt in return.
Kitty was...an accident. She was only meant to be a solution. The loneliness, that he was now aware of, could be difficult at times, particularly in terms of his sobriety. He told himself that all he needed was someone to talk to, he didn't need a connection as he'd had with Watson, a connection was where it became dangerous. A student seemed an excellent solution. A student would provide all the company and stimulation he'd received working with Watson, and if he was careful, none of the silly human weakness. Besides, as he would more willingly admit to aloud, he thought teaching as he worked helped him be more efficient. Kitty fit all of his requirements: she was clever, she already showed signs of detecting skills and of deduction, and she was clearly also not interested in any sort of relationship. He thought she'd do excellently.
He didn’t pity her. That would do no one any good, least of all Kitty. But he cared to be careful with her, he did not touch her - he doesn’t overly care for physical contact, other than that which is sexual, anyway - he tried to not stand too close or sneak up on her, other than when it was necessary for training, and he warned her about that and got consent, and he even sometimes attempted to hold back his temper with her. Not always. Not very successfully. He was only trying to not make things more difficult for their arrangement and for her.
But maybe that was how it began, that he allowed her that little bit of give that he did not normally allow to himself or to others. That tiny bit of space. He has always had a tiny bit more patience and sympathy for victims of crimes than for others, particularly those who were vulnerable or defenseless and were taken advantage of by those who are stronger than them. It's not pity. Merely sympathy. But he had never had that sympathy be so...prolonged as it was with Kitty.
The sympathy changed, perhaps, became empathy, which is far more dangerous. He found - they both found - there was something in the other that they understood. Something about him that no one else had ever understood, not even Watson, who understood him so much better than anyone else. Kitty understood how it felt to be broken.
It was true, what she said. Someone hurt me. You hurt yourself. It was painful to hear, and it was true. But though it came from different places, happened in different ways, still, still, it was the same feeling. To be broken inside, cracked, hurt and ashamed and at odds with the world, rubbing yourself raw, cutting your own insides with the cracked edges, wrong. That night, the night she left and came back (people leave, but sometimes, sometimes they will come back, and that is how one knows they are special), the night he lost his temper cruelly because he was feeling more broken than usual, wasn’t able to ignore it the way he usually could, was feeling the slow drip of his sobriety, the slow, tiresome wearing down of life at your senses and strength; she came back, and for a moment they saw it in each other. The brokenness. A moment of perfect compassion and understanding that he can compare to very little else. To be seen, utterly - the way that he sees others - and simply accepted, well, that was worth something, very much worth something. It saved him.
He wanted to save her back, to help her the way she helped him simply by understanding, by being present, and that was a new feeling for him. There was also that Kitty was younger, more ignorant, more hurt, more vulnerable. When he thought of her being hurt again- Watson had been hurt or nearly hurt before, sometimes put in near fatal danger, and it always filled him with fury and terror, so he knew the feeling of wanting to protect someone, but it wasn't the same with Kitty, somehow. For the most part, on a logical level, he knew Watson was utterly capable of taking care of herself. This was not quite so true with Kitty. She was a very clever, capable girl, but she was simply not the same as Watson, and she had already been hurt once. He wanted, very much, to make sure she was not hurt again. To give her the tools to make sure she wouldn't be hurt again. To protect her as much as he could. Even if it meant taking threats to her onto himself instead, even if it meant he was hurt instead. It was not a new feeling, precisely. He'd have been willing to sacrifice himself for Irene or Watson. But he'd never known that until Kitty, never known that sometimes it is necessary, never known that sometimes loving someone means putting them first, even if it that hurt himself.
He’s not sure that, without Kitty, he could have returned so soon, and so well. She was angry when he returned and attempted to restore ties with Watson - and he was angry with her in turn, as indeed he thinks is only reasonable when one finds one’s protege has engaged in a baton fight with one’s former and hopefully future partner - but he really thinks he was only able to be more understanding of Watson’s boundaries, of the compromises that must be made when one loves another human being, of how to put another person’s wants and needs before your own, because of some of the things he learned with Kitty. He was able to begin to fix things because Kitty, caring for Kitty, taught him how.
For a brief while, things were fixed, and it became as he wanted it to be, the three of them, working together. Him and Watson and him and Kitty and - he was so strangely glad for this third part - Watson and Kitty. The loneliness, perhaps for the first time in his life, somewhat receded. There was very much else that was difficult and painful, there always is, but to have the feeling of loneliness be lessened, to know there were people nearby that cared for him, and that he cared for in return, that he could reach out to when he was struggling, people that he wanted to protect, people that made him not just a better detective but a better man, people that made him want to be better- That was very much worth something.
Kitty left.
But she said, “I love you.”
He thinks perhaps he would like to say it back to her someday, and to Watson too. Not yet. But someday.