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They say your life flashes before your eyes right before the moment of death. But in reality, it's the moment you realize you're going to die. Not because you're scared of death but because you know that you're going to see the one you love for the last time.
And so it was on the Tarmac. That moment. The flash.
The causes:
Death was an almost certainty. Seeing John ever again, an impossibility.
And with the requisite causes met. The inevitable effect... Inevitable.
Was it when I said goodbye?
Was it when I made him laugh just to see his smile one last time?
Or was it when our hands met and we shared the last touch we would ever have?
No. Not then.
It was the last look. The very last look into John's eyes was all it took to see what we were to each other...
I saw everything.
The good.
Meeting in barts, the teas, Cluedo.
The cases together, running around London together, The Game.
John's jumpers.
Every moment with John in 221B, even his complaints about the milk, all of it.
The bad.
The criminals, even though they were of a better class.
The close calls.
Mycroft.
Moriarity, "Richard Brook"
The phone call.
The fall.
And then came the ugly - What we could have been. Impossible to bear knowing it never was, we never were, and never could be.
Everything I wanted but couldn't have.
Pushing a stray hair out of his face.
Holding hands whilst we stroll in the park.
A kiss. Many kisses. More than kisses.
Sleepless nights when we just can't get enough of each other.
Lovers
Boyfriends
Husbands?
Every possible scenario my brain could imagine was flashing in front of my eyes and I couldn't prevent it.
And as quickly as the flash began, it stopped. All the possible lives we could have lived gone. They slipped out of my head just like I let John slip through my fingers.
We missed our chance. And the worst part was that I could see it in John's eyes too. The longing for what never was. But how could it? He had his new wife, his new baby, his new life.
He couldn't walk away from that even if he had the chance.
It was no longer the two of us against the world. And now it wouldn't even be the two of us.
This may as well have been the moment right before death because this is what dying feels like.