Work Text:
Joan is well aware of what is and is not considered healthy in a relationship of any kind.
She knows, for instance, that no person in the relationship should view another as their property or their possession. People are people and not things, and it isn’t good to think of them as belonging to you. She is aware of that, but she is also very aware of the fact that Sherlock is hers.
Not in a romantic way. That’s out of the question, and it always has been. He is not her lover…but he is hers in every other possible way. There is something in him that he has only given to her. It’s something that he will only ever give to her. They have decided, slowly, but surely, to share everything that they have with each other. They have decided – as if on instinct – to be as open as two human beings can possibly be with another. They have decided that every part of the other person is worth knowing on every single level.
It’s a kind of ritual that can only be completed when two people voluntarily give themselves to each other, and that’s what they have done. It isn’t written on paper. She may never say it out loud. But Sherlock is hers. And they both know it.
Sherlock has heard many times that people are not possessions. That they can’t belong to anyone. But that isn’t true, because Watson is his. First his sober companion, then his best friend, then his protégé, then his partner, and now his…
He is not sure what she is now. There doesn’t seem to be a term that could ever accurately capture what Watson has become to him.
(and anyway his personal relationships have become so strange as of late that an attempt at categorizing all of them into nice, neat little boxes has become frustrating)
But he knows that she is the person that he respects the most and the person who he thinks of the most and the person who he needs the most. He knows that her safety and happiness are important to him. Moreso than his own. And he knows that he has…made steps with her that he has never made with anyone else. But all of that –
(All of the as yet unexamined emotions that sometimes swell in him just before he goes to sleep, just as he thinks that he is lying in his and Joan’s home, their home, he has a home, a real one, one in which he is not a burden, one in which he is wanted and welcomed)
– doesn’t matter. What matters is that she is his. It is his responsibility to look out for her, just as she has looked out for him. It is his responsibility to ensure her health and safety and happiness. It is his responsibility to remember that the life that they have built together is dangerous and must be protected.
(And he failed her that one time, that one time. He allowed his brother to come dangerously close to ending her. And he still thinks of it sometimes, still reminds himself of it so that he’ll remember for always, so that he won’t allow it to happen again, so that he won’t ever ever come close to being alone again, to being without Joan again, because there is something different about the world now, something different about him now, he can look at it all and hear and see everything that he does and think that maybe maybe it isn’t so unbearable, that maybe there are more people who he can care for than he originally thought.)
There are other obstacles of course. Occasionally there will be someone else in Watson's life. Someone who takes up just a bit too much of her time. Who takes her just a little bit too far from him, from what they have. And he has gotten better, he thinks
(knows)
at giving her the space necessary to determine how far she will let these other people come into their space. But he also thinks
(knows)
that no other relationship she has will ever be able to compete with the one that she has with him. It isn’t arrogance or conceit or an admission to things he won’t allow himself to consider. It is only the acknowledgment that they have something together that they will never have with anyone else. So no he doesn’t like it when she leaves. But it’s bearable. As long as she comes back sometime.
As long as she knows who she belongs to.
As long as she knows he belongs to her.