Work Text:
The carriage lights blazed on. Beneath the floor panel, the timer began counting down. “My God.” John’s breath came quickly. “You can’t switch the bomb off, and you didn’t call the police.”
“Go, John. Go now.”
“There’s no point. Other people will die.”
Sherlock shut his eyes, fingers pressed to his temples.
“Think,” John said. “Please think.”
Sherlock’s hands fell. His face, when he looked up, was scared and heartbreakingly young. “I can’t do it, John. I don’t know how. Forgive me?”
“No. This is a trick. Another one of your bloody tricks.”
“Not this time.”
The timer showed one minute.
“I wanted you not to be dead,” John said.
“If I hadn’t come back, you’d still have a future with Mary.”
John gripped the handrail. The steel was cold beneath his palm; Sherlock’s eyes were wet. “I find this difficult, this sort of stuff.”
“I know.”
“You were the best and the wisest man that I have ever known.” John swallowed. There was no future now, no later in which to avoid further regret. “Yes, of course I forgive you. I love you. Always have. And we’re going to die, and I never got to be with you.”
John seized Sherlock’s face and kissed him fiercely. Sherlock gasped, then clutched John close in answer. Beneath them, the timer had stopped.