I silently stand in the graveyard in which John decided to bury what he believes to be my broken body, hidden away from sight in the shadows of the trees, camouflaging into the darkness with my dark locks of hair and the turned-up collar of my black coat casting shadows on my ethereal complexion. Logical reasoning forces me to comply with these precautions because even though ordinary people are spectacularly unobservant, I cannot risk John Watson noticing my presence. I see and say nothing (Latin translation: 'video et taceo', which was a motto of Queen Elizabeth I) as I observe him bid farewell to me, or rather, to the patch of earth that he believes my body to lie underneath. For obvious reasons, this is an inaccurate belief, and John is under a misapprehension. A tortuous, guilt-evoking, regretful misapprehension, but a necessary one none the less. I would rather 'die' a thousand times and let John live, rather than allow John to be murdered by a psychopath and truly lose him forever. Far better that the world believes me to be lost forever because I know it to be untrue, that instead it is a temporary measure to be enforced only until John is safe. Until they are all safe from the remnants of Moriarty's men, which is all that matters.
Nearly every single ordinary person that I have encountered seems to be under the erroneous impression that I am incapable of experiencing feelings, and this mistaken belief proves their idiocy more than my deductions ever could. The suffering that both John and I are simultaneously experiencing is necessary, and it is better for us to endure this pain, the pain that probability reasons will not be permanent, rather than having either of us meet the more permanent end that Moriarty had planned. With John having proven on more than one occasion that he would be willing to give up his life if it ensured the safety of mine, and with the revelation occurring to me as I stood on Bart's rooftop that I was more than willing to do the same for him, I was sure that the current outcome had been the best that I could have hoped for. Nobody that I cared for had died, and I believed that they would normally call this a result had my own life not been 'lost' in lieu. However, there had been no avoiding this minor technicality. It is an irrevocable fact that my mind is superior to John's, and it was only because of this that I was still alive. I had managed to find a workable solution to Moriarty's 'final problem' in the short amount of time that I had, but if John had been in my position, it was highly unlikely that he would have managed to do this, ergo he would be dead, and this wasn't - and still isn't - an acceptable option in my mind.
Even though I had positioned myself a fair distance away from the headstone bearing my name to reduce the risk of being spotted - regardless of how much John wanted or needed to see me, or how much I wanted or needed him to - I could still hear the words that my remorseful friend was speaking to it as I watched him attempt to repress his emotions. He did not manage to do this nearly as well as Mycroft or I could, but unlike John, we had been practicing this kind of restraint for at least two decades apiece. I couldn't profess to understanding the sentimental notion of talking to a headstone as a replacement for the human whose remains it marked, but I could understand the theory behind it.
"But please, there's just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me, don't be...dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this…"
Outwardly, I knew that my expression remained impassive as John's words and their consequent impact was absorbed begrudgingly into my mind palace. I had perfected the art of appearing aloof for many years now, even when there was an internal conflict taking place within my mind and churning stomach. There was a slight temptation to delete both John's words and the urge to display the emotional response of tears forming that came with them (most likely due to associating a similar stimulus with this response in childhood through classical conditioning), but I decided against pursuing that option. I needed to remember John's exact words, gestures, emotional responses and body language, because they would spur me on whenever I became disheartened with what I must do to keep him safe. I would never desist with my mission - to destroy Moriarty's organisation as thoroughly as he had destroyed me - until it was complete, but I had reluctantly accepted my own logical conclusion that I would inevitably begin to occasionally reminisce about London, Baker Street, home, John and every other part of me that I had left behind. Therefore, I had to remember the reason why I had to see the mission through to the end. If I returned while it was still in progress, it may endanger the lives of the people that I cared about, and I would not allow that to happen again. Nobody would ever be allowed to hold that sort of leverage against me again.
A distraught John had finished his farewell and was preparing to leave 'me' in the graveyard. I could see that it was something that he had never thought about having to do. We had both grown a little too complacent, naively believing that our life together would remain untarnished by the many hardships we had endured for countless years to come. My 'sociopathic' nature had been compromised, and I was still unsure as to what results this would yield, but from what I had already observed, it did not look like it would work in my favour. Sentiment truly was a chemical defect found in the losing side. After all, what other conclusion could I draw from the evidence available? I, who had grown to care for John and a handful of other people, had nearly lost everything, whereas Moriarty, a man for whom it was physically impossible to experience any genuine feeling, had won. True, he was dead, and I was not, but in the eyes of the world, I was the antagonist, the fake, whereas 'Richard Brook' was the innocent, the wronged actor. The very thought of it made me snarl, and although I was resigned to the fact that there was nothing I could do to rectify this at the moment, the idea was always present in my head. Ideas couldn't be deleted once they had been implanted in the brain, not even by my superior brain.
I had finished keeping my graveyard vigil, watching over John to ensure that nobody dared to touch him whilst I was still in the area, but primarily making sure that my friend would be okay. Obviously not now, but in the long term he would begin to recover. It would be impossible for me to communicate with John until the danger had passed, but I'd asked my brother to watch over both John and the others for me in my place. Mycroft had agreed almost immediately, only asking one thing of me before formally promising to keep me informed of anything that may happen to them. He had made me promise to come back alive, to which I had replied that if I could outsmart Moriarty, his henchmen should be relatively easy to deceive and eradicate.
As I exited the graveyard via a secluded route and climbed into the private car that Mycroft had assigned for my own personal use until I left London, I tried to organise my thoughts into a coherent sentence, one that I would whisper quietly in place of saying it to John, which it was clearly impossible to do, and then I would be done with the despised feelings until my mission was over. I had never been very good at articulating my feelings, and it was only after I had finalised my sentence that I supposed I could have mentioned the fact that I could tell from the slight tremor in the hand John had used to touch my headstone that he was beginning to regress to his fragile post-Army state, and that I sincerely wished that he wouldn't. I would also have been tempted to remark - however futile the comment would be, seeing as John would never hear it - that I hoped John would forgive me in time, but then I already knew that he would. It was dull to state the obvious. In the end, I, Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, with the memory capacity to remember any information that I deemed important or interesting, settled on three little words to whisper, silently begging the driver not to repeat my words to Mycroft.
I'm sorry John.
The single tear rolling down my cheek did not go unnoticed as I spoke. Nothing ever did.
Author's Note: Any text in brackets is relevant information from Sherlock's mind palace that he is recalling.