In Memoriam
You've lost.
That coffin was never meant for her; it was meant for your friendship. You've never had many friends in your life, a rare luxury that you've always taken for granted, but now you've one less and it feels as if someone has ripped you in two. Your friendship - that now cold, dead thing - was forever tainted by words you can never take back. Even as you tear into the coffin, you feel your heart begin to die, the piece that Molly Hooper once occupied shriveled up to join the wood and white silk scattered on the floor.
You've ruined this. It's all your fault. You've ruined one of the only good things in your life and there is no way to fix it just as there is no hope of picking up the pieces of the ruined casket and putting them back together. This is shattered beyond repair - she is shattered beyond repair. You replay her voice, tired and devastated, over and over again, those three damning words wrenched unwillingly from her trembling lips seared into your memory to taunt you until the day you die. You recall how small she looked, how visibly pained she was to give her confession. There were tears in her corners of her eyes, clear as day even through the grainy screen of the television.
The thought that you were the one to lay her so low brings you to your knees. You've always known you are not the best man. Not the kindest nor most compassionate - a sheer mess of a human being who couldn't quite get it right. But you couldn't mock her about that. Never about that. Love is a complex emotion that you will never pretend to understand, and you could certainly never presume to understand the hell she goes through to love you. You of all people: an ex-addict who solves crimes to get high, or more recently, just an addict who pushes themselves to the breaking point with no regards as to whom they may hurt in the process.
You've never been able to understand what she sees in you. You are only able to understand that after today, she will never see those things again. She can only see the man who hurt her one time too many.
How could you possibly face her again after this?
You need to face her. She deserves so much more than what you've given her, but there's no way to reach her now. Eurus has the phone. Eurus is in control. And until she gives up that control, you are tormented with the image of Molly Hooper bent across her kitchen counter sobbing over a phone call that ended as soon as she bared her most vulnerable parts to you - a man she now most certainly considers callous and cruel. More disturbing is the thought that she is like you: angry and full of demonic rage, thin wires frayed to their snapping and suddenly cut.
What makes everything worse is that it is all an experiment.
Eurus has manipulated you like a puppet on a string, played you as easily as her Stradivarius. She confronted you with an impossible choice and you fell right into her greedy hands, her vacant blue eyes staring hungrily through the screen as she played God with the people you care most about.
Some lingering part of you that isn't consumed with grief and anger knows that you are feeding the monster, giving Eurus exactly what she wants: context. She wants to see you squirm, to watch you fall prey to your dangerous, damning emotions. However, the Consulting Detective knows that there is still a game to be played and a girl in a plane in the sky about to crash if you don't get up and keeping moving forward.
Your head slumps back against the wall, as cold and unforgiving as the slab. You spot the gun a few feet away and sneer at it. You want to toss it out the window. Instead, John Watson is there to pick it up and hand it your way.
Soldiers, he reminds you. You're astounded at how calm he is, and not for the first time do find yourself wishing to be a bit more like him. Good John Watson. Strong John Watson. Brave John Watson looking down at you to guide him home not knowing that you are already lost at sea.
You've lost, but you haven't lost everything. Not yet, at least. You've still got Mycroft and John, and right now they need to you tape your bleeding heart back together long enough to make it out of this mess.
Soldiers, you echo, voice hollowed of anything except reluctant acceptance.
You take the gun and it feels like lead in your hands. You stand but your legs are shaking. You cast one last glance to the television to see it has been cut off, nothing but static crackling through the screen. Molly is gone, but you must move forward with only the hope of living long enough to set things right to get you through.