I'm dying.

It isn't like before, the threat of death skirting around my brighter-than-sparks life. A playful shadow in the backdrop of my mind.

I feel it come in close, dampening and numbing my fingers, pressed haplessly against the hole torn through my side. The sky above me is dark, dark, dark. No stars here, it seems. I don't dare say death is unfair, but the starlessness seems particularly unjust.

Breathing is a struggle. The wind is cold; the snow beneath me seeps into the collar of my coat and into my shoes. It should bother me more than it does, but I've so much more to be worried about.

I imagine this is what John felt like after being shot, but that life-to-death seems like a negative image to my own, snow and sand, sunlight and heat against moonlight and ice. Please God let me live versus I dare you to take me now. Prove to me something I never knew.

I can't refute what's true. I've never been able to do as much, though the rest of the human race seems content to ignore anything that looks it in the face. I can't refute that I'm going to die here, in some wasteland, Russia or Mongolia. Hell, I don't even know where I am. Weak laughter bubbles to my lips. It hurts. I squeeze my eyes shut, and it feels like my blood's gone pale.

I can so easily see the lie in the world, but I cannot see the lie in myself. Then, I couldn't tell you exactly why I faked my death in front of my best friend. I would have said I refused to let Moriarty win. I refused to let him beat me. I was going to beat him at his own game. I was going to win and keep my life at the same time.

But, no, it wasn't just me. It was the other lives hanging in the balance, it was me trying to push John away just so he could maybe, someday, more easily believe the false lie and let go and move on and be the person he would've become without me. I don't know who that person is, or if I protected him even a fraction of how he protected me. I tried. God, did I try.

There was so much more I wanted to do, I think to myself. I want to go home, and admit that home is wherever John is. I want to see his relief, his fury, his sorrow, because though I may not care about emotions, I can't deny that I have them, and I can't deny anything him, because anything John is good. That's what I've learned since I fell from a rooftop. I suspect I knew it before, but as always the most true things are the hardest to see. My one human frailty, but also my greatest strength.

I want to scream, I want to lash out, but I can't feel anything anymore and... I'm afraid. I've never been this cold, and that aching wound in my side? It used to scream with pain, but I can't feel that anymore, either. I'm scared. Frightened. I can't deduce my way out of this one.

So close. So very close. Only a few more months, and I would have solved the Final Problem. I could have cleared away all the important, potent players in Moriarty's network. I could have beat him. I would... I could...

Why is it getting so hard to think? Why is this happening? The sharp edge of my mind becomes a dull fiber of degrading acuity. Do I mourn the loss of blood or the loss of clarity more? What's happening, again? Think.

think.

dying, simply, in a snow drift, in a puddle of my own blood, hollow-point bullets fragmented in my gut, the no-stars-sky yawning wide above me, everything moves into grayscale, the impossible miracle unrealized

always reckoned I'd die early, on terms that were not my own

fighting the world to the last, I suppose

will he be safe?

did I do enough?

i don't know

but, when i think about it-in these last moments when my mind is glaringly clutter-free and blank and everything makes simple, perfect sense like it never has before-is there a better reason for me to die than for the one person who proved i was mortal enough to love?