A/N: Hello again, peeps! Here I have the third and probably last part to my little "In Silent Moments" series thingymabobber. Might be more drabbles or some stuff for further in their future, but I don't have anything planned as of yet. Enjoy, and please R&R!
I'll cross the sky for your love
For I have promised,
Oh, to be with you tonight
And for the time that will come.
— Drowning Man, U2
She wakes to the distinct feeling of someone watching her, something she learned to sense as a soldier. Of course, now she's cocooned in the comfortable warmth of her own winter bed, not under thin sheets in the sweaty bunkhouse or tent of an arid desert. She waits a moment, then slowly pries open her eyes, blinking in sleepy surprise at Sherlock, syrupy morning sunshine lighting up the sharp angles and planes on his face, softening them with a honey glow and tinting his beautiful eyes with amber.
"'Morning," she says groggily, rolling onto her back and looking at the little side table by her bed, automatically searching for the time. Her clock calmly reveals her to be twenty minutes late for work.
"Sherlock!"
He frowns in apparent confusion at her tone. "What? You've been awake for half a minute, what could I have possibly done?"
"I am late for the surgery why didn't my alarm go off,"Jane rattles off in one breath, and feels her irritation levels spike when Sherlock merely smiles warmly at her.
"I turned it off."
She inhales deeply, fortifying herself for an imminent row. "Why, pray tell, did you turn off my alarm on a work day?"
"You obviously needed the rest, and you also agreed to finally talk to me, so I called in for you and said you were sick. Then I disabled the alarm on your clock so that you wouldn't wake up." He explains it all with an air of placidity, but she can tell from his nervously fidgety hands that he's worried she'll be mad. He shifts like he wants to add something more, but refrains.
"Well," is all she can manage, her anger dissipating like dust in the wind as she watches Sherlock's face, an expression akin to a dog wishing to please its master on his face. "Right. Get me a glass of water, okay, and then we can talk."
His faces lights up, and she spots relief in his eyes as he quickly trundles off the side of the bed and scurries down the stairs. She flops back onto the pillows, which really could be softer, come to think of it, and sighs, feeling a twinge of guilt for not noticing how desperately Sherlock wanted to actually sit down and have a proper discussion for once. Then again, he probably deserved the anxiety, and more, for having made her think he was gone.
"Here," Sherlock reappears and holds out a glass, which Jane accepts gratefully, the cold water soothing her throat which was dry from sleeping. He settles on the edge of the bed, pulling his legs up and sitting cross-legged while facing her. "I'm sorry."
Jane swallows a bit more water and sets the glass aside, plumping up a pillow and repositioning it so that she can lean against the headboard. "I know you say you're sorry, Sherlock, but I can't. I just can't do that again, so you understand?" She wants to cut right to the chase, slice out all of the unnecessary griping and moaning and just say what needs to be said. "If I let you back into my heart, which I will whether or not I want to, because you never really left it, I won't be able to—" she pauses, trying to think of how to word something that she still can't think about without tears pricking at her eyes "—I won't be able to watch you die again, Sherlock. It would really kill me."
His hand gently settles over her, light as a feather from a fallen angel, and she turns her palm up slowly and grips him tightly. She keeps her gaze locked on the brown floral bedspread and whispers, "I can't live without you, Sherlock."
"You did once," he whispers back, deep voice rasping in his throat. "You can again if you have to."
She laughs humourlessly, the sound twisted and dull. "That wasn't living. That was existing. Surviving. Clinging to nothing."
"Jane . . ."
"No, Sherlock. If you want me to forgive you, really forgive you, you have to promise me you will. Never. Ever. Ever.Do. That. Again." She enunciates clearly and pauses between the words, her eyes boring into his, brimming with emotion. He stares back with a wide gaze, then nods very slowly.
"I promise. I'll . . . If ever something like Moriarty happens again, I swear, I will find another way." He swallows noisily, not a sound he usually makes, and finally tears his eyes away from her tired face. "I can't live without you, either, though," he says so softly she half thinks she imagined it, imagined the hush of words that spill forth, desperate and scared and full of something most call love. "Jane, you think it was hard for you," he backtracks, tripping over his words, "No, it was hard for you, but it was just as hard for me. I had to disappear, Jane, I had nobody, no home, nothing, but at least you still had everyone here. I wouldn't have traded your safety for anything, but it still hurt. I'm not a machine or ice, I can feel the wings of despair just as well as you." He drags his face back up to hers, only a few inches apart, and she can see the individual teardrops that cling precariously to his dark lashes, unspilled even as he pours out all the pain his has hidden in himself for three years and the weeks that he has been here again. "I'm sorry," he adds again, a broken, begging note in his voice.
"You are forgiven, Sherlock Holmes," she says, gently, kindly, because what else is there to say? She can't not forgive him, not after watching his eyes glimmer with those unshed tears and hear him stumble over his speech, can't not let him slip right back into her essence, nestling beside her soul.
He smiles, leaning forward and touching his forehead to hers. His warm breath tickles her cheeks when he speaks. "I love you."
Those three simple words, spoken hundreds of millions of times every bloody day by hundreds of millions of people, warm her to the core, melting the last vestiges of clinging ice that she hadn't even known was there. "Then kiss me," she whispers, and it's different from any other time before. His lips are cold and hot at the same time, burning bright like frozen ice, hard and soft and fierce and so, sodelicious, melting against her mouth in a smoothly throbbing rhythm. They've kissed before, before he disappeared, and once when he returned, because she was so shocked and startled and pleased and angered all at once, and adrenaline does strange things to high emotions, but this is like relearning something that used to be beautiful and is now infinitely more so.
"Jane," he murmurs, softly, reverently, pulling away half an inch so that he can speak. "Jane. I'm sorry."
"Shhh," she whispers gently in return, her heart feeling lighter than it has in years. "I get it, we'll be okay."
His lips quirk into a smile, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and his breath is warmer than the sunshine pouring through the window. "I promise."