She is never quite sure just how it worked out like this. She can go through it, step by step in her memory, and still not reach a definitive answer - and she's tried, no doubt about that. It seems so important to know, to understand how she was so fortunate. To figure out what, exactly, the action or series of actions was that meant she deserves this.
There were misunderstandings, miscommunication. And no, she never felt like that for Miss Adler, though it was suspected by some. There were tragedies, faked and real. A dive off of a roof, though she never hit the ground. A bullet in her chest and it was all a world of pain, and she couldn't breathe but she knew that she couldn't let go either. It was close, so very close.
She pushes the memory from her mind, preferring not to dwell on the moment she'd stopped fighting and felt herself slipping away. It seemed right, the only reasonable response. What place was there left for her, after all? But there was that voice, whispering softly, and for that voice alone she was able to hold on.
(The voice, its breath ghosting over her cheek, both words and sense an anchor, holding her. The voice needed a safeguard, someone to watch out, even in secret. She could never forgive herself, were something to happen, whether or not she were there.)
It wasn't righted right away. There was much more to get through. Yet, that bullet changed the game and made the ending so much more tangible.
She can never let herself forget the moment when all of the pieces fell into place, their fingers intertwined, her eyes stinging with the force of the tears that she was too proud to let herself cry. (They slipped through, trickling in rivulets down her cheeks, and she can still feel them, in moments like this, when she remembers.) It is too important, too precious. And she can live it forever though there is no need to thanks to the reality she is in.
Sherlock Holmes smiles across the table at Josephine Watson, who doesn't see her being quite taken up with a running commentary of the newspaper headlines. It is all irrelevant, unimportant, nothing that could possibly have an impact on them. But her voice is music, filling her veins and swelling her heart and she could set it to the violin. She has, already, more times than she count, each composition infinitely precious for all that it represents.
Jo looks up, catching her eye and smiling, the words dying on her tongue. And everything is just beautiful.