He's so brilliant. He's got this…glow about him. When he makes his deductions. And then he looks at me and I feel like I'm part of it. I feel like I know things, like I'm part of something important.

I never thought I'd fall in love with someone like him. I've seen him at his best and his worst, when he's glowing with the fire of a new case and when he's doubting himself, and when he's been drugged by…someone. I hated her. He connected with her and the whole time I wanted to scream at him. I was about ready to kill someone.

When I realized he drugged me in Baskerville, I was furious. How could he do this to me? But then he smiled at me and it hit me that I wasn't angry. It also hit me that I was in love with him. It seems like a strange time to figure that out, but I knew he didn't know he was doing anything wrong. Like a child. The same glimpse I saw of him that night at the pool. He…needed me.

And then we were running through the street and he called out to me.
"Take my hand."

And I knew I would lose him if I didn't hold on. But then…then we got into a fight and I was yelling at him and I left. I'll never stop hating myself for leaving

I saw him on the roof.

And my world stopped.

It's my fault, Sherlock. I'm so sorry.

And now I stand in the graveyard and I realize he's gone. I walk to the cab and press my face into my hands, trying to hold back the sobs. I whisper it to myself.

"Sherlock Holmes, I love you."

For me, it was decided when he grabbed Jim and yelled at me to run. I've never felt terror and panic like that. All my life I've heard that I was a freak, a psychopath, that I was nothing. I knew that falling for him was a dangerous idea. I tried to tamp it down, shut it out, but by the time we were at Baskerville, my heart rate elevated every time I saw him.

I remember the first time I fell in love. It was with a boy, and when I let someone know, they told him. His friends beat me up behind the school.

They were idiots.

"Love is a dangerous disadvantage."
I was not talking to Irene when I said that. I was speaking to myself.

But I couldn't stop. I didn't want to.

And then I was standing on the building, holding my phone, trying to find a way to make John understand.

I knew then why people wanted love. It was dangerous and beautiful and destructive and everything I never knew I needed.

When I heard him at my grave, I walked deep into the graveyard and hid behind a statue. I cried for the first time in fifteen years. Into my hand, my face wet with tears, I said it.

"John Watson, I love you."