No
John had never seen Sherlock cry before.
He had heard him cry once. On the phone. It seemed like an eternity ago. That one day where the unthinkable happened, back when John had thought that he and Sherlock had had all the time in the world. That one day where he saw the world shatter before his eyes, the world with dead blue eyes and red blood streaks and no pulse in his pale wrist. That day he thought he would never be able to cope. Never be able to move on. Never forget.
But he did. He had. It seemed impossible, but slowly he had healed. There was still a part of his heart that seemed to have died along with Sherlock, but the rest of it was still pumping, still working. And he had given it all to Mary, to lovely Mary Morstan, soon to be Mary Watson. She had taken his place. Sherlock did not exist anymore. Sherlock did not matter.
So why was his stomach sinking and his throat tight as he stared at the man who did not exist?
So why, for one second after seeing that Sherlock is back, did he feel an inexplicable happiness, a joy so profound that it felt as if his damaged heart had been fixed just by the presence of him?
And why did it feel so torturous, so impossibly painful, when he realized that none of it even matters, and the happiness will eventually fade, because he knew there was only one outcome of this anyway?
It was his wedding day. He had been so aware of each second passing by, knowing that he would remember this day for the rest of his life, the day he would wed his wife Mary. So why, he thought, why did he have to choose this day to come back? The day that was supposed to seal his life shut forever, the day that would prove to John Watson that those brief years he spent with Sherlock Holmes were, undoubtedly, the best years of his life…years that would never repeat themselves.
And as John stood in the empty hall, just an hour before his wedding, looking his best, tainting his tuxedo with tears as he stared at his past, the man standing in front of him with this god-forsaken look of complete hopelessness on his pale white face and pale blue eyes, his past coming to overtake his future, and before John could open his mouth or blink or let his heart cease aching so terribly, the name that he had thought he would never think of again floated up and filled his entire mind:
Sherlock Holmes.
"Did you ever love me?" Sherlock whispered.
The well-remembered voice brought back a surge of memories. Memories from those few years, those brief, brief years that John had thought he had forgotten.
He didn't. He never had. And he somehow he knew he never will.
There were tears running down Sherlock's pale, thin face. He already knows, John thought. He already knows the answer to his question; he is only asking because he is hoping against all odds that he is wrong.
John's mind was in a deafening silence, a cacophony of absolute nothingness combined with voices telling him to say YES, YES, COME BACK, PLEASE, THERE IS NOTHING I WANT MORE THAN YOU TO FINALLY COME BACK, NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON I CARE ABOUT, THE ONLY PERSON I EVER WILL CARE ABOUT…
But then he thought of his soon-to-be wife.
He thought about how beautiful she looked the first time they met. He thought of how kind and sweet she had been when he told her about Sherlock's "death". He thought of all the promises he had made to her, and he thought of how he had never broken any of them, and how he wasn't about to start now.
He thought about the wedding. Children. A future.
He thought about how long it had taken and how hard it was to convince himself that Sherlock didn't matter, that he never did matter, that he was just a strange man that he used to know, for a few brief years that he will never be able to get back…
And it was at that moment that John realized how perfectly easy it would be to utter it. One word, two letters, one syllable. And he also realized how perfectly difficult it would be to gather the courage to form that one word in the first place, and to say it out loud; how extremely painful it would be to tell the biggest lie of John Watson's entire life.
"Did you ever love me?"
"No."