"Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock blinked and stared at the officiant. "Yes?" The man sighed and looked at the man whose hands enclosed his own. John's hands. Sherlock could fill a journal with deductions of those hands.

"Mr. Holmes, your vows."

Sherlock looked from the priest (actually a former butcher, but he hadn't bothered to let John know) to the crowd of friends and family. Molly gave him a slight nod, only noticeable to an eye searching desperately for a hint of encouragement. Sherlock nodded back then turned his gaze to the man before him. "My vows."

"Our last goodbye, one that will, hopefully, be our very last, was silent. And it was loud. Deafening. Silent in the words I spoke to you. Loud with every thought my tongue refused to give to you. I remember the days after the tarmac, when we both remained bound by forces too strong to resist. I was wrong then, John. There was no East Wind coming. It was already there."

"I have to correct you on something, John. Something you said. Something I heard but had no right to hear. You said that you were so alone, and that you owed me so much. I learned of these words unfairly, but I beg you not to think that what I am to say is the same. The loneliness you felt before meeting me is but a blink in the universe compared to the loneliness I felt after our last and very last goodbye. A part of me died, the part that believed our love to be fated to oblivion. Fated to be forever unspoken. There is nothing worse than to lie in bed each night with the ghost of one's love curled up beside."

"Words unspoken. The term must have been made for us, John. From the beginning of our journey to the end, our love was quiet. There were so many times I wanted to speak, to confess, but fear sewed shut my lips. I once said that love was vicious motivator. I was wrong. Fear of love is far greater, and it was that fear that kept us apart. It kept us apart through life and death and loss until the day I broke your heart. I am so sorry, John, for breaking your heart."

"I believed my chances with you were done. I believed I would see you everywhere. And I did. In the absence in my bed, in the emptiness of your chair, in the unforgettable lack of you from my existence—I saw you. All I wanted, all I needed, was to find somebody. I told myself that the hole ripped through me could be filled. But I was wrong, because you shared that same hole, John. Like we were made to be together or apart and forever incomplete."

"The actions that brought us back together do not matter, John. It is the actions of our past and the actions of our future that tie me to you now. I cannot imagine my life without you, and because of it I will say the words that filled our past with silence and will fill our future with a loudness to reach the stars. It is the words unspoken and the words I speak today. John Watson, I have always loved you and will love you until the end of time. I vow to love you, my dear Watson, not unspoken, forevermore."