She had sad dew drops floating down her cheeks and he had angry-stained knuckles aching to destroy cities and hopes and loves.

She had fire in her hands and it was melting the ice in his heart, leaking through his eyelashes.

He had walls surrounding himself and she was never a good climber.

They start with indelicate rush, with shattered glass on the lab floor and hushed moans behind closed doors, with notes forgotten on coats and midnight encounters far from anyone's view.

It continues with lingering stares and secrets that weigh too much on her shoulders, the ones he kisses so carelessly.

They are no fairytale lovers and his maddening need for solitude is like a curse in a language long gone: she doesn't even understand what's harming her so much.

Her insufferable good heart makes him so angry to the point of no return.

He's breaking the golden girl into tiny pieces and selling her broken parts below market rate.

He's destroying the most beautiful thing he ever had.

And her gaze pierced through his brain straight into a land called "self-condemnation", where the desire to kiss her matched the need to apologize for this, for all of this.

He was so sorry he couldn't be what she deserved.

They start with John asking "where are we going?" and his inexplicable impulse to say 'home' as his steps lead them to Saint Bartholomew's hospital.

-/-

He had abjured from all this a long time ago, lacing promises and oaths with the dynamite that destroyed his universe.

He had written a contract with blood and it was unbreakable.

He was chained to his past and he couldn't drown her warm eyes and her kind smile and her easy laugh and her auburn hair and her steady hands and her sweet voice with the anchors in his mind.

His heart was a scorched earth and he wouldn't let her kisses heal him.

He would kill all the roses.

Mycroft had a tiny scar under his right elbow.

Sherlock had one on his left ankle.

The third Holmes' brother had a memorial near a cliff.

(It started with his "come on come on, let's go faster!" and it ended with the agonizing scream of a 16 year old boy.)

(Mycroft never drove again.)

(Sherlock never raced again.)

(The other one's heart never beat again.)

("SHERLOCK HELP US!")

(And he picked the ginger boy instead of the brunette.)

(And of the three, the one who died was the only one who forgave him.)

He had a one-way ticket to a burdened conscience and he was not gonna take anyone with him.

He would kill no one with his selfish love ever again.

-/-