title from fall out boy.
take two years and call me when you're better
sherlock is not okay
I'm not okay.
I'm not okay.
I'm not—
.
Sherlock tells John to take his hand, and when he does—when they run far far away and hopefully into a world where his life isn't shattering into a tiny thousand fragments—Sherlock never looks back.
(Looking back would probably mean giving up and no one has ever taught him that before.)
.
Molly knows him almost as well as John does—perhaps more, and if he had time, maybe he would tried to figure out how much she knows.
But he doesn't have time because he is going to die he is going to die he is—
.
(—not okay.)
.
—and he is absolutely terrified.
.
When Sherlock was a boy, he was terrified of falling of shattering every bone in his body and never living independently again.
When he got older, it was the falling and losing your mind in the wind trying to push you back up.
Now, he is terrified of dying and watching his heart slip into the gutters where no one will ever try to find it again.
.
(Except, perhaps—if he is lucky—John.
John would follow him to the sun, and maybe that is more frightening than anything.)
.
(When he and John had first met, Sherlock thought nothing of it.
But then he learned that soldiers are not allowed to keep guns, and Sherlock thought that was odd because John follows all the rules—
Except—
Except, he knows John kept the gun within easy reach before he moved into Baker Street.
He kept the gun in a lock box in the closet back in the flat.)
.
Sherlock does not want to find John's heart in the gutter.
.
Molly promises to be waiting on the other side, and right before he spies John in the corner of his eye, that's all Sherlock can think about.
.
John's words echo in his head, bumping against the walls of his mind palace, as he throws his phone to the rooftop.
I'm not okay, he thinks.
But I will be.