What John thinks about Irene
(Sherlock Meta by xistentialangst, cloisteredself and Pretty Arbitrary)

xistentialangst:

"[She] Got herself on a witness protection scheme, apparently."



I love John’s face in this last gif. It’s like “heh, I forgot; you’re SHERLOCK” followed by sadness that Sherlock is incapable of feeling normal attachment to anyone and a hint of tragic “he’ll never feel it for me either”.  Lord, Martin.

cloisteredself:

This, to me, is one of the clearest scenes to demonstrate John feelings for Sherlock. It’s plain on his face and there’s really nothing else going on in the scene to explain away what’s going on. At the end of TSoT there’s a lot of stuff on johns face, but there’s so much in his heart at that moment that it’s hard to be precisely confident about what he’s telling us on screen.

But in this scene, he’s only really reacting to one thing, Sherlock’s (apparently) cold dismissal of Irene. And since Martin is utterly brilliant it’s a clear read of the emotions he’s feeling.

Pretty Arbitrary:

This entire episode is a paean to pining!John, and it actually explains a lot about the conclusions he comes to regarding Sherlock after.

He spends most of the episode being jealous of Sherlock’s interest in Irene, and being shut out.  Sherlock won’t tell him what’s happening, won’t let him see the phone, literally shuts a door in John’s face when he’s opening the package.  Meanwhile, John’s counting the number of text messages and trying to figure out what’s going on, how he can help. When John confronts Irene, he’s angry.  He simultaneously wants to protect Sherlock’s heart, and he wants Irene to go away.

And just in case anyone had doubts about John’s jealousy and attachment, Irene calls him out on the couple thing.

So then Irene shows up in Sherlock’s bed.  And John, finally, gives up.  He cedes the battle, leaves the two of them alone to get together.

And that’s when the truth comes out.  John misses the entire denouement of the case—the thing he lives for, the thing that sends that spike of excitement through his veins and makes him stare at Sherlock like he lit the stars in the sky.  The moment that, frankly, the show and the actors have a habit of playing a lot like an orgasm (Sherlock’s ‘Oh!’ face, and hey, remember John’s post-coital ‘oh, oh, Sherlock’ in the Great Game in front of the Vermeer?)  In this episode, John is left out.  That moment belongs to Sherlock and Irene.  (And it’s not even what John meant to give up.  He thought literal orgasms were going to be happening, not figurative ones.)

And then, a little while later, Mycroft comes to him and asks him to lie about Irene being dead.  Neither of them is sure whether it would break Sherlock’s heart or not, but they don’t want to take the chance.  John doesn’t even want to lie to Sherlock, but at the last minute he decides to, to protect him.

And Sherlock, knowing that he’s lying, knowing that he doesn’t have to, lets him.  Leaves John closed out.  Leaves John to believe that Sherlock chose Irene over John and that even so, Sherlock doesn’t really give a fuck about anyone or anything, even the woman that John let Sherlock go for.

So how should he think Sherlock feels about him?

Honestly, this has always made this episode leave a bad taste in my mouth.  Because by letting John walk away believing that Sherlock chose Irene over John and that John must carry the burden of knowing the truth about what happened to her, Sherlock IS choosing Irene over John.

Especially with his smug little phone-flip at the end, which says nothing but that he’s proud of himself for leaving everyone in the positions they’re in at the end of this episode.

It’s particularly nasty when you realize that nothing happens to change John’s mind about this being the truth between now and when Sherlock turns up at the restaurant a couple of years later, having left John to grieve painfully with no real reason that made it necessary or much apparent regret that he did so.