Love is not a game

 (Sherlock meta by heart-knows-no-shame, cumbercougars and bassfanimation)

heart-knows-no-shame:

It’s been weeks and I’m just so struck by the fact that the whole theme of Sherlock throughout the years was…“The game is on!”. Sherlock using the distraction of his detective work as a substitute high, and honestly a way to keep himself at arms length from ‘humans’ and any emotional and/or romantic relationships of course.

And then there’s The Final Problem and in comes Eurus Holmes, setting up this game for Sherlock, and putting Molly Hooper’s life in danger, and during that call we get all this…

• Is this one of your stupid games? No, it’s not a game. 
• I’m not an experiment, Sherlock. No, I know you’re not an experiment, you’re my friend, we’re friends. 
• You know why. No, I don’t know why. 
• Because it’s true, Sherlock. It’s always been true. Well if it’s true then just say it anyway. 
• Say it like you mean it. I love you. I love you. 

He spends the whole phone call worried and pleading and as soon as it’s done he tries to shut all that off and get back to the game so he says…”Eurus, I won, I won…I won, I saved Molly Hooper.” 

But then you have Eurus coming back with that emotional context speech and being like, Haha nope, silly boy, you just lost, you proved yourself wrong, you have emotions, you do care. 

And the writers had Eurus use Molly Hooper against Sherlock, like this, to facilitate this exact epiphany, (disapproving everything he’s said over the years, that he’s not a hero, that he doesn’t have a heart) because Molly Hooper does count, she matters the most, he loves her, and love is not a game.

And  I just can’t get over how important that scene was [...] for Sherlock’s  entire arc of character development !

cumbercougars:

The “…if it’s true, say it anyway…” is even more poignant in repeated watchings because that’s when the penny drops with him. It makes my heart ache for both of them.

bassfanimation:

I still cant get over the fact that this scene essentially broke down Sherlock’s character into it’s purest, rawest form. A man finally letting himself love. For real. The game is over, his game with himself is over. This finally frees him from his own cold chains and he sees that the game never was fun, it was never who he was supposed to be. Molly saw that from the beginning…saw through his “bullshit”, his "game". Now everyone else knows Sherlock does have a heart…all thanks to Eurus Holmes and Molly Hooper, and of course everyone who loves Sherlock. But Molly was the key…the last door that unlocked that made it all possible. “You made it all possible.” “What do you need?” “You.”