Mary & John 

 (Sherlock meta by thelonelybrilliance)

There was something quite tragic and yet beautiful that Mary died without knowing that John slipped.

This isn’t to say that I’m happy John slipped, or that I think it was a small deal. I do think he was remorseful. I do think he is human.

John has more trust issues with his spouse than most people, and he’s done a really remarkable job of swallowing it down. He loves (loved! GAH MY HEART) Mary VERY MUCH. But new fatherhood is tough, and feeling on the outs from two of the most important people in his life from an intellectual/plotting standpoint–that can be difficult. All of this made it not OOC for me that John would get a little close to a dangerous line.

But. He pulled back. He pulled back and he was sorry and remembered that he loved his crazy little family and his adorable, dangerous, inscrutable wife with her little lace-up sneakers and her assassin’s past. And he wanted to tell her–he wanted to apologize. He wasn’t going to sweep it under the rug.

And then she died. I can only imagine that on top of everything else–all of John’s other insurmountable grief, he feels guilt. But Mary was a very different person than John was. In a way, I think (with the exception that surely she was sad to leave behind John and Rosie) Mary was content when she was dying. She had her shot, her crystalline perfect moment with a man she loved more than anything, even if she couldn’t stay because her past would always catch up with her.

So Mary knew she was always going to die. And Mary got to die looking at her perfect husband–a good man, a faithful man, who, yes, isn’t perfect, and yes, toyed with a possibility of indiscretion, but that doesn’t change who John Watson is and it didn’t distract her in that last moment from seeing who he was.