watsonshoneybee:John: “I’m a storyteller, I know when I’m in one.”Sherlock: “Of course…of course...

watsonshoneybee:

John: “I’m a storyteller, I know when I’m in one.”

Sherlock: “Of course…of course you do, John.”

In reality, John is also caught in a ‘story:’ the fiction of his reconciled marriage to Mary and the fiction of Mary’s identity. Sherlock is realizing that John knows that this fiction is false; John knows that he cannot go back to the fiction that existed prior to Mary shooting Sherlock because it wasn’t real.

Throughout TAB we see Sherlock trying to reconcile Mary’s identity with John’s apparent choice to forgive her; he goes to lengths to imagine a worthy cause for her (women’s suffrage) because in reality she doesn’t have one. He imagines her aligned with Mycroft, but can’t help but code her as untrustworthy by imagining her taking Mycroft’s bribes to spy on Sherlock. He imagines her as deceiving John and ignoring John, while John barely notices her undercover life as though he doesn’t care. But then we come to the waterfall, and John tells Sherlock that he needs to go back to reality, and John also tells Sherlock (read: Sherlock tells himself that John has this knowledge) that John knows what is and isn’t real. 

Sherlock realizes that not only is he better with John, stronger with John (made stronger by sentiment), he finally realizes that John’s forgiveness of Mary wasn’t genuine. John isn’t abandoning him, he’s living in a story world right now–to protect Sherlock, to protect himself, to protect the baby–but John is coming back to him. That’s when Sherlock really decides to wake up. It’s not just that there’s always two of them: it’s that there’s only the two of them. 

Nice observation.