Wow, Sherlock is a MONSTER to John.
All that. He tells all those people, but never John. Because “Well, I was worried you might blab.” Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence there.
Two years and he swans back in, all caught up in this idea of making John’s wish come true, and NEVER ONCE did he ever give a single thought to John’s actual life or grief. Until he looks him in the face and realizes, “Oh, this wasn’t clever. It was just cruel.”
But THEN.
Yeah, he apologizes, but he lies about the police and then he pulls that prank in the train car, and after everything else that’s frankly fucking EMOTIONAL TORTURE to John. It’s not funny or cute. It’s vicious and flat-out traumatizing.
And, like, in a way I totally groove on that, because I LOVE Sherlock as a colossal asshole and, well, John’s big sad eyes. <3
But also I’m honestly kind of pissed at the opening with Sherlock getting beat up and the ‘oh, his two years away took their toll’ because FUCK YOU, Sherlock, that was YOUR choice, YOU swanned off for two years and abandoned everybody not because you needed to ~save anyone~ but because you wanted to go off and be CLEVER. They’d even already dealt with the fucking snipers, so you never even HAD to fake your death. You DELIBERATELY set up your best friend to apparently commit goddamn suicide in front of him—and that’s not just a death you grieve for, suicide fucks up the people you leave behind in almost unfathomable ways—and now you TORTURE him into admitting that he still loves you and because you don’t want to admit that what you did to him—and everyone else you lied to—sucks balls.
I mean. It’s a story. It makes him a total asshole of a character and just possibly that psychopath many of us spent quite a bit of time arguing that he actually wasn’t. Which is all legit, and it’s psychologically dark and twisted in a way I sort of like in a character. But I’m just saying. Keep the woobie!Sherlock away from me. After this, I find it apologist.