So like I said, I rewatched TEH, and wow I totally get where John is coming from this season after a refresher on this episode.
I mean, Sherlock treats him like dirt. We see the one fateful moment when he flips out while pulling John out of the fire, but John doesn’t (till later, when he’s floored by it). But other than that, we get:
(TL;DR: Sherlock is really horrible to John until he isn’t, and what John knows by the end of it all is that he’s the one thing that can reliably fuck Sherlock up.)
- Sherlock repeatedly joking while John is freaking out.
- Sherlock having told Mycroft, Molly, his parents, and 25 assorted people but not John. And why? Because John “might have let the cat out of the bag.” (As opposed to his parents, who failed to so much as bother attending the funeral?) Maybe he had another reason—but if so, he never shares it. He leaves John with that as his only explanation. ”I didn’t trust you enough to think you’d keep your mouth shut.”
- The prank in the train car, which whether you think Sherlock meant the apology there or not, from John’s perspective can only look like Sherlock pranking him to make him say nice things about him—and then laughing at the expression on John’s face when he does. Sherlock barely even acknowledges what John has given him.
And yes, we the viewers can see the quaver of Sherlock’s mouth when he realizes that John is deeply upset rather than pleased. We can see how he really is desperate to hear John tell him that he’s forgiven. But in every case, John is far too deeply emotionally compromised for it to be reasonable to expect him to notice anything else.
Sherlock never shows him. In fact, the way Sherlock treats him, anyone in John’s position would reasonably assume the opposite: that Sherlock doesn’t really care all that much. That this was all a funny, fun game to him and he’s only moderately regretful about how much he hurt John.
And as for the apologies: Sherlock apologizes three times. The first time, John doesn’t even accept it because, as he says, he knows Sherlock will say ‘sorry’ just because he knows that’s what he’s supposed to say. The second time, at Baker Street, Sherlock apologizes twice. The first is flippant…and then he pauses and says it for real. So John does at least get a real, meaningful apology out of him during the course of the episode.
The third time, in the train car—you know, the first time I thought it was really touching, but listening to it again it has the same wooden tone Sherlock uses when he says things he doesn’t mean. He’s speaking for the drama, not because he really means it. He does, just as John accuses, want John to say nice things about him.
And we learn just how needless it really was for Sherlock to not tell John he wasn’t dead.
Well, to be fair it wasn’t needless in the moment. For those moments when Sherlock was on the roof, there was an assassin on John who needed to be taken out, and assassins on Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson (and we have no idea whether Mycroft had men covering them or not—Sherlock seemed genuinely alarmed that Moriarty had singled out more than John). For those moments, John did indeed need to legitimately believe he was watching Sherlock die.
For the two years after, that was when there was no reason not to tell John. Even Mycroft was surprised to learn that Sherlock hadn’t ever said anything to him.
And it’s really clear after a second watch that Sherlock really didn’t need to make John say the words to be forgiven. John really had already effectively forgiven Sherlock at the point he was kidnapped. And it can’t have been many days. We had maybe one, when Sherlock’s hanging out with Mycroft. And maybe another when he tried to talk to John and got told to fuck off (or was that Sherlock’s way of describing the restaurant?) And then all the stuff with John at work and Sherlock with Molly was just one day, since Mary and Molly were wearing the same clothes the entire time.
So apparently John wasn’t all that angry to begin with, once he got past the initial shock. At least not angry enough to stay away from Sherlock.
And then the whole thing with the train car and how Sherlock conceives of his trick. Because he probably wasn’t expecting the bomb to activate while they were inside, but once it does, there’s only a moment when he doesn’t have the situation under control (he does get credit for those being the seconds in which he tells John to run). But right after that, he digs up the thing about a switch from his mind palace, because he was was looking for it, rooting around and muttering, “Where…”
So he really truly does treat John abominably in this episode. And the conversation at the end is still horrible. John’s asking him if he was there for John’s breakdown at his grave when he said goodbye, and Sherlock says he was, and with the music and all it’s clearly supposed to be touching, but how? Sherlock doesn’t give him any kind of reassurance or explanation or anything, and it really comes off reading more like, “Yes, I heard you wishing for me and grieving and I basically just fucked off.”
John, you damaged, needy little monkey.
But it really does explain the rest of the season. Why the hell would John possibly think Sherlock cares as much for him as John does for Sherlock? There’s absolutely zero evidence for it, from where he’s standing. I mean, obviously Sherlock cares some, but John has no reason to believe that the depth of need and desire on Sherlock’s side is equivalent, and Sherlock continues to be nice to him only when John’s too emotionally compromised to notice and to give him big old “fuck off” signals whenever John seems to be in danger of suspecting that Sherlock might actually love him. Ivyblossom said it better than I can about the dance of confusion between them (I think; was it Ivy? I can’t find it now or I would link it.).
Till John sees Sherlock in the video at CAM’s place, of course. And then he’s horrified, because what he’s seeing is not just that Sherlock cares about John, but that Sherlock is endangered by caring about John. John is the one lever that anybody can pull whenever they want to get to Sherlock.
(And given that this whole season is basically a documentary about Sherlock’s inability to stop getting over-emotional and fucking up whenever it comes to John, he’s got a good point there.)
What John’s thinking on the tarmac could very possibly be, “He’s better off without me.”