#john's guilt

[inevitably-johnlocked]

hello steph! i hope you enjoyed the con - you looked beautiful in the pics! anyways, i sent in an ask a little over a month ago that i haven't seen you answer so i thought i'd try again (i hope this is okay). i'm just wondering if you can point me in the right direction (your own explanation or meta on the subject) re: the breakdown of events in tld. i'm mostly confused as to why john is seen recording his version of ~some?~ events to lestrade ??? i'm so confused by the inclusion of that? SOS :(

Hi Nonny!

Sorry for the delay… I get literally a dozen asks a day, and I don’t always have answers right away when I get them. Thank you for your kind words about the pics of me at con – all lies, but appreciated, LOL. 

Honestly I don’t really have a good answer about TLD… a lot of it doesn’t really make much sense if we’re to take it at face value. I personally feel that TLD is a false narrative, possibly altered by either “Eurus” (who I don’t even believe is real), the TD-12 drug altering perceptions (why introduce it otherwise?), or it’s someone’s Unreliable Narration of events. I have a feeling though that we will never know :/ You might find some interesting reads further down in my ‘tld meta’ tag, so you can peruse that if you like.

What bugs me about the Lestrade thing, even, is that apparently Lestrade knows about events he possibly can’t know about, especially if there was a D-Notice slapped on the Magnussen thing. Like did John NOT get the memo about Mag’s shooting being confidential? And then he just blurts it out to Lestrade, ON RECORD, IN AN INTERROGATION. Has me thinking that TLD is in part John's POV, and in his head he's telling Lestrade about his guilt over hurting Sherlock in a metaphorical sense. But otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense. More to add to the Fucky pile, in my opinion.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

If pretty much everything in TLD can be taken as John's interpretation/memory/guilt about past events (Sherlock on drugs=HLV, attacking Sherlock=TEH etc) then Mrs Hudson telling John "if Sherlock Holmes dies you will not have me" is telling us that the reason (or at least one of the main reasons) that John broke off contact with Mrs Hudson after TRF is that he knew how much she loved and was protective of Sherlock, and he thought that she blamed him for Sherlock's suicide.

Hey wow Nonny, ouch. But yes, most likely true. I think John still blames himself for Sherlock’s suicide – and later him leaving John to grieve – and just doesn’t know where to direct the guilt and anger that was pointless for two years. The inner turmoil John must have felt since Sherlock’s return in TEH has been building for YEARS at this point – “So why did I grieve for two years? Boy that was a waste of my time? Does he even care how I feel? Does he know what that did to me? What was the point? Was it my fault? Did he leave because of me? Why did he leave without me then (I could have helped!)?  – and John, probably not really having talked about it in those years EVER, just let it stew and fester and finally the dam just breaks. John is mad at himself, not Sherlock. He has trust issues, put all his trust, faith and love into Sherlock, and Sherlock betrayed him. Top that all off with a Mary cupcake of manipulation, lying and emotional abuse and John is just DONE with everything. John is a troubled and tortured soul, and Sherlock is trying everything in his power to help him.