Oh my stars, I have so much homework to do. Which is why I am writing fanfic. *cough* I-might-be-a-procrastinator. Anyhoo, we have done it. This is the last chapter. I am putting a big shiny completed sign on this fic. This started as a simple 30 day OTP challenge, my first ever fic, but it morphed into so much more, yeah okay I'm being melodramatic, but I am Sherlockian, what do expect?

I cried tears of joy at all the amazing reviews. Thank you guys, thank you to anyone who took the time to read this. And a very special thank you to my best friend (okay, erm-maybe-a-little-bit-more) and the person who manages to keep me together- my dear MorMor with a's, I love you.

Thank you to all my fellow fangirls at school. Thanks to the one and only Maggie for being just as gay obsessed as I am.

Okay this is turning into a massive speech, but I want to add a message here, to anyone out there struggling with bullies, their parents, their sexuality or just life in general, go and check out "It gets better" on youtube (if you don't know it) this video helped me a lot.

I love you all.

Sherlock sat in that waiting room, he sat and he waited.

For the first time in his life, his mind was empty. Gone were all the clever remarks, the acute observations and the brilliant clarity in which he saw the world. How could he be expected to see the world when he didn't know if his was going to be taken away, after all? His world; that was what those doctors were operating on. Not just another human, his Entire World was splayed open on a cold steel slate, being poked and prodded, desperately being pieced back together like some macabre puzzle.

Sherlock sat in that waiting room, and he did not document time. He forgot about the ticking of those little cruel hands, because the longer he stayed in this little piece of oblivion, the longer he could know that John was still alive, somewhere, somehow. There was a tiny ray of hope.

Calendars and clocks haunt the best and worst of us. Our deepest fears lay enclosed in their garishly coloured pages and on their ornamental faces. Yet somehow, that waiting room seemed void of these ghosts.

Time didn't matter. John did.

Sherlock wanted to run in and shout at the nearest doctor.

It doenst matter if John's heart doesn't work, mine beats for him anyway.

Science didn't matter. John did.

Sherlock wished he could get al the minutes that was left of his life and just hand them to John.

He didn't matter. John did.

John. John. John.

And footsteps.

None of these immortal concepts are as important as footsteps.

Because that is the question we are asking ourselves.

When the grey blur of unknowingness in the waiting room ended, how many pairs of footsteps were heard walking up the stairs of 221B Baker Street?

Was it one solitary pair? A pair of footsteps that used to be filled with boundless energy and genius and, eventually, love bubbling over the edges. Footsteps that belong to a man who used to be married. A man that is now grief stricken. A man that slowly made room in his life when he found the one that was meant to run beside him. This man used to dream of retiring to a cottage in the countryside with John Watson. Used to, because John Watson blew into his life like a hurricane and suddenly gave him direction. He kept him right, but then he blew right out again. And maybe those footsteps were a bit heavier right now, the footsteps of a soul with a big rip where it was severed from something that was never meant to be cut from it.

Or, were there two pairs? One injured but healing and one more, alive and happy. Two pairs of footsteps that would continue to quietly trudge up these steps for years together, sometimes exhilarated, sometimes exhausted and sometimes ecstatic, but always together: where they belong.

So, were there two pairs?

No. There was just one slightly heavier pair.

But they weren't heaver for the reason you think.

Because that is the thing with love.

When you see just one pair of footsteps, it just means that one person was carrying the other.

So yes, there may have just been one pair of footsteps going up those stairs, but there were two souls in love.

And in the many coming years there would be more times that there is only one pair of footsteps. Because John will always carry Sherlock and Sherlock will always carry John.