My rating is for self-harm, suicide attempt, and explicit sexual content (later). I'm sorry to anyone who finds this first bit triggering. I suffer from these things myself and I understand how triggering it can be to hear about it or read about it or see it in or on someone else. If you can believe it, writing this has helped me some.

"High functioning sociopath", that was Sherlock's label for himself and he had lived his life accordingly. His label was his everything. After all, who are you if not the labels you give yourself?

He began to develop this label even before he knew the term or he read the DSM. He developed this sense of self when feelings were too much, when it was just too much to have them at all. He conceived of a break with two options: he could be emotive and crack under the scrutiny and hatred that surrounded him or he could not feel it, any of it. Not care about anything at all. He went through his teenage years, forcing himself to drown out the talk of others, reciting to himself that they were idiotic and could never understand and it was true; they could never understand what it was like in Sherlock's head. And so, he told himself that nothing they said mattered, to feel nothing when he was accosted by their words and maybe accost them back a little and a little developed into a lot as he became more and more guiltless.

Then, one day, much later and when he'd already embraced this unfeeling self, he read about Antisocial Personality Disorder and what it means to be a sociopath and thought it so wonderful. He had a lot of the criteria met already and developed the rest until he himself couldn't tell where what he'd learned separated from what he was.

He would not give this up. It was his saving grace. He could be the callous genius, not caring if the whispers behind his back thought him sick, twisted, and even capable of murder. He could feel no guilt about outing an affair or finding a murder to be a wonderful and exciting puzzle. He could manipulate Molly with a comment about her shoes or some nonsense and not care that he was dragging her along, only that he got what he wanted. It was liberating.

And so, every day he woke up and he went through the motions. Until one day was somehow different from the others: the day he met John. This was of course something that he did not allow himself to think at the time or for long afterwards. But the feelings started to creep back in that day.

He resisted it with every cell in his body.

People would comment on how they were a couple and John would even proposition him and he would push it aside. He was a sociopath. He didn't feel these things. Why couldn't they just understand? They were idiots; he knew it. They did not see things they way he saw them. They believed in love conquering all and all that blather and they saw what they wanted. They saw that John tolerated him and they declared that they must be a couple. It was cliché.

And yet, the slippery fingers of sentiment started eroding at whatever small crack they could find in his constructed mask. He pushed back as hard as he could. He maintained his cool exterior, when turning John down at Angelo's. He kept his biting tongue, when he told John he was an idiot at any chance he got. He preserved his manipulative ways, getting John to do absurd things to prove a point.

But nothing could keep the fingers from doing their work. He hesitated at Angelo's and felt appreciative of John's reassurance. He complimented John, telling him that he was a brilliant conductor of light. He did these things without meaning to and it rattled him.

The fingers got their first big break, when he saw the bomb strapped to John, and the feelings really started to rush back then. After that night, he tried to push back even harder. He gave Irene Adler his attention for a while. He had to admit that he found her intriguing; her intellect, her ambition, it was all so refreshing. Surrounded by incompetent criminals who he took down within the day, she arose as a competitor and a companion. She was a challenge and so very much not like John. She was like Sherlock: cold and cunning and taking no mercy. He liked it. With Irene there was no expectation of humanity, just an interest in his intellect, which she then in turn matched with her own almost perfectly, almost. He enjoyed her presence in a sea of vacant expressions and in this enjoyment was the added benefit that she not only acted as a distraction from the incessant reminder that he ought to be different and ought to try to be different, but also as the wedge between he and John, a potential stopper to kill the damnable flow. She was the convenient and novel combination of a person he could respect and person who could unknowingly serve a great purpose. John would count the text messages and watch him mourn the loss of a genuinely intelligent individual, a true colleague, and this mourning was at least reassuring in its drop of potential that this rift would kill the spill for sure and then he would repair the damage to his identity. What kept some of his disappointment at her loss at bay was the thought that at least all might be well at last for his construction; even if he had lost a companion, he would not lose what was left of his sanity.

But John was annoyingly good at dealing with Sherlock's blows. He met his insults remarkably well, taking a walk and returning good as new. John adjusted to Sherlock's actions, indulging his bored phases and even eventually becoming his personal consulting PR man. He told him how to behave in public, when he'd crossed the line (and to Sherlock's horror he took the advice).

John took it all in stride.

Nothing Sherlock did kept John out and stopped the feelings, but nothing could stop Sherlock from trying to preserve his identity. He hypothesized that if he didn't have his identity, then he would crumble. He had pretty good logic to back it up, he thought. This hypothesis did not need to be tested. It was basically a fact.

Maybe one thing could stop his reconstructive efforts: Moriarty threatening the lives of his friends, John's life. In the fraction of time that he had to decide, he let down one of his dams just a little and he felt something. He couldn't let John die. Absolutely not.

So, he put his plan in action. He jumped.

Since being "dead", Sherlock hid and assisted his brother in deducing the locations of the three gunmen and taking them out one-by-one, killing their orders with them. All the while, he thought about that dam he'd let down. He's never been able to properly put it back up again. It was leaking endlessly.

He stared at John at his grave and he hurt. He sat alone in his new secret flat and he felt lonely. He was terrified by these feelings and what they meant. The world was beginning to crash in on him and all he wanted to do was be with John again. During those times, he reminded himself that he had work to do, a puzzle! There was one assassin left, John's, the most elusive.

He'd just deduced his location and he'd just sent Mycroft the final text, when he got the phone call.