AN: My first foray into writing Sherlock fanfiction, this was an idea that attacked me while I was trying to write a completely different Sherlock fic, and wouldn't let go until I had stopped what I was doing and wrote it out. It was prompted by an image I saw online of several of the recent Holmes-and-Watson incarnations, all under the words "In a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you." The title comes from Sherlock and Mind-Palace-Mycroft's words to each other in 'The Sign of Three'.
I also want to point out that the opinions expressed here are supposed to be Sherlock's and not the author's.
Co-in-ci-dence
noun
1.
a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection
synonyms: accident, chance, serendipity, fortuity, providence, happenstance, fate.
Coincidences were always a bit of a sore spot for Sherlock Holmes.
It wasn't that he didn't believe in them, per say; it was just that, in his chosen field, it was a bit rare. If something just looked like a coincidence, then more often than not it wasn't, and was or could be a key point in solving the crime. A random turn of events? Highly unlikely; the universe is rarely so lazy.
That being said, they did happen every now and then, and when they did it almost always managed to throw the detective off his game a little, much to Sherlock's chagrin.
Perhaps is was due to the way he saw the world, with its patterns and puzzles. Just the sheer randomness of it was an affront to all the detective stood for, his reasoning and deductions. Every action had a reaction (A man writes a letter in ink, leaves ink stains on his shirtsleeve - obviously he was in a hurry or he would have noticed before he left the office), and every event had a reason behind it, no matter how silly (The woman woke up early today because she was nervous - obvious from the way her fingernails had been bitten - but what was she nervous about? Her unpaid bills? Her job? Her plan to kill her husband? Obviously the latter, she didn't care about her job and she's never been bad off financially). But a coincidence was complete happenstance that came to be regardless of odds or the motivations of those involved. Completely accidental and circumstantial.
It was positively hateful.
After all, nothing could throw off a good investigation like a completely random coincidence. He could puzzle over a particular piece of evidence for days before conceding defeat and admitting that yes, the wind did just happen to blow that little piece of rubbish into the victim's garden, and no, there wasn't any special reason behind it.
Those particular circumstances never failed to put Sherlock, and then John, in a foul mood (because obviously if Sherlock was in a bad mood, it wasn't long before he put John in one as well). It was during one of these moods, when Sherlock was going on about the ridiculousness and improbability of coincidences, that John pointed out the two of them meeting that day at Bart's could be considered a coincidence.
Outwardly, Sherlock had simply scoffed and continued his monologue as though John hadn't spoken.
Inwardly, though, Sherlock felt as though he'd been dunked in ice water...Because once he'd thought about it and run several different scenarios in his head, John was completely right. And once the realization had hit him, the consulting detective found it very difficult not to obsess over it.
It really had been a complete coincidence that John just happened to be walking in the park that day, the same day Mike Stamford had been there, and passed him. The odds of that happening, and on the same day Sherlock had remarked upon needing a flatmate, were ridiculously low.
The odds of Sherlock finding the perfect flatmate on his first day of looking were even lower.
Sherlock should know. He had figured them.
In fact, the odds of being a soldier shot while abroad in Afghanistan, invalidated home, and then succumbing to depression and then possibly suicide were much, much greater - but Sherlock didn't like to think about that.
In the end, though, after running endless odds and countless scenarios in his head, that was one of the most maddening things he thought about: He owed his meeting of John Watson entirely to coincidence.
Once, in one of his more childish moods, he'd mentioned this to Mrs. Hudson.
She had simply shaken her head, tittered at him in her usual fashion, and said "Fate, dear," before proceeding to admonish him about the human toes he was keeping in his refrigerator.
And that gave him a whole new set of twitchy feelings and irritation, because if there was something Sherlock Holmes hated more than coincidences, it was that word - fate.
Because while he could admit that coincidences happened ('When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth', after all), he absolutely and resolutely did not believe in the ridiculous concept of fate. He was a man of science and logic, and didn't have time to waste on blind faith and silly concepts of a preordained future through supernatural means. That was for children and ludicrous individuals in denial of the immediate world around them.
No, Sherlock Holmes didn't believe in fate, or destiny, or whatever one called it. He could believe in something being a coincidence far more than any of that nonsense.
And yet...well, despite all of that, and all of his logic and his arguments, he couldn't help feeling a little uneasy, either.
Because deep down, he still didn't quite believe meeting John Watson could have been a coincidence.
After all, the universe is rarely so lazy.
AN: Thanks for reading! Reviews and feedback are very much appreciated. :)