A/N: The inspiration for this fic was from the song "Tea & Toast" by Lucy Spraggan (X Factor). Beautiful song, highly recommended.
Disclaimer: I'm not here to make any profit out of those fics, just for entertainment.
Sherlock often wondered what the true purpose of life is.
He pondered that question ever since he came across Charles Darwin's book in his father's huge library when he was 4, and like a true Darwinist, he believed everything had its purpose, because if it didn't it wouldn't have existed at all.
When he was 6 years old, he truly believed it was to make his mummy and daddy happy, to make them proud, but then they sent him to a boarding school in some god-forsaken deserted place somewhere in the middle of Scotland and didn't even bother to send a car to pick him up for Christmas, so he eliminated that option when he grew older.
When he turned 11, and the only significant person left in his life was Mycroft, his 7 years older brother that was always there to fill-in the void left by their parents, he was completely positive the purpose of life was to grow up to be like his elder. But when his brother finished school, went-off to some far-away university and left him all alone, Sherlock decided he didn't want to be similar to his brother at all when he grew up.
When Sherlock was 16, he was convinced without a shadow of doubt that he found it – the purpose of life was to help people with his deductions, to help solve crimes in order to restore the discipline to the streets every night. But then a group kids his age called him a freak and beat him up, and he changed his mind. People didn't deserve to be helped.
When he was 21, Sherlock was addicted to Heroin, and his entire world focused on stimulating his mind every night because life was so dull, so boring and unworthy, and the only reason he didn't commit suicide and ended all of it was because Mycroft talked him out of it in an attempt to compensate for lost years, but Sherlock never forgave him.
When Sherlock was 26, he found a new passion – solving crimes to stimulate his mind, and he never allowed himself to get attached to people, just come over to the crime scene, solve the case, give his statements and walk away and wait for the next one. Never staying still long enough to see the man he had become. The man that was more of a machine than a real human.
When he turned 31, Sherlock Holmes met Dr. John Watson.
The good doctor was his complete opposite in almost everything; he dressed differently, thought differently, acted differently, looked differently and spoke differently, but they shared one thing – their addiction to Adrenaline. They would run through the streets of London like they owned them, solving crimes together and drawing closer after each case. Sherlock knew better than to let himself get attached to someone, but by the time he finally realized that he couldn't live without his blogger it was already too late.
So when after a particularly tough case John pulled him in and kissed him square on the lips, Sherlock found out that he didn't mind it at all.
For years afterwards he believed he finally found the purpose of life – to make John happy, give him everything he had and more because that was the least he could do for the man that saved his soul, but then he found a file on John's laptop that contained details about several adoption agencies, everything changed.
When Sherlock was 37 and John was 40 they adopted a beautiful baby girl called Beatrice.
By that time Sherlock was utterly and completely positive that the purpose of life was to raise a child to be good, and that belief lead his life into dedicating it to the raising of his baby girl, educating her, giving her everything she wanted and needed along with his life-partner, John.
Finally, he thought, finally he found the answer to the long-asked question.
But… decades later, when he sat by John death-bed and they were both old and he knew he would soon follow his husband, his 45-year-old daughter walked in with her husband and her 17-year-old twins,
Sherlock thought,
That maybe,
Just maybe,
Life didn't need to have a definite purpose at all.