"An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." - Ancient Chinese Proverb
This is a story about Sherlock Holmes. John Watson does not appear in person until the very end, so I'm sorry if that puts some of you off. There are hints of John throughout as the story builds, to keep us all sane, but this is a story about Sherlock - about his life, and about his thin red thread. Beta'd by the lovely RainDancer16, who helped keep me together and beat out this story.
(This work can now be found on AO3! archiveofourown(.)org/works/373088)
The world is full of red.
Red threads, everywhere, connecting everyone. One person to another.
It is believed the red thread appears sometime after the first few days of birth, always on the left ring finger. For some, whose connected will be younger, the thread won't appear until the other is born. Young children are fascinated when the thread is explained to them, and many spend free afternoons following their threads as far as they can before they tire, or their mother calls them to dinner.
When people are fortunate enough to meet their connected, the connection is never challenged. It is not uncommon to see two men or two women connected, or people of different social classes or races. Some people cross oceans and learn new languages to be with the person on the other end of their thread. Then of course, there is the 'traditional' match, between a man and a woman.
Some people spend all of their time following their threads searching for who they are connected to. It isn't uncommon to see men and women, young and old, staring at their left ring finger and onward, analyzing the space, following wherever it may lead. Others decide to wait, to find their connected when it's mean to be.
However, waiting can have consequences. Waiting means running the risk of watching your thread turn black. Black means death. It is not uncommon to see someone fall to the ground, clutching the space before them, with tears running down their face. They say nothing feels worse than watching your thread turn black, especially when you've never seen who is on the other end. Those left behind are usually found at the funeral, in the back, the most distraught of all.
Sometimes, if one is very lucky, a new thread will appear in the place of the black one.
The research behind these threads is extensive, but science can't seem to find any answers. Everyone knows they just appear, and can only be seen by the people the thread connects. They can tighten and tangle, grow longer or shorter, but they cannot be broken.
For Sherlock Holmes, the matter of his red thread was a complicated one.
Often, when he was not yet ten years old, he would sit and watch his thread move during the day, imagining what the person on the other end was doing. At night, he would look at it, taut and still and bright in the darkness, and imagine his connected sleeping, or reading, or perhaps watching their own end of the thread.
"Your eyes are going to fall out if you stare at that thread any longer." Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother, would often warn him. "It will happen when it is supposed to."
"Just because you don't want to see who is on the other end of yours…" Sherlock grumbled in response. "I just want to know who it is. Is it a boy or a girl? Are they tall? Short? Do they live in London? Do they even live in England? Would they mind me reading my books aloud?" Sherlock always had questions like these. Even at ten, he wanted to know everything.
When Sherlock reached his teen years he pushed the thread to the back of his mind. There were more important things to think about, like molecular structures and the way people's faces moved when they lied. Sherlock, lacking any sort of verbal filter, would call people on their faults, catch people when they lied, and spew unwanted information about a subject. People began calling him names.
Freak.
Know it all.
Sherlock tried to ignore these remarks. His classmates were beneath him. But there was a voice in the back of his mind that kept telling Sherlock his connected would think the same thing. That he would be rejected. He would have deleted his thread altogether but that is hard to do when it's tied around your left ring finger.
"It's quite a shame, I rather miss you puzzling over your thread when you were younger," Mycroft teased over the phone. He was away at university. "I feel if you were to meet your connected tomorrow, you would brush past them in favor of solving a mystery."
"Oh, and you wouldn't do the same if it meant you could worm your way into the government?" Sherlock shot back, his eyes settling on the thin red thread on his left ring finger. The circle was perfect, no knot or bow, just a loop and a perfectly connected line coming off of it. His eyes followed it until it hit the wall, passing through to where he could not see it.
"Dear brother, I have just accepted that we will meet when we will, if we ever do." Mycroft's voice was clipped and sharp, the teasing tone now gone. "It is not who I am to follow this thread to its end, and it never was. But I worry about you. There was a time you would have sailed across the earth, to the moon, and then back to find whoever was on the end of that thread."
"Well, I grew up." And I don't need to find someone who will hate me, Sherlock didn't add.
"You're fourteen, I hardly think that's grownup." Sherlock could practically hear his brother's eyes rolling.
"I've found more important things I'd rather focus on. For example, there's this case of a boy who drowned. I think it might have been foul play." Sherlock clenched his left hand, tearing his eyes away from the thread.
"Yes, Mummy told me you were meddling…Well…I see I cannot get through to you. I'll be home for Christmas."
When Sherlock decided to attend university to further his studies, he had more time to be distracted by the subject of threads. He'd seen many people passing each other on campus stop and stare at one another before moving close, entwining their left hands as if realizing they just found everything they had been searching for in the world. To see your thread reduced to the smallest link between you and your connected is said to be like having life breathed into you for the first time.
Everyone had the same look when they found their connected: lights in their eyes, a flush on their cheeks. Their mouths part ever so slightly, and their chests stop moving from the lack of breathing. It is the perfect picture of 'awestruck.' Though it's common courtesy to give two people their privacy when they first connect with each other, for some bystanders, it's hard to look away. Some reminisce about when they found their connected, others dream of when they will find theirs.
Sherlock found himself studying people when not focusing on academics. He would gather information about how people acted just after they came upon their connected. He would take notes on the behaviour of those who have just witnessed their thread turning black. He would question people about whether they had found theirs, if they were looking, if they were waiting, if they had given up.
When Mycroft questioned his actions he claimed it was just research. Mycroft assumed, quite rightly, it was actually so Sherlock would not think about his own thread.
When Sherlock was in his later college years, he acted as if he didn't have a thread at all. He had begun to fear that if he ever did meet the person on the other end of his thread, they wouldn't accept him. Who would? He talked out-loud; sometimes he didn't talk for days. He played violin at three in the morning, much to the chagrin of his neighbors. He had staring contests with a skull he nicked from the pre-med department. To most, he was a freak. A weirdo. That unnerving smart kid in the back of the classroom.
"Don't talk to him, he'll insult you."
"Don't let him see you, he'll know your whole life story."
"He thinks he's better than everyone else."
Well, of course he did. He was better than everyone else. Everyone else was dull. Boring. Stupid. They didn't see. Anything! It wasn't his fault he could notice details most people couldn't. He wasn't insulting, he was just telling the truth.
Not far into his Junior year, Sherlock met a boy named Sebastian who also said he had no thread. To Sherlock, who knew this was a lie (he had seen Sebastian staring at his ring finger three days before they officially introduced themselves to each other), this was the perfect opportunity to forget about the red burden on his left hand. So he took advantage of Sebastian.
They accompanied each other to parties. They had dinner together in each other's dorm rooms. They drank too much wine and made out often. Sherlock had to act quite a lot like a normal person for fear of driving Sebastian away, but the distraction was worth it.
At times, he even forgot about the thread that fit snugly on his left ring finger. But every night, after Sebastian went home, after they didn't sleep together, Sherlock would lay on his bed with his left arm outstretched, his fingers splayed. He would take note of which direction his thread was pointed. It was usually pointed to the South somewhere. He didn't know if this meant Southern England or Southern Europe. There was the possibility his connected was in France or even Africa somewhere. His pessimistic nature convinced him he was connected to a Spaniard who refused to leave home.
Sherlock and Sebastian stayed together for about a year. Sebastian grew used to Sherlock's quirks and put up with Sherlock's refusals of sex. Sherlock appreciated the company. The distraction. But things turned over sideways one night after some particularly heavy drinking.
"Sherlock, darling. It's been a year. Don't you think we've waited long enough?" Sebastian was lazily trying to unbutton Sherlock's blue silk shirt from his position next to Sherlock on the bed.
"Don't call me darling. You know I hate it." Sherlock said absently as he grabbed Sebastian's hand and pulled it to aside to get his fingers away from the buttons.
"You didn't answer my question." Sebastian said, disappointment evident on his face.
"And that, Sebastian, should be all the answer you need." Sherlock lifted his free hand and brushed the fringe out his eyes. Sebastian, ignoring the hint, lifted himself over his partner, brushing soft kisses to Sherlock's throat. Sherlock groaned, letting Sebastian kiss him, but batting away wandering hands from buttons and flies.
"But Sherly, darling. I want you." Sherlock could feel Sebastian smiling into the crook of his neck as he said this. He rolled his eyes at the nickname.
"Don't. Call me Sherly. I know ways to kill you that could be made to look like an accident." The kisses stopped momentarily, only to be replaced by a clever tongue tracing a vein up Sherlock's throat and ending with a nip just behind his ear.
Sherlock let Sebastian do as he pleased for a while, kissing back when his lips met Sherlock's own, keeping careful hold of the hips hovering above him. Then a hand slipped between his legs and he tensed, his hands gripping so hard,bruised dots would appear on Sebastian's skin the next day.
"Sebastian..." he gritted out, hoping the edge to his voice would be all that was needed to remove the unwanted hand.
But Sebastian just cupped his hand, running his palm over Sherlock's sex in a greedy manner. Sherlock wasn't one for second warnings, and, with surprising strength, flipped Sebastian onto his side. Sebastian's hand fell away in surprise. Sherlock sat up, avoiding looking his partner in the eye.
"Sherlock, what is your problem?" Sebastian was angry.
"I don't have a problem. You do." Sherlock still refused to look at Sebastian as he stood to cross the room and sit on the couch. "I told you no."
"Bloody hell, Sher, what's the big deal? It's just sex." Sebastian stood as well, his voice agitated. Sherlock sensed something was going wrong, something not according to Sebastian's plan.
"Sex isn't important. I don't need it for a relationship. Ours was fine without it." Was. Sherlock knew it would end tonight.
"What I don't understand is why you're so fixed on it." Sherlock never saw sex appeal in Sebastian. Mainly because he knew he wasn't his connected, but also because on the off chance he did meet his connected… he didn't want to ruin things.
"Goddammit, Sherlock. Everything is just about you, all the time." Sebastian huffed as he rooted around the room for his shoes. "What you want, what you need. You don't care about anyone else."
Sherlock was silent. He did care about others. Perhaps not as much as he should, but he did. He cared about his mother. He cared about Mycroft, in his own way. And he cared about his connected, who was still located in the South somewhere. But at this instant, he no longer cared for Sebastian Wilkes. He hadn't really cared for him properly anyway. He was just a distraction.
"Jesus, you really are just a freak…" The words caused Sherlock's head to snap towards the man who spoke them, who was walking towards the door with a venomous look on his face.
"You've never said that before. Freak." No particular emotion. Just stating a fact. He'd already deleted any sort of connection to the man, so it wasn't as biting as it should have been.
"Yeah, well, I was trying to win a bet." Sherlock's brow knitted, and Sebastian laughed. "Who can bed the freak in a year, that was it. I got my whole Business Ethics class running a pool. Looks like some folks will be making it big tomorrow. Jesus."
"I was just a bet." If Sherlock was hurt, he didn't let it show. "It seems you are the fool here, Sebastian. To think you could win…"
"Fuck, Sherlock. Get over yourself. You're nothing special. I'm not surprised you don't have a thread. There's no one unfortunate enough to be connected to you." And with that Sebastian strode out of the apartment and slammed the door after him. Sherlock remained on the couch, his fingers steepled under his chin, dwelling on those last words. He didn't move for two days.
Sherlock had no friends. He had no one to talk to, nor did he want to talk. He slept less than normal, and only ate when the pain got too bad to concentrate. When he wasn't studying, he looked up cold cases and attempted to solve them. He met unsavory people along the way, homeless men and women who could see things and find out things other, more upstanding citizens, couldn't. One particularly slimy contact eventually introduced Sherlock to the wonders of Cocaine.
With Cocaine, Sherlock could escape the boredom that seeped in between studies and cases. His mind was constantly working, spinning, exploring. Most importantly, when Sherlock had Cocaine, he had no red thread. He couldn't see it. It was bliss. He didn't have to worry about his connected rejecting him, because he was connected to Cocaine, and Cocaine would never let him go. He didn't have to worry about watching his thread turn black, because Cocaine could not die. The words Sebastian Wilkes said never existed.
When Sherlock finished school he moved to London. Mycroft set up a flat for him, and Sherlock promptly fused to the couch for a week and a half, ignoring the phone. Mycroft finally strode into the flat himself carrying a large stack of cases that people would be willing to pay Sherlock to solve. The elder Holmes didn't say a word, just grimaced at Sherlock, left the stack on the table, and turned on his heel. When Mycroft had finally entered the government four years prior he had focused his attention on rising up to be all but the Queen, and his and Sherlock's relationship had withered to almost nothing. It was a great brotherly gesture for him to even show up at Sherlock's flat.
Sherlock made quick work of those cases, and began again his college hobby of solving cold cases that he requested from Scotland Yard. He established another Homeless Network, more extensive than before. The underground drug scene in London ensured it wasn't hard to keep up with his Cocaine, and he spent most of his time high. He worked from home, ordered take out whenever he felt the need to eat, and generally kept out of contact with people. He was content, and in the haze of cases and Cocaine, Sherlock could forget about his thread.
Eight months after Sherlock left school, he was looking into a case involving a house fire. The house was still empty, burned and wrecked, and had never been rebuilt. He deduced arson just based on statements, and wanted a better look at the house to make sure. Officer Greg Lestrade took one look at the young man from his place in the lobby of New Scotland Yard, however, before grabbing Sherlock's elbow and wheeling him to a chair. Sherlock had underestimated how frightening he looked - tall, unnervingly thin, hair grown down to his chin, and sunken in eyes whose pupils were blown as wide as his irises. Amidst Sherlock's babbling about the crime scene, Greg managed to get his name, enter it into a system, make a phone call, and load him up into a car. When Sherlock became aware of what was happening he figured he was being taken to Mycroft's and cursed loudly, but remained slumped in his place on the hard plastic seat of the car.
When they reached Mycroft's place, Sherlock allowed himself to be pulled from the car and lead up the walk to the stately town home while the Officer knocked on the door. Sherlock kept his eyes trained on the man with the iron grip on his elbow. Lestrade was very obviously avoiding Sherlock's gaze, ready to just dump him and be off back to the Yard.
But then the door was open and Mycroft was there. If Sherlock hadn't been high as a kite he would have witnessed the other two men lock eyes and raise their left hands, but he was stumbling into the house and up the stairs to the guest room as soon as the door was open.
Sherlock stayed with Mycroft after that. He caught glimpses of Greg when he ventured out of his room once in a while to escape the shrinking walls, but spoke not a word to him or Mycroft. He deduced the second time he saw the officer sitting on the couch chatting with Mycroft that the two were connected. The first time was only a glimpse as Sherlock was venturing out for water and Mycroft hurried him away so the two connected's could have privacy. When Sherlock was thinking clearly he realized he was a little jealous of Mycroft. Mycroft never expressed an interest in his thread, and here he was, connected, and probably a little more than chuffed about it. It wasn't as if Sherlock was actively seeking his own connected, but he thought maybe he would have met his before his brother did.
Sherlock's daily activities included vomiting into a bucket, forcing down soup, and staring at the thread that was slowly becoming more visible. He hadn't seen it in years, since college. Since before Cocaine. He was secretly glad it was still red.
Three months into Sherlock's detox Greg began forcing solid food down his throat. Greg, rather than Mycroft, because Mycroft wanted to teach Sherlock a lesson while Greg felt sorry for the poor sod. Sherlock didn't breathe fresh air for ten months. When both Holmes brothers and Greg were sure Sherlock wouldn't relapse, Sherlock returned to his flat on Gower Street. Greg started inviting Sherlock to work on various cases as a favor to Mycroft and to keep the kid too busy to even think about using again.
The years pass on. Sherlock spends his days staring at his thread, watching it move through various acute angles in the Southwest before making a great sweeping arc to the Southeast, where it moved very little for quite some time. He joined Greg, who had been promoted to Detective Inspector and who had also moved in with Mycroft, on more and more cases and set up a private consulting practice via website to make money. He made contacts inside St. Bartholomew's hospital to help with his research. He was doing well.
It was the beginning of September, and Sherlock was thirty-three when he moved to his new flat on Baker Street. He wanted to break his dependence from Mycroft, who was still helping him pay for the too-posh flat on Gower Street, and found refuge in the quaint little flat owned by Mrs. Hudson, for whom he had helped settle a case once in Florida. She agreed to let him pay half rent until he found a flat mate as thanks for his help, and dithered over him as much as she could, making biscuits and tea and forcing him to eat.
Several weeks before Christmas, Sherlock was spending a long night inside the lab at the hospital testing the effects of different corrosive solutions on teeth for a private case. He was waiting for a test to finish and was staring at his thread when it suddenly, slowly, began arching Northwest. Towards London, he figured, based off the angle. London. Where Sherlock was. He abandoned his tests in favor of sitting on the lab floor and tracking the thread's progress for about seven hours, until he was sure whoever was on the other end was in London. Time and angle put the beginning of the path somewhere in Afghanistan. A soldier.
Sherlock was found the next morning by Molly Hooper, who was a little bit startled, and a little bit more worried, to find the Consulting Detective on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at his thread as it moved around in a much wider scope than it had for several years. He quietly excused himself, leaving Molly gaping after him and the corroded teeth in their test tubes, and retreated to the safety of 221B.
For three days, Sherlock ignored calls from Greg (four about a case, and three about dinner on Saturday), refused to eat, and did absolutely nothing but stare at his thread, considering where in London his connected might be. He had nothing to go on for distance, just direction, and his brain was a flurry of possible locations. It took both Mycroft and Greg pounding down his door (Greg, of course, doing the pounding; Mycroft was there against his will) for Sherlock to tear his eyes away from the red.
"Sherlock, you can't just keep staring at that thread. Do something about it. Go and find whoever's on the other end." Greg was the romantic in the Lestrade-Holmes relationship, and would of course be the one to encourage such a notion.
"No." Sherlock stated simply. He did not say I know my connected will hate me. Nor did he say I'm afraid of being rejected. Because those were truths he wouldn't even let himself believe.
"Well, if you aren't going to do that, at least get off your arse and help me out with my case. Be productive. I'm not going to have to put a watch on you, am I?" Sherlock caught Greg's reference to his drug problems in the past. His brow twitched, but Sherlock remained silent for a few moments.
"If the mud has traces of iron in it, the brother is your killer." With that, he grabbed his violin from the sofa and slunk away to his bedroom. He heard Mycroft calling something about the Saturday dinner, but it was lost in the first pull of the bow.
It took Sherlock another week to emerge from his flat and continue living the life he had built up before it was disrupted. Whenever he wasn't actively researching or working on a case, his eyes stay trained on the red thread connected to his left ringer. He would make assumptions, something he never did, on where his connected might be.
Now they're at the supermarket, perhaps.
Probably sitting in their flat, judging by lack of movement for several hours.
A stroll in the park?
He would wonder if the person on the other end watched their thread. He would wonder why they didn't come find him. Sherlock knew his own reasons, but not his connected's. Maybe they didn't want to be found either.
The New Year came and went, and the third in a string of 'serial suicides' occurred. Sherlock had a blase interest in these cases but was more worried about finding a missing ring that could convict a kidnapper, as well as finding a flatmate - Mrs. Hudson was getting a little fussy over the rent, and his private consulting wasn't quite making ends meet. He absently shared this information with one of those doctors that worked in Barts one morning. Was it Stamford or Sutherland? But Sherlock was honestly paying more attention to dirt samples to care whether Stamford or Sutherland had taken an interest in his living situation.
Sherlock was just re-running a few tests, face stuck to the microscope, when he heard the doors open to the lab. The heavy footfalls suggested Stamford, as Sutherland was quite on the small side. The extra pair of footsteps suggested Stamford brought a potential flatmate.
"Mike, I need to borrow your phone. Mine doesn't have any signal down here." Sherlock carelessly extended his left hand, palm up, eyes still trained on the magnified image of bacteria. The sharp intake of breath from someone who was obviously not Mike Stamford forced him to reluctantly lift his eyes from the scope. What he saw took his own breath away.
Before him was a man very obviously returned recently from war, possibly Iraq, but most likely Afghanistan, with his right hand on a wooden cane, and his left outstretched before him. His eyes were wide, his cheeks were beginning to flush, and his breathing was quick and shallow. Sherlock looked at the man's left hand, at the red thread tied around his left ring finger, and followed it the whole ten feet across the room to his own left ring finger.
And it was as if life was being breathed into him for the first time.
He stared at the former soldier, taking in everything about his appearance: Blue eyes, dishwater blonde hair, not too tall - or too short, he thought with a hidden smirk - plenty of muscle, psychosomatic limp, ghastly plaid shirt, determined face. Of all the possibilities of who could have been on the other end of his thread, he never thought it would be this combination. A former soldier. A doctor.
"John. John Watson." And John Watson was making his way over towards Sherlock and Mike Stamford was leaving the room quietly and Sherlock was struck paralyzed and didn't know what to do. He had prepared to never meet who was on the other end of his thread. He had prepared to see his connected take one look and go running. He hadn't prepared for this. For an army doctor with a small smile on his face and terrible taste in shirts to be coming right at him, as if Sherlock had been everything he had been searching for in the world. But that didn't matter anymore.
"Sherlock Holmes." Then each man clasped the other's left hand, the thin red thread almost nothing outside of pulse against pulse, and the world made sense, and Sherlock knew, somehow, he could be happy with this John Watson.
THE END ?