There were many books written on the strands, and what they mean. Long descriptions of colours, diagrams for examples, and instructions on how to see them filled most books. The only problem with this was that people who couldn't see them could not learn how to see them. It was as simple as that. You were born with it or you weren't.

Quite a few scientists who could see them had gotten together and written a fantastic books that was essentially the bible of links.

All the people John knew who saw them had a copy, pages dog eared and notes written in margins, bits highlighted for later reference.

John didn't have one of these books, but every time he saw one he soaked the information up, starved for insight into himself.

He memorized all the known colours of links, could run them off at a moment's notice if required. His friends thought it was a neat party trick for someone who couldn't see them. He just shrugged and told them it was easy, the colour matched the relationships.

Red for love. Blue for paternal. Pink for maternal. Green for siblings. Orange for other family members. Purple for friendship. Yellow for coworkers and colleagues. Black for enemies. Silver for professional relationships, often between doctors and patients or teachers and students.

Those were all the known colours of all the known links. Of course, they varied depending on the people and the nature of the relationship, dark blood red or almost orange meant very different things between lovers, but it was generally accepted that these were the only colours that existed.


John met Mike Stamford in the park that day, a sunshine bond between them that quickly returned to the purple shade it had once been, before John had gone to Afghanistan, back when they were in school together.

He introduced him to a man surrounded by a web of yellow, a solitary strand each of blue, pink, and green amidst sunshine streamers and the occasional silver flash.

John felt sad for him. No friends. No love.

Another yellow strand reached out to John and grabbed him firmly, tying a knot that John hadn't seen the likes of often.


The next day when he went to see the flat, John saw who the pink bond led to. The landlady, Mrs Hudson. She obviously wasn't Sherlock's mother, but must have been the single maternal figure still in his life. Mrs Hudson reached out to John with an orange string. He didn't really want to ponder what that meant. But she was obviously fond of Sherlock. John didn't need to see a pink bond to know that.


Sherlock was thrilled when another man showed up to invite him to help at a crime scene. This Lestrade was linked to Sherlock with a dark blue strand. John just went with it. After the couple of days he'd had, not much more could surprise him. Of course, he was wrong.