Sherlock Imagines, Oneshots and Preferences

Infuriating (soulmate AU)

Warnings: major character death

🧵

Red strings of fate. As fascinating as the concept was, it was equally infuriating.

You huffed in annoyance as you walked down the street back home from work. The red string around your wrist phasing through the pavement you treaded on.

You gently brushed the string with your fingernail. Beautiful. It's beautiful how this solid thread was a straight line leading you to your soulmate, phasing through doors, walls, and the earth itself. Just a straight line connecting the two of you.

In equal parts, it's infuriating how your thread always led straight into the ground because your soulmate was on the other end of the world. It's infuriating how everyone you knew had already found their soulmate. What's most infuriating is how everyone else sees a single thread, their own. But on occasion, you happen to see everyone's. It only lasts for a few seconds, a glitch of sorts. But by the heavens, it's infuriating seeing the red lines connecting every being to another, while yours just got lost in the endless web. Never found.

Everyone is connected. Every human on this planet. Then why was it so lonely?

You glanced at your wrist again, your eyes trailing behind the thread leading straight into the ground. Just like it did every day. Sometimes it felt like you were walking a dog.

The thought made you sneer as you entered your house, shutting the door behind you and watching as the thread effortlessly phased through the door and rested by your feet again when you lowered your hand.

"Pointless," you muttered as you tugged at it, walking into the kitchen to grab a knife.

You felt angry. Desperate. Your cousin's wedding was underway and your best friend had just gotten engaged. But here you were, still hanging onto this stupid thread. Alone. Red strings of fate. What a ghastly concept.

In a fit of rage, you ran the knife's edge along the thread, over and over again, in vain. This was forever, whatever this was. You were trapped, bound to this. This thin string travelling halfway across the world.

Screaming in frustration, you dropped the knife. Pointless, you muttered again that day.

🧵

A year passed and you got an offer to move to London. You were overjoyed, to say the least. If there's one thing you knew, you were getting closer to your soulmate. A mathematician friend of yours once told you that your soulmate lived in Britain, based on the angle the thread made into the Earth.
And now, here you were, finally on your way home. Home. Odd calling it home, since you'd never been here. But it felt like home, nevertheless. Whoever it was, they were here. And that fact made you feel safe.

You spent the whole day jet-lagged, asleep in your hotel room, anticipation building for what awaited you. When you finally felt strong enough, you set out, following the trail that was made for you since you were born.

Slowly, you twirled the thread around your fingers, smiling at how it was leading straight ahead of you now, instead of right below. Every step brought you two closer.

Or so you thought.

The whole evening, you were going round and round in circles. Was your soulmate travelling? Running?

Occasionally, you closed your eyes, imagining yourself seeing the thread grow shorter and shorter, seeing the other end of the thread at last. After all these years. Looking up along the trail and seeing the very same thread around your wrist tied around the other person's wrist. You could never make out their face.