A/N: Okay I toyed with several titles for this, and where to upload this duo of chapters and ultimately decided it was going to be a new story arc.
Based off A Christmas Carol and Scrooged the film, enjoy the first of two Christmas chapters.
Merry Christmas :)
"You have the chance Sherlock."
"Victor?" Sherlock stared at his old roommate in horror. "Victor, this isn't possible. Victor you're dead…" Sherlock's voice became hollow as he stared at the man before him.
"Yes I am indeed Sherlock. I am dead. Dead as I can be because I fucked up. I fucked up big time." Victor snorted and sat on Sherlock's sofa. He laid out a line of coke and quickly snorted it. "This is why I fucked up. I passed up on life Sherlock – there you and I were chasing down opiate dreams, not giving a fuck about anything. We were pretending to be these greater beings set on an earth with morons…"
"I am surrounded by morons, you never had the displeasure of meeting Anderson." Sherlock's mouth twisted in distaste.
"No Sherlock." Victor slammed his hand on the table and stood up once more. "We are not greater than anyone else on this earth, I should have embraced humanity not remained aloof from it." Victor hissed. "I died in some coke whore's house and it took three weeks in a fridge in a London morgue for my family to find me. No one could ID is that the way you want to end your life Sherlock?" Victor snarled and stood up once more.
"You're not real, you're a bad trip." Sherlock growled, glaring at the paraphernalia on his kitchen table.
"You shouldn't be tripping right now, what do you need drugs for!" Victor grabbed Sherlock by the wrist when he reached for another needle. "You have everything you need right now Sherlock, I'm giving you this opportunity to fix your ways."
"What is this Scrooge? Well you can sod off Jacob Marley." Sherlock hissed, pulling himself away from a rather crazed Victor, unnerved by how solid the man before him felt. This really was a bad trip. Moving to the table, Sherlock focused hazily on the drugs before him and his hand shook as he sifted through the pills.
"I'm not gonna give you three ghosts to see the error of your ways Sherlock." Victor was stood opposite him again but his fingers were working a mobile phone, not that Sherlock noticed. He was still shakily moving through the assortment of white tablets. "I am your last chance Sherlock Holmes. Well not quite." Victor had moved back around the table so he was stood beside his best friend. The detective blurrily stared at the ghost before him and chuckled a laugh again.
"Such a bad trip, you look like you're in rough shape." He sneered.
"It has been nearly ten years Sherlock, what do you expect from a dead man?"
"Silence…" Sherlock grunted, returning to the task of drugs.
"You'll get that shortly but first I'm going to do my one kind gesture to humanity, I'm going to save your life." Victor grabbed Sherlock's collar, pulled him upright and to face him. "I'm going to get your angel to you whether it's the last thing I do."
"The fuck do you mean…" Sherlock started to say but without another word Victor punched him square in the face, knocking him clean out.
~S.H~
When he came to, there was no Victor, there was no 221b, there were no pills.
There were beeping noises, flashing lights and sterile white walls. The world was blurry and painful and the light hurt. He groaned aloud and something shifted to his left. He didn't have the energy to look at what moved but the room got darker and he moaned in relief.
The world went black again.
When he regained consciousness the next time, everything was in much sharper focus and the world was still dark but definitely clearer.
The blur next to him he could now identify as Molly Hooper. It didn't take him long, even in his addled state to read the emotions on her face – Molly had always been an open book. She was pissed, relieved, concerned and anxious all in one sitting. She couldn't work out whether to slap him or to hug him.
"Hooper." He said curtly and Molly twitched.
"Well you've ruined yourself but at least you're still here." Her tone was sharp and her fingers curled into her palms to stop herself from slapping him around the face.
"Why're you here?" He snapped out.
"Because you text me." She frowned. "But I imagine while you doped yourself up on almost every substance known to the drug dealers of London, you don't recall sending me a text."
It was Sherlock's turn to frown now, what did he remember?
His face fell and Molly's curiosity grew.
He remembered Victor. He remembered the warning. He remembered the encounter and now, now he remembered his best friend on his mobile phone.
"Victor died Sherlock." Molly was perplexed at the mutterings Sherlock was now spouting.
"An angel…" Sherlock murmured but had got himself into such a frenzy that Molly had run for the nurses. The nurses wrestled him to the bed and fiddling with his IV.
He slipped back into a dark world and started to scream.
"I warned you Sherlock." Victor's voice came from nowhere. "You need to accept your guardian angel Sherlock. Or this is it. Eternal damnation. No burning, no freezing, no torture apart from that feeling…."
There it was, that burning in his belly, the itch under his skin, that need to snort up, dose up, that need.
"Fuck." He cursed and felt the addiction intensify, it was behind his eyes, throbbing in his veins.
"I told you Sherlock. I told you, now make it back to Molly, Sherlock. You have this one chance." Victor's voice had become urgent but Sherlock could barely focus on him. "Sherlock, Sherlock listen to me, Sherlock." Victor's voice was changing… to something he knew.
"Sherlock." Molly's voice was soft and coaxing. "Sherlock you're safe, you're with me." He could feel something other than the itch in his body, could see something in the darkness.
"Molly."
"Sherlock." Molly repeated and she threaded her fingers with him.
"Molly save me." He whined and her fingers tightened with his.
"I'm never gonna leave your side Sherlock, even when you I find you passed out on the kitchen floor with almost every drug known to man on your table." She scolded softly. "I'm going to be here through every damn tantrum, as I always have been." She whispered and Sherlock smiled gently.
"What did I do to deserve you Molly Hooper?" He grated out, voice crackly.
"That I never know." Another voice said wryly and Sherlock turned to see Victor perched on the windowsill. "Good going kid, knew you'd listen to me at least once in your life." He nodded before disappearing in a cloud of white dust.
Sherlock would process it when he was off the cocktail of drugs ricocheting in his system – right now all he needed was Doctor Molly Hooper sat beside him.
"Merry Christmas Sherlock." Victor's voice ghosted past him once more as Sherlock's thumb stroked the back of Molly's hand.