The Ghosts of Christmas Do Not Exist

A/N: Tiny bit of heavily implied past slash. Nothing written out, just implied or innuendo. Tiny bit of otherwise heterosexual innuendo as well. Applicable to this chapter, rated T.

Sherlock awoke with a start, adrenalin prompting him into making a grab for the gun he kept in the nightstand.

He had grown used to living with someone - John - and then he had had to cope with resettling back into a life that was, well, more or less, lonely. Maybe it wasn't really the right word, lonely, but it was definitely a lot more quiet than he had been used to. During his two years mostly abroad, it hadn't been a big deal because he was always on the move, but returning to Baker Street without the familiar press of companionship echoing in the halls was weird.

But now, he had definitely heard movement in the flat, movement that ought not to be there since he lived alone again, and movement that should definitely not have been in the flat at three o' clock in the morning. With the looming threat of Moriarty being alive settled permanently in the back of his brain, his fingers curled around the cold bite of the gun in the chill of the flat to press off the safety.

He kicked the blankets away lithely, swinging his legs out of bed. Mindful of the creaky floorboard just to the left of his instinctual place to put his right foot, he silently got to his feet with the gun held aloft.

"Hey, Will."

Sherlock spun on his heel to the voice behind him. He recognised three things at once in that instant: one, there hadn't been anyone behind him for the fact that he'd done an instinctual sweep of the room upon waking, two, he knew the voice that was talking to him from the other side of the room, and three, that this whole escapade was a dream, because the voice talking to him from the other side of the room was a voice from the past.

It didn't stop the shiver that travelled down his spine as he stared across the room into the face of an old friend. "... Victor," he said softly, lowering the gun.

He was exactly as he remembered him, twenty-one years old, the man that Sherlock had known back in university. Brown hair in a disarray, warm brown eyes and tanned skin, with the smile that almost made Sherlock's heart ache in a whim of fancy.

Victor had been murdered seventeen years ago.

Sherlock blew out a deep breath, throwing the gun aside. "Clearly this is a dream, then."

Victor leaned against the dresser. "Does that matter?"

Sherlock pushed his fingers back through his hair, padding the few feet back to his bed. "No, I suppose not." He sat down on the mattress, crossing his legs beneath him to prop his elbows on his knees. "It's been a very long time, even within the realms of the unconscious."

"Do you have dreams of me often, then?" Victor smiled, a smile Sherlock remembered as one that stated it's just us, we're the only ones in on this secret.

Sherlock smiled wryly. "Probably not ones you'd want to hear about."

Victor sighed, pushing away from the dresser. "Oh, probably not. But that's not why I'm here."

Sherlock rest his head on his hand. "No? This is a social visit? Interesting. What can I help you with, Victor?"

"I'm here to take you back, Will."

Sherlock frowned. "Take me back? Oh," he added, as Victor sat down on the bed next to him. "It's going to be that kind of dream."

Victor laughed - and Sherlock definitely remembered that sound vividly, just as everything else - and shook his head. "Don't get excited. No, Will," he continued, as Sherlock raised an eyebrow, "I'm here to take you back. Into the past."

Sherlock frowned. "The past? Our past?"

"Part of that past. Come on." Victor stood up, offering his hand.

"... Alright, then. Entertain me, as usual," Sherlock replied, taking Victor's hand. He wasn't even on his feet before the world spun around him. He blinked away the sudden bout of vertigo and when he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the steps of a school building he knew too well, and also a place that he never wanted to see again.

"... This is not our past," he said dryly, dropping his hand away from Victor's. This is before you even knew me."

Victor nodded, folding his hands behind his back. "Yes. Year Six, I believe? There you are, though, you look exactly the same. Your hair's a bit darker now."

Sherlock grunted noncommentally, watching a group of boys down the stairs. He recognised the scene. Himself, at eleven years old, in the midst of a row with five other boys.

"Why did you bring me back to prep school?" Sherlock asked, looking up at Victor again. He didn't bother to get to his feet. Clearly they weren't going anywhere except memory lane, so it was called, and it was one place that he didn't care to traverse.

"Shhh."

Sherlock pursed his lips and flicked his gaze back to the ruckus on the walkway.

"Give it back!" young Sherlock demanded, clutching at the wrong end of the hideous school-issued bag.

"Give us the answers for the next test Teacher has planned and we will," boasted one of the older students, fifteen, some boy that he had never bothered to remember.

"I don't know them," his younger self protested.

"Yes, you do." The fifteen year old pulled on the bag.

His younger self pulled back determinedly, clinging onto the bag tenuously. "Not like I know your Mum caught you with that old blonde girl that you've been having sex with!" he retorted.

"Not the best retort, that," Sherlock commented, tilting his head.

Victor chuckled. "Impressive deduction for an eleven year old."

"I knew the girl, she was stupid, she freaked when she realised she could go to jail for having sex under age," Sherlock replied, and then winced when the fifteen year old decked his eleven year old self. "Ouch," he and Victor echoed at the same time.

"Freak!" the fifteen year old hissed.

"Me?" eleven year old Sherlock retorted, grabbing his bag. "I didn't screw her-" He ducked another blow and retaliated by throwing one of the heavy textbooks at the tormenter.

"William Holmes!"

"Oh, I hated that name," Sherlock muttered. "I hated 'William'."

"I don't know," Victor said conversationally, although his eyes were narrowed. "I think it suits you."

"That's only because you were the only one who ever called me that to begin with, besides professors and my parents."

In the memory, one of the prefects was marching across the lawn. "William Holmes, get inside now! You'll receive six of the best for fighting again, how many times must we have this conversation?!"

"I was never well liked," Sherlock commented to Victor.

"Clearly."

Victor reached down to grip Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock was about to question what he was doing when the scene changed again. This time, it was a dim room lit only by the flicker of flame, the smell of vanilla and lavender so thick in the air that it was enough to choke him. And he recognised it again, of course he did, but this time, it was less irritating and more embarrassing.

"Victor," he complained, left standing side-by-side with his immortal apparation, "why did you bring me back to the night I lost my virginity?"

"It made you into who you are today," Victor said. "And it was with a girl," he continued, clapping Sherlock on the back.

"You knew about her, and this is voyeurism," Sherlock retorted, although he cringed as he felt his cheeks blaze in the overly humid room.

"How old were you here?"

Sherlock huffed and turned his head. "Seventeen."

Victor laughed - he was laughing at him, Sherlock realised with a start- before falling into silence.

The girl he'd lost his virginity to - Clarissa, he still remembered her name even if he wished he didn't - had been nineteen and from out of town. Sherlock had been a tiny bit high at the time, and a little suggestible. He could still cringe over the fact that they'd had sex by fire light. At least it had been by candle, honestly what had he been thinking?

"That... was fantastic," Clarissa gasped, pulling the blankets up over arms. "Are you sure you were a virgin?"

"Quite," teen Sherlock replied, flicking the condom into the bin.

"Well, don't sound so excited," Clarissa replied, reaching over to ruffle his hair.

His teenage self leaned away, sitting up. "I'm not."

"What?"

"I don't know, for having slept with so many men, you'd think you'd be better."

Victor snickered. Sherlock ignored him.

"What?" Clarissa repeated.

"It was boring, there weren't fireworks, as they say, you're too fucking loud and, as I said, having had engaged in coitus with so many other participants, you'd think you'd be better versed in pleasing rather than just being pleased." He reached for his pants and looked around for his trousers.

"Are you kidding me right now? What the hell gives you the right-"

"No wonder you don't have a boyfriend," teenage Sherlock muttered. "Or friends at all, for that matter, you're a horrible judge of character as well as a horrible shag."

When the stiletto shoe went sailing over his younger self's head and towards Sherlock in the memory, he ducked reflexively and straightened up to find himself in yet a different place. "Oh. That's finally over."

Victor smiled. "Although I don't truly understand why you went from bisexual to asexual."

Sherlock blew out a breath. "Nonsexual, mostly. And it was easier. Clarissa was a nightmare and you got murdered. It was easier to just not care."

"About all types of companionship?" Victor turned a knowing, sad sort of gaze on him. It was like he was searching for something, and Sherlock didn't like being searched.

"Apparently." He looked around. "Where are we now? I don't recognise this place. It looks like the 1800's."

"That's because it is."

Sherlock frowned. "What?"

"Well, more or less." Victor shrugged, slipping his hands into his pockets.

"Then this can't be my past," Sherlock replied.

"It's what your past could have been," Victor explained. "Had you been born a century before you were. This is a different version of your past."

"Interesting..." Sherlock cast his gaze around. "Where- oh."

He pulled up short as he caught sight of himself striding across the cobblestone street. He looked familiar to his own self now, except his hair was slicked back, hidden beneath a charcoal version of a deerstalker and-

"What am I wearing," he intoned, narrowing his eyes.

"A cape coat," Victor said pleasantly. "A travelling coat, if you will. And the ever present deerstalker; they hailed from this age, you know."

"Yes..." Sherlock made a face. "No."

His Victorianesque self strode away beneath the arch of a stone walkway, vanishing into the shadows. Dogging his path was a familiar face.

"John."

"Holmes, I say, wait up!" Victorian John called. He was familiar, too, asides from maybe a few more wrinkles. The moustache was back, which Sherlock made a disgruntled noise at in the back of his throat, and he was dressed in traditional to the time wear, down to the pocket watch he was tucking back into his pocket.

"Hurry, my dear Watson! You'll miss the main event!"

"'My dear Watson'," Sherlock echoed. "He would knock me for a loop if I called him that in our time."

"Different times, different mannerisms."

"Yes."

"John!" a voice called, and was that-

"Is that Mary?" he mused.

And second later, he was proven right; Mary came running around the corner, holding onto her hat, the frills on her shirt waving in the wind. "John! I don't think this is a good idea!"

"Mary's here, too?" Sherlock smiled slightly. "So, John was still married even in a different version of my past. To the same woman, even." Something about that was reassuring, especially after the debacle that had put the modern marriage to the test. He would have made a note to tell all of this to John, if it hadn't just only been a dream.

"What's the case?" he asked, leaning over to Victor.

"Jack the Ripper," Victor replied.

"Oh! Nice." He started forward. "Let's go see how this me's deductions are."

"Will."

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder. "Hm?"

Victor smiled at him sadly. "It's time for me to go."

Sherlock frowned, backtracking slightly. "Why? I'm usually more conscious of the fact that I'm waking up if I'm waking up. Besides, each separate memory should count towards a different dream rather than it as a whole, so we're not anywhere near the allotted time for this particular altered reality-"

"It's time."

Sherlock closed his mouth. "Fine. Right. Well." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I'll see you again, then, I'd reckon. In my dreams, obviously, as cliché as that sounds." He met his gaze and tilted his head. "Perhaps in better circumstances."

"I miss you, too, Sherlock."

Sherlock sighed, turning away. "Of course."

"Bye, Will." Victor surprised him by pulling him into an overly familiar hug. "The next one'll be here any second."

Sherlock felt his eyebrows knit together. "Next what?"

But he received no response asides from the bells of Big Ben tolling in the distance. The warmth and pressure of Victor's hug left him cold and emtpy, standing alone in a world he didn't recognise as it filtered out around him.

"Victor?"

He shook his head against the ringing in his ears and blinked hard. When he opened his eyes this time, he was back in his bedroom, surrounded by the darkness and silence of his own flat. He blew out a breath and flung his arm over his eyes. What a strange dream, with so many faces from the past. Even Victor...

Sherlock rolled over and groped for his blankets to go back to sleep.

"... Hello, Sherlock."

His eyes flew open again at the soft voice that broke the silence. He knew that voice, too. Not from a past like Victor's had been, but from the present, or the recent present. He knew her voice. It wasn't one he was likely to forget.

"... You," he breathed, moving his arm aside again.

She smiled in response.

There's rumours going around that perhaps the Christmas episode is going to be a version of A Christmas Carol. Now, I would love this and, naturally, I had to get my two cents into this, and write my own version. This will be in four parts... I had intended five, like the original, but I bounced into Victor without thinking, so it'll be four. Three different 'ghosts'. Lots of different possibilities. Some possible, some alternate, like the 1800s, it'll be a smorgasbord of Sherlock and Dickens fandom fusion.

I do not own Sherlock. I do not own A Christmas Carol.
Stay tuned! Thanks for reading!