Disclaimer : It's sad to admit that BBC Sherlock is not mine.

Had Our Roads Not Been Crossed

Chapter 1 A Soul Within

Don't disappoint me now, honey, I thought you were interesting

Sherlock Holmes was not a superstitious man. He was a man of science, armed with logic and deduction and trusting nothing that couldn't be proven by either one of those. Now, however, the damning evidence was blinking in front of him, and for the first time in his entire life, Sherlock was considering the existence of supernatural beings. He knew that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the answer; he told this to others often enough, but he had to say, he himself had never expected this kind of answer.

I would never listen to a word Stanford says now, Sherlock thought viciously for lack of better things to do. Stanford was the one who gave him the information about the flat in Montague Street, which was oddly cheap for a flat that was in London. Sherlock had asked for a reason of course, but Stanford just waved it away saying that Sherlock should be okay with it.

The reason, Sherlock later found out from the frantic owner, was that the place was haunted. That podgy and haggard man almost wept in relief when Sherlock said he wanted be a tenant, and whipped out the necessary documents in a comically hurried fashion. After Sherlock signed it, the man poured out his woe of being an unlucky enough fellow who had gotten cheated into buying a haunted flat, while irritatingly not giving the paper back.

Sherlock, not interested in slightest in the supernatural beings, just nodded along, hoping to finish the deal and get out of there fast. Apparently, it had been a wrong move, for it only assured the man that Sherlock wouldn't run like a baby at more horrendous tales. The man rattled out more unnecessarily facts about the flat; namely, gruesome death of the previous tenants. It picked Sherlock's interest for sure, and he thought maybe he would dig out the details if the boredom got to be too much, but all the same, he would have been much happier if the man had just released him without that particular titbit.

To tell the truth, the resident 'ghost' had been far from Sherlock's mind, at first. All he cared about the flat was that it was inexpensive and reasonably comfortable, and he had been satisfied with it. However, little things began to change his perspective; like stuffs moving out of their original place ever so slightly, coffee running out faster than he had expected it to be, that kind of things.

Of course, ghost has not been the first suspect that popped into his head. He figured that either a) he was hallucinating or b) his memory was failing; which were both vexing because he could think of only one thing that could possibly have cause it. Drugs. So after much debate with himself, he decided to go cold turkey for a while. Throwing out his stash actually felt like a defeat, for Mycroft's constant telling-off rang in his ears. He could actually imagine the smug voice telling 'I told you so' with a painful clarity. He hated his vivid imagination sometimes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for Sherlock, even after his mind has been cleared of any and all stimulants – including caffeine – weird things continue to happen. Surely he hadn't put eyeballs in the fridge, but in the oven, and why the hack would he ever downloaded romantic movies? His mind wasn't tricking him; therefore there must be a real person behind all this.

The only problem was that he had no clue. It wasn't Mycroft's attempt to make him quit, because it didn't fit in with his usual dramatic and/or flamboyant style. Not to mention that his brother wouldn't continue this inanity even after he managed to make Sherlock quit his habit. It wasn't some work of a minor stalker, according to the search of the previous tenants, because those little things later escalated to be much more inventive and cruel.

Actually it was hard to believe that any person had invaded the flat, now or before. There was absolutely no evidence of it; not even a tiny bit of hair or the scratch mark on the door could be found. Sherlock hoped that some small evidence, which would at least attest the fact that somebody else had been in the place, if not the intruder's identity, would be found, but no, even that was too high a hope. There was too much mystery and too little data.

Sherlock let out a frustrated growl, and did something utterly stupid in a moment of insanity. He brought out his lap-top and typed in,

Can you read this?

Completely appalled at the fact that he tried to communicate with the ghost like some kind of a brainless teenage girl, Sherlock stood stock still and stared at the computer screen for a few minutes. Those words continued to blink innocently at him. So, he, Sherlock Holmes, had really done that.

Hell. Getting clean must have cost him a lot more than he had thought it to be. He was going to get coffee as soon as possible. Shaking his head, Sherlock got a grip of his sanity once again, and tried to wipe clean those foolish words from his computer. His effort got thrown over, however, for his keyboard suddenly went out of control, keypads pressing themselves without anyone's touch. It created one sentence on the screen with fast, click-clack sound.

Don't disappoint me now, honey, I thought you were interesting.

Sherlock Holmes was not a man who got surprised easily, or god forbid, freaked out. However, his whole world had just back-flipped now, so he considered it to be a wholly worthy time to do just that. However, he couldn't and wouldn't stoop so low as to plaster his emotion all over his face.

I'm getting my coffee, now.

So he calmly typed in and stood up.

It was, in his not so humble opinion, a very dignified departure.

AN: Hopefully, that was an interesting enough begining :D

Frankly, I've been dying to write Ghost!Jim and Before-series!Sherlock story since I saw episode 203. That has been ages ago, but I finally got around writing it. I'm so excited to see where this story would take me XD.

So people, have anything to say to me? Don't resist, just say something! It would make me so happy :)