Sherlock moved his arm aside, staring into the face of Irene Adler. She was naked, as per the usual, with her blood red lipstick stained lips curved into a smile.

He sighed in resignation. "What are you doing here?" he asked, rolling to his feet again. Clearly, he hadn't woken up at all, this was just all part of the dream. He had to admit, even for him, it was a strange dream.

"I'm your next ghost," she said cheerfully, stepping forward.

"Ghost? You're not dead." Sherlock hooked his dressing gown off the floor, offering it out to Irene.

"Oh, everyone thinks I am. I go by a different name now, you understand." Irene took the dressing gown and slipped it on. "You unwittingly played right into your brother's hand in letting him believe that I was murdered by that terror cell. It's all so rather pedestrian, but I suppose it's a must."

"Yes..." Sherlock shook his head sharply. "Now, explain what this is all about."

Irene glanced up from fixing the collar. "Pardon?"

"First Victor, now you. What's with the ghosts and the strange dreams, clearly they're all interconnected, although I don't know why."

"Oh," Irene said, her eyes sparkling with humour. "The great Mr Holmes doesn't know something."

He shrugged. "They're dreams. I don't put stock in dreams. Or palm reading or tarot cards or horoscopes." He rolled his eyes. "But I'm sure you and all of my 'ghosts'," he curled his fingers into air quotes, "think you have a reason, so explain."

"Oh, that's more the third ghost's job," Irene replied absently. "I mustn't step on toes."

Sherlock scoffed. "Please. Stepping on toes is part of your job," Sherlock retorted.

Irene smiled sweetly. "Oh, so you remember."

"Evidently." Sherlock turned away. "Who is my third ghost?"

"That would ruin the surprise."

"I don't like surprises."

"You may like this one."

"I'm almost positive I won't."

"You won't know until you try."

Sherlock blew out a short breath through his nose. "Okay, new question." He spun back around. "Why three ghosts?"

Irene raised her eyebrows.

Was that a ridiculous question? Sherlock took a metaphorical step back and tried to think, but he came up empty handed. "What?"

"Really?"

"I don't understand," Sherlock grumbled. He loathed the words, especially to the mind of a woman the likes of one Irene Adler.

Irene laughed softly, running her fingers up his arm. His eyes followed the movement almost unconsciously. "Charles Dickens."

Sherlock blinked a few times. "... Author."

"Yes. A Christmas Carol?"

Sherlock shook his head. Irene was tracing idle patterns on his bicep now.

"Oh, Sherlock. Crabby old man, visited by three ghosts to see his past, present, and future Christmases, led to a change of heart to change his destiny," Irene explained. "Very popular story. Very high critical acclaim."

"Ah..." Sherlock shrugged slightly. "Not really my area."

Irene looked up at him. "Really? I pegged you as a reader when you were younger."

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. "But..." Now she was tracing his exposed collarbone, where his shirt had dipped away from his shoulder and. "Gulliver's Travels... and... Frankenstein and... such."

Irene smiled coyly. "Yes, well." She stepped away and crossed the room. "Not the most captivating topic, this. Let's move on before on the bells."

Sherlock shook his head slightly. Focus. "Very well, given that you've not giving me any other answers. Where to- oh, do give me a warning next time. I'm going to get whiplash."

The scenery around him had changed again, but it was pleasant as it was familiar this time. If the morgue was his home away from home, then his home away from home away from home was John's home.

He slipped into a smile without conscious thought, watching Mary watch John as his friend struggled with assembling a changing table. He was glad that they were back on good terms. He liked Mary, despite everything that happened. He didn't exactly have a brand, when it came to women, but if he did, he suspected that Mary would be close. Trained killer and all.

"This is the present," Sherlock confirmed, roving his eyes over Mary's very pregnant stomach and John's blatant irritation at the table not cooperating.

"Yes."

"John, why don't you read the instructions?" Mary laughed, folding her hands over her stomach.

"I've read them three bloody times," John retorted. "I know this has to- aha!" He secured one of the pieces and hit it with the heel of his hand. "I told you I could do it."

Mary laughed quietly. "It looks great, John."

"Mm. I should have had this done ages ago," John muttered.

"No." Mary held out her hands. "No."

John smiled slightly, curling his fingers around hers. "Yeah, but..."

"We're doing it now." Mary leaned over, pecking her lips against his. "In the meantime!" She pulled away, glancing towards the closet. "I'm sorry, but we are not going with a detective themed room like Sherlock suggested."

John laughed and shook his head. "No. He said he's going to get her a little deerstalker. One for newborns? I'm not supposed to tell you that, though."

"He's incorrigible. He told me that he wanted to get her a toy microscope when she's old enough because that's the first toy he ever had," Mary said. "And he wants to teach her the elements and famous serial killers."

"That's not a bad idea, why would you think that's a stupid idea?" Sherlock asked out loud, although, as before, he went unnoticed in the dream.

"Yeah, he's a little excited. I'll reign him in," John replied, going back to the changing table. "I'm surprised, actually."

"Is surprised the word?"

John sighed. "Worried, maybe. I don't know. I don't try to think of it that way, though."

"He was excited for the wedding-"

"- and then he shot up, whether it was for a case or not. I know," John interrupted. "But I want to think he's just excited for the baby, I mean, he really isn't rubbish with kids. He's good with them, actually. I think the young ones make him nervous, but I've seen him interact with them at a primary school one time and he was surprisingly... well, he'd kill me for saying, but paternal, really."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. He could remember that case. The kids had been witness to a murder. He'd hated that case specifically for that reason. It was hard to interrogate kids, and it was bad enough to even need to in the first place. Kids weren't meant to have to experience the dark parts of life at that age. Did that make him... paternal?

"Your biological clock is ticking, Sherlock." Irene spoke, startling Sherlock into remembering that this was really a dream and not something he was witnessing in real life.

He turned away. "Rubbish. Let's get on to the next hallucination."

"If you insist," Irene replied with a sigh.

White flakes filtered down around him, drawing his attention first to them and then the whiteness as it converged around him. Not the transition, but the landscape; London was coated with a half inch of fluffy white snow. The stark white building in front of him nearly folded into the landscape itself. Sherlock knew who this vision would involve; only one person he knew frequented the Diogenes Club.

He gave Irene a sceptical look.

"Like Victor said, he is another part of who made you who you are today," Irene replied simply. "My opinions, nor yours, matter in that regard. The sooner we visit this place, the quicker we can move on."

Sherlock sighed. "Very well." He strode forward and reached for the door handle. His hand went right through it. A cold shock went through his body, quickly replaced by the impending thought that he could walk through walls. Of course he could. This was a dream, and he was being escorted through memories, past, present, and presumably future to come by ghosts. It made sense that he could walk through walls.

Still, he tried to ignore how Irene laughed when he uttered "Cool" under his breath and strode through the doorways until he got to Mycroft's office.

"Have you heard from your brother lately?" was conveniently the first thing he heard when he stepped into Mycroft's office. It was Anthea speaking, as she handed over a manila file to Mycroft. (Sherlock still didn't know her true name, Mycroft's assistant. Every time that he had bothered to remember it, it had changed. He was horrible with names, even if he never failed to remember a face. Most people he just gave names in his head. Half of the Yard were collectively either named 'Stupid', 'Intolerant', or pure and plain 'Useless Officer of the Law'.)

"No," Mycroft replied without looking up. "I've seen from his statements that he's been spending far too much time with the Watson family in the infant department and that he took a trip to Liechtenstein last month, for whatever reason."

"Should we upgrade his status?"

"No. Whatever my brother is up to is, to some regard, important. With James Moriarty circling London, I find it best in these times to leave Sherlock have control over his whims." He glanced up. "Relatively, of course." Mycroft looked back at the files. "He's far too excited over the latest developments with the Moriarty case to do something rash, and he knows that he has boundaries to follow now, lest he be shipped off to Europe for the rest of his natural life."

Sherlock snorted at that little piece of information. Did Mycroft expect him to think that the looming threat of permanent exile was going to keep him on a short leash? He had every plan to do what needed to be done to stop Moriarty; but Mycroft was right, in such a sense, when he said that Sherlock knew better than to do certain rash things at this time. Handling Magnussen was different than handling Moriarty.

"Very well." Anthea paused in filing through documents. "Are we quite sure that Mr Holmes will be able to track down Mr Moriarty?"

Sherlock's proverbial hackles went up, but Mycroft's almost long-suffering sigh interrupted off any form of complaint that he would have spoken.

"I have full confidence in my brother's abilities, Anthea, as well do you, as well does the entirety of London," Mycroft said. He sounded tired.

Sherlock tilted his head slightly.

"I also have full confidence in James Moriarty's abilities to match my brother head-on. It's not a matter of when Sherlock will end Moriarty, it will happen, but more a matter of if they will take one another as they fall again. There is no clear victor in this battle of wits, just a matter of what will happen when it reaches its climax."

"You're worried about him," Anthea replied, sliding the drawer closed and picking another file without looking.

"Naturally. He's Sherlock Holmes. He's my brother. It yet remains my place to worry over him as much as it is to clean up his daily messes." Mycroft returned to his paperwork as the world faded out around Sherlock and Irene, leaving them surrounded in smoky gray darkness.

Sherlock stared into the whisps of smoke-like substance floating by. There was something unsettling about that conversation. He couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Brotherly compassion," Irene commented softly. Her voice again startled Sherlock out of his muddled reverie; he shook his head violently to chase the thought away.

"So it would seem. Next?" He looked at her expectantly. "Following the pattern, if there is a pattern, the next place we visit should be an altered state of my present life."

Irene's smile was nearly salacious. "Still the new sexy."

Beyond her was a church. Going by the flowers, the dresses, and the organ music, it was a wedding. Sherlock could tell that much, but it wasn't one that he recognised, it wasn't one that he'd planned. Or maybe, 'not in reality' was the key clause in it.

"Who's the bride?" he asked Irene distractedly, spinning around to look for familiar faces, but he and Irene were alone in the small, back room.

"You'll see. Ah, there she is now."

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder as the door opened, going stiff as Molly walked into the room. She was wearing a wedding gown, the traditional sort of poofy gown that seemed to feature in most weddings, with lace details and intricate beading. The train dragged along behind her, glossed black shoes taking care not to step on it as whoever followed her in.

When Sherlock looked up, he was looking back at a mirror version of himself; same age, same hair, same tuxedo he had worn to John's wedding last year.

"... I didn't get married to her," he said quietly, although his voice came out thin. It bothered him that he didn't know why, or why the sudden and irrational panic, or the tightening in his chest.

"No," Irene agreed. "But she is a gorgeous bride."

Sherlock blew out a breath, his heart thudding in his ears. "Yes," he said, swallowing. "She is." He glossed his eyes over the loose waves in Molly's hair, the flowers peppering their silky strands, the bodice of the gown, the blush on her cheeks. He swallowed again, and looked away. "She got married to Tom, then."

"In this world," Irene said. "Best of all, you were her matron of honour."

"What?"

"Oh, Sherlock, this is beautiful, I'm so grateful, I couldn't have done it without you," Molly said, addressing the other Sherlock.

"No, you couldn't have," other Sherlock said effortlessly, but he thought his smile was more resigned than genuinely happy. "But I didn't mind too much," he continued, glancing around before looking back at her. "I owed you. For everything you did."

"You really didn't..."

"I will never stop owing you, Molly."

Sherlock watched as his mirrored self leaned over to not kiss Molly on the cheek like he had before, but on the top of the head. He lingered a second too long, but then pulled away and brought his hands together.

"Right then! We need the veil. The music will start to play in approximately fifty-seven seconds!" other Sherlock said cheerfully, and spun Molly around to the mirror.

Sherlock met his own gaze in the reflection, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, he was back in his own bedroom.

"Well," Irene started. "That was certainly enlightening. The softer side of Sherlock Holmes," she mused. "Should I be touched? Or disappointed that you never treated me that way?" she asked innocently.

Sherlock couldn't stop the glare, but he turned away to the window to keep his attention elsewhere. He felt strange. He knew the feeling, obviously: it was emotion. Knowing that didn't stop it from feeling strange.

"Humanity is what keeps us rooted in this world, Sherlock."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he retorted, turning back around.

Irene was gone.

He blew out another deep breath, forcing himself to close his eyes and count to ten. He walked back over to the bed and sat down. The clock was one minute from turning over, less, in fact, given Irene's disappearance. The bells would chime soon and with them would come a presumed glimpse into his future.

He pondered briefly on his guide, and what the whole point of this was, and how he would very much just like to wake up and enjoy a cup of hot tea with some sleeping medication. Dreamless sleep sounded good. But. Until then.

Sherlock opened his eyes as the bells began to chime.