Thanks so much for the amazing reaction to the first chapter! It was really overwhelming.

Time for Sherlock to meet this 'ghost' of Christmas Past...

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He opened one eye to find himself staring at the bottom half of a chair leg; his other eye was squashed shut against the living room floorboards. Sherlock tried to push himself up with his elbows, but his head was swimming and the effort required felt ridiculous. Instead, he heaved himself onto his side, and then eventually his back; he stared at the ceiling for a few moments, trying to get his eyes to focus, but the overhead light was offensively bright, and he found he had to close them again.

"Congratulations, Sherlock, this is a new one even for you," said a familiar, supercilious voice.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he was presented with upside-down view of his brother.

"Mycroft?" he mumbled, trying to roll himself onto his elbow. "What happ…oh God, I remember."

"Yes, you managed to accidentally chloroform yourself," Mycroft smiled. "Quite the achievement."

Sherlock hauled himself into a sitting position, shuffling across the floor until his back was against the front of the sofa. His brother was perched on the arm of the new yellow chair, and Sherlock wished he had the strength to tell him to get off and sit somewhere else.

"Wait, are you-" Sherlock began, when his eyes focused again. "Is that the Christmas cake Mrs Hudson gave me?"

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, his smile almost a challenge. A saucer was balanced on his knee, and he daintily sliced into the dark, fruit-laden cake with his fork.

"A little dry for my liking," Mycroft replied. "But a good effort nonetheless."

Sherlock grimaced at him before dropping his head into his hands and raking his fingers through his hair. Then a thought entered his head and he whirled around to face his brother.

"H-how are you even here?" he demanded.

It didn't make sense. Sherlock knew that with only inhaling the toxic fumes indirectly, he could only have been knocked out for a few minutes – and yet here was Mycroft, making himself at home and taking liberties with one of the few decent things he had left to eat.

"How could you know that I was in trouble?" he went on. "I find it hard to believe that you were coincidentally dropping by to wish me the compliments of the season."

Sherlock waited for an answer, but Mycroft just gave a Sphinx-like smile, and pushed the cake crumbs around with his fork. What the hell was going on here?

Eventually, his brother spoke.

"Think about it, Sherlock. Think about the most likely scenario here."

Keeping his eyes on Mycroft, Sherlock swallowed, urged his brain to climb up a few rungs out of its current mire of confusion.

"Oh Christ, I'm not dead, am I?" Sherlock said suddenly, eyes wide. "Because that would make this a particularly shit Christmas."

Mycroft gave a wry laugh.

"I'm flattered that you would see me in the role of St Peter, brother mine," he said.

Sherlock glared at him darkly.

"I was actually thinking more of Cerberus, the hound of Hades," he replied. "But I appreciate that you would enjoy the admin involved in guarding the gates of Heaven – not to mention the regular opportunities for schadenfreude."

Mycroft set down his plate and fork, and crossed one knee over the other.

"So, what happened here tonight?" he asked. "I thought Mummy warned you about playing with household chemicals?"

Sherlock splayed a hand over his face for a moment, pressing the pad of his middle finger between his eyebrows.

"I had separated the sodium hypochlorite from a bottle of toilet bleach, and I'm fairly sure that I accidentally combined it with some isopropyl alcohol from some hand sanitiser I took from the hospital," he said, picturing the identical beakers on his kitchen table.

Mycroft tilted his head to one side.

"Yes," he replied. "I believe you were a little…distracted."

Sherlock hauled himself onto the sofa and turned on Mycroft.

"Not distracted, just tired. Not concentrating," he explained. "And – hang on a second, how do you even know all this?"

There was a stand-off for a few moments, while Sherlock looked for clues in his brother's irritatingly haughty expression. There was an odd familiarity about this whole thing; a vividness that also somehow seemed unreal.

"Oh, I get it!" Sherlock said finally. "I see what this is! None of this is real, is it? I'm having some sort of bizarre, chemical-fuelled dream!"

Mycroft laughed again.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time, would it?" he said. "And I believe you learned some interesting things about yourself during your brief narcotic-soaked sojourn as a Victorian gentleman. Not just about yourself, I might add; your mind did some things to Dr Hooper that were rather…illuminating."

"Shut up, Mycroft!" Sherlock growled. "Given that this is apparently all in my head, I could very easily shove you arse-first out of the window."

Mycroft gave a long-suffering sigh.

"Well, that would be a shame," he said, studying the back of his well-manicured hand. "I thought you and I might go on a little trip together. No pun intended."

"How about I just stab myself in the eye with your cake fork and wake myself up?" Sherlock retorted.

"Humour me, Sherlock," Mycroft replied, with a watery smile. "You never know; you might find it rather enlightening."

Sherlock rolled his eyes as he got to his feet.

"What are you going to do? Twitch your nose and we appear somewhere else? Make us vanish in a puff of smoke?"

Given his brother's fondness for the dramatic, this seemed right up his alley.

Mycroft stood, too, brushing invisible crumbs from his pinstriped trousers. He took a couple of deliberate steps towards Sherlock, then gestured over his shoulder, a stillness coming over him as he spoke.

"Walk through the door, Sherlock."

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Before he opened the door, Sherlock could hear voices, including a child's, which rung out above the others. Instead of emerging in his own hallway, he found himself in another hallway altogether; one that he vaguely recognised. The voices were coming from a room off to the left, and Sherlock could see flickering light spilling out from under the door.

"Our parents' house," Sherlock said, quietly, more to himself than to Mycroft, who was standing at his shoulder.

The wallpaper and some of the hallway furniture were different, but he knew it well enough. His eye was caught by the photographs; framed pictures of him and Mycroft in school uniform – he himself was no more than eight years old in any of them, gaps in his teeth, and sporting the dimples that his mother always banged on about adoringly.

"Why are we here?" he asked Mycroft. Suddenly, he felt afraid of what he might find on the other side. He couldn't place the year exactly.

"Go ahead, Sherlock, go inside," Mycroft replied. "They can't see or hear you. This is in your head, remember?"

Sherlock approached the door, hearing each floorboard creak in its old familiar way. Tentatively, he reached for the handle. As he stepped into the room, he was assaulted by noise and spectacle; a huge Christmas tree festooned with lights and decorations, foil concertina lanterns and paperchains hung from every available picture rail, music spilling from…he remembered that stereo – it was the first cassette player his father ever bought.

His breath caught in chest as he saw his mother and father, or rather the younger versions of themselves. Both were wearing paper hats, and his father was wearing a bowtie covered in holly sprigs – and both of their eyes were creased with laughter. Off to the other side of the room, his eyes fell on the figure perching on the sofa – dressed in Sunday Best, and no more than fifteen years old, was his brother. He could recall Mycroft at thirteen, rather overweight and self-conscious about it, but a couple of years later, he had already slimmed down and looked like a prototype of his current self. If he was calculating correctly, this Christmas marked the end of Mycroft's first term away at school.

All three members of his family were watching the child obscured from him by the tree. Sherlock felt himself holding in his breath, felt his heart pounding in his chest, as he allowed himself to walk slowly past the teenage Mycroft. He almost jumped in shock when his younger self suddenly leapt up from his seat on the floor and started waving his arms in excitement. Sherlock stood back, watching as the curly-haired boy tore the plastic wrapping off his latest gift.

"I remember that," he breathed. "But I never expected Mummy and Dad would buy it – I thought they would say it was too expensive."

Mycroft – the middle-aged version – was standing by him now, surveying the scene along with him.

"Mmm," he replied. "But this was the first Christmas in the new house, the first Christmas after…Eurus was taken away. They went all-out for this one, although I suspect it was the last thing they felt like doing."

Sherlock blinked, his gaze moving between his parents. They had done a remarkable job of suppressing their grief, burying their anguish – and all for the young boy currently pulling wrapping paper off his next present.

"You bought me a chemistry set," Sherlock murmured, watching his younger self examining the box. "My first."

"Yes," Mycroft replied. "I believe you wanted an Action Man, but I like to think that my decision to overrule you was rather prescient. Although judging by what you did to yourself tonight, perhaps the Action Man might have been the safer option."

Sherlock couldn't help looking at his younger self, looking for the signs of trauma, the damage, the beginnings of the man he was to become. But what he saw was an ordinary eight-year-old boy, rosy-cheeked and beaming with excitement, thrilled by his new acquisitions.

"I suppose you're trying to show me that there was a time when I enjoyed Christmas?" he asked Mycroft. "It's rather a fatuous point. Yes, I was happy, but it was a delusion – had I known, had I understood the truth, it would have been very different."

Mycroft folded his arms, watching his younger self unwrap a cassette Walkman.

"Perhaps," he conceded. "But it was happiness nonetheless. And it was what Mummy and Dad wanted for you – you were their world, Sherlock."

Sherlock squinted at the gift his brother was unwrapping.

"Is that Phil Collins?!" he asked, pulling a face.

Mycroft sighed.

"Yes. I asked for Madonna's Like a Virgin, but Mummy didn't want to ask for it at the little record shop in Horsham."

Sherlock snorted, exchanging a small smile of familial understanding with his brother.

"We've seen what we need to see," Mycroft said. "Time to move on."

Sherlock threw a glance across to Mycroft.

"Move on to where?"

His brother nodded past his shoulder, and when Sherlock turned, he found that the room in which they were standing had been transformed. The same living room, but different décor, a new three-piece-suite – and an entirely different atmosphere. There was still a tree, and a row of Christmas cards standing sentry on the mantelpiece, but there was a stony silence in the room. With a heavy heart, Sherlock recognised the scene. He was at the centre of it again, but this time he was a teenage boy sitting on the sofa wearing a defiant expression, facing down his mother and father; Mycroft, now a young man, hovered by the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back.

"Christmas Eve, 1993," Mycroft said. "Do you recall? You had just been kicked out of school."

Sherlock nodded, watching the fifteen-year-old version of himself insolently stare off into the distance while his parents tried to reason with him. His grandfather, father and Mycroft had been boarders at the school from the age of fourteen, and he had just well and truly destroyed the family tradition.

"I hated that school," Sherlock commented. He knew, however, that was scarcely an excuse for his behaviour either at school or in his parents' home, and the agonies to which he subjected his mother and father.

"You were unhappy, yes," his brother said. "Angry, too, and frightened by not knowing where that anger stemmed from. Although you had no memory of it, you had suffered a great loss, a loss that you didn't have the opportunity to properly grieve."

"I wasn't allowed that opportunity," Sherlock retorted.

Mycroft gave a small nod, absorbing the barb.

"Mummy and Dad asked me to intervene," he said eventually. "They wanted me to persuade you to see the bigger picture, the value of 'sticking it out' at that school. I suppose they saw that it did me some good. But when I found you behind the greenhouse with certain…illicit substances, I knew immediately it wasn't going to work."

Sherlock bowed his head, felt a pressure building behind his eyes. He didn't need Mycroft to remind him what had happened next; it was the first time he had ever witnessed his father cry.

"You told them," Sherlock said. It wasn't accusatory; just re-running the tape.

"Only after I caught you the second time," Mycroft pointed out. "I didn't have a choice – you were fifteen, a mere child. You were lonely, I recognised that; anger and fear aside, prodigious intelligence can be very isolating. It's unusual for the likes of us, brother mine, to find another person who can truly understand, who sees and accepts us for all of our flaws and our emotional shackles."

Sherlock didn't need to look at his brother to know that he was looking at him pointedly.

"There are extraordinary rare breeds to be found amongst all of the goldfish," his brother added.

Sherlock gave a short bark of laughter.

"Mycroft, that is a horrible analogy!"

His brother shrugged, and smiled a haughty smile.

"This is all in your head, remember? So, actually, it's your horrible analogy. Shall we continue?"

Before Sherlock had the chance to come up with a rejoinder, his surroundings seemed to dissolve around him, and he found himself standing in the hallway of 221B. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mycroft put out his hand and ushered him back against the wall. Sherlock heard footsteps coming up the stairs, but it was a tread he didn't recognise – high heeled shoes, but the wearer wasn't used to walking in them. Then Sherlock saw the top of the visitor's head, recognised the silver gift-topper in her hair – and his heart plummeted five feet to the floor.

"Mycroft, no…" he said in a quiet gasp, barely able to lift his gaze again.

"One you'd rather forget?" his brother enquired.

"I can't-" Sherlock replied. "It's – look, I know I was a complete arsehole, and I really don't need to see it again to-"

"I'm keen to see it, though," Mycroft replied, as Molly approached where they were standing at the top of the stairs. "I understand it was quite a watershed moment."

His heart thundering, Sherlock forced himself to look at Molly. She paused at the top of the stairs, bulging gift bags in both hands, and he saw her take a deep, fortifying breath. God, she was nervous – he'd never considered that. As Molly walked through the front door, Sherlock felt his brother nudge his elbow, and he reluctantly followed her as far as the doorway. Immediately, he caught sight of himself seated at his desk, saw his reaction to Molly entering the room.

"You cover it well, I have to admit," Mycroft said.

"Cover what?" he demanded, without looking around.

"What Dr Watson and Detective Inspector Lestrade are spectacularly failing to cover."

Sherlock watched as Molly took off her coat and adjusted the strap of her dress, never taking her eyes off him for a second. The dress, the hair – it wasn't Molly, he'd thought that then, but it was only now that he could see just how ill at ease she was; how much she was prepared to throw at this to…well, to produce the result she wanted. He desperately wished he could tell her to turn around and walk out of the door, to make her understand that he wasn't anywhere close to being worth it.

"Oh, this is interesting!" Mycroft said, leaning against the doorjamb. "Deduction time, I see. Seems rather inappropriate, given the occasion. Ah, so you think Dr Hooper has a boyfriend? Can't possibly imagine why that would provoke such a reaction in you, Sherlock."

Sherlock found her could barely raise his eyes from the floorboards, shame coursing through every vein in his body. When he looked up, he saw the face of his fresh-faced younger self, so full of arrogance and bravado - and he wanted nothing more than to punch that smug bastard square in the mouth. From his current view, he could feel the awkwardness in Molly's posture, see the tips of her ears turning pink. God, what right did he think that he had to do this to her?

He raised his hand to cover his mouth, feeling his breath hitch.

"Good lord, Sherlock, did you really just insult the poor woman's mouth and décolletage? And after all the effort she clearly went to."

They continued to watch the scene play out, and as Sherlock saw his younger self being hit by the lightning bolt of realization, he could recall exactly how that had felt. A gut-punch, a hard slap of awakening.

"Oh, Sherlock," Mycroft stage-whispered. "You really had no idea."

Sherlock blinked again.

"I…I knew…I had been aware that Molly may have…" he stammered. "But I didn't know…I mean, I thought it was only-"

"A superficial crush?" Mycroft continued. "Well, that would be understandable. You did get the looks of the family, but you tend to lose your sheen once you open your mouth."

In a way, that had been exactly his thinking all those years ago. It seemed inconceivable that anyone, particularly someone like Molly, could actually have such a strong, deeply-felt attachment to him. Could care for him, despite the fact that she received nothing in return. Less than nothing, in fact, given the way that he took her feelings and performed a public vivisection on them.

"So, it turned out that your adolescent jealousy was actually aimed at none other than yourself," Mycroft said. He didn't phrase it as a question, Sherlock noticed.

"It wasn't jealousy," Sherlock protested huffily.

"No?"

"No," he replied quickly. "I just thought that Molly was…better than all that."

"Better than what?" Mycroft queried, his eyebrow raised. "Romantic feeling? The basis of all life on this planet?"

Sherlock found himself at a loss for words, but at the time he had been horrified by the realization that he was not above jealousy, that losing Molly's undivided attention was a problem for him. And not just because of the lab privileges either.

They stopped talking long enough to catch the end of Molly's reproach of him, the words of which had never left him, that still stung and which still held weight with him. The word 'Norbury' might remind him when he's getting above his station, but Molly's speech was the thing that reminded him not to be needlessly cruel.

Sherlock watched as he placed a kiss on Molly's cheek. He remembered wishing that they didn't have an audience – not because he actually planned to kiss her kiss her, but so he could feel less self-conscious and could give her the apology she deserved. Instead, he came across like a chastened schoolboy kissing his maiden aunt (though he never forgot the soft floral scent that had greeted him).

And then there was that bloody text alert. At the time it was part of a bigger game, and he hadn't given it a second thought, but now…he couldn't comprehend how Molly must have felt when she left 221B, how she could possibly have faced him in the morgue a few short hours later.

"It changed things, didn't it?" Mycroft prompted, watching as the younger Sherlock exited the living room in search of his coat.

"Yes," Sherlock replied quietly.

He couldn't begin to explain to his brother how much. After this horrible episode, he saw Molly in an entirely different light; he was more careful with her feelings, yes, but he suddenly understood that what he saw as her weaknesses were actually her strengths. Sherlock had known she was brilliant in a work capacity, but she was also far stronger, far more complex than he gave her credit for being. In short, it opened up a door that he'd never been able to properly close.

It had started to alter his view of romantic attachments, too, although he didn't realise it for a long time. Previously, notions of love had seemed frivolous, ridiculous, shallow, but Molly had shown him depths to romantic feelings that he hadn't considered. Although for a long, long while he still couldn't see himself as the recipient of such feelings, he could at least understand what others around him – notably John and Mary – could take from them.

But when he and Molly spoke those words to each other during that terrible phone call, his education was finally complete. Not only did he understand, on an abstract level, the all-consuming nature of love, but for the first time he was himself utterly consumed by it. Powerless, vulnerable and terrified by the reality of what it could do to him. The problem was, ten months on, that terror hadn't quite left him.

"Can we go now?" Sherlock asked his brother, his voice little more than a whisper.

"It's your chloroform-induced delusion," Mycroft replied. "Go ahead. Although I do have one question – what was the gift that Dr Hooper gave you, hm?"

He was too ashamed to tell his brother that he didn't open it; he couldn't bring himself to throw or give it away, so he buried it at the back of his wardrobe, like a bad dog burying the evidence of his crimes; as far as he knew, it was still there. Molly never asked about it – why would she want to revisit that horror show?

"One final destination," Mycroft told him. "This one should still be fairly fresh in your memory."

Sherlock closed his eyes, pinching his forefinger and thumb into the bridge of his nose. He had more than an inkling of the scene that Mycroft was about to lay before him. Surely, he would wake up soon? Unless this was it, and these were the final, spiteful throes of his dying brain before he shuffled off to an ignominious end.

When he opened his eyes, he was outside his parents' house and it was bloody freezing, his breath escaping into the frigid air in puffs of vapour. Beside him, Mycroft was dressed in his long wool overcoat and leather gloves.

"How come you get a coat?" Sherlock demanded, wrapping his arms around himself in a vain attempt to retain some body heat.

"I've no idea," Mycroft replied. "Clearly the 'me' in your mind would be more adequately prepared for all eventualities than you are. Which would be fairly accurate."

"Christ, I miss smoking," Sherlock groused.

"Then why ever did you quit?"

Sherlock frowned as he briskly rubbed his hands together like an idiot.

"Complete sobriety seemed like the best idea," he replied. "You know, after everything…"

"More to Dr Hooper's taste, too, I imagine," Mycroft mused, as he retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

Sherlock shot him a look, but didn't reply, instead asking shirtily, "Can we at least go inside?"

"Decent enough view of events from the kitchen window, I should say," his brother replied, gesturing for Sherlock to step up to the side of the house.

Through the window, Sherlock saw his brother in shirt sleeves at the kitchen table, a Christmas cake and a batch of mince pies dangerously within arm's reach. Off to the side, he himself sat in the old kitchen armchair, legs crossed and hands bridged under his chin; it was two years ago, and he recalled exactly what he had been thinking about. Their mother was bustling behind Mycroft, telling him off about something that Sherlock hadn't bothered to take in at the time.

"I can't hear anything out here," he told Mycroft.

"You don't need to," his brother replied. "In a short while your charming dealer friend will have put your nearest and dearest – including, might I remind you, a woman with child – into a toxified state. But I believe you had something else on your mind, too – something that temporarily distracted you from your single-minded and ill-conceived scheme."

Magnussen had a complete monopoly on this thoughts that day, but Mycroft was right, something had happened that had disrupted his calculations and reasoning - he'd received a Christmas message from Molly.

Nothing earth-shattering, just a text wishing him a Merry Christmas and asking whether he was okay. He hadn't replied. He couldn't – because that would have meant lying to her. And he couldn't bear to have what he believed would be his last communication with Molly be a lie, couldn't allow that to be her final memory of him. Although other recent memories of him wouldn't exactly have been ones for her to treasure, either.

"After all you did, after disappointing her so enormously, she apparently she still cared enough to enquire after your welfare. She still wished the best for you."

Sherlock swallowed, felt himself nodding along to the sentiment.

"I can't understand-" he began, looking away from his brother as, with horror, he felt the first prick of tears at the corners of his eyes. "After everything…I don't…I don't know why."

There was a pause, and he felt Mycroft's hand come to rest on his shoulder.

"You do know why, Sherlock," he said.

He withdrew his hand, and the two men stepped away from the window together.

"Oh, I should have mentioned," Mycroft continued. "I probably won't be the only visitor to invade your subconscious this evening."

"What do you mean?" Sherlock asked, still reeling slightly.

"Well, these things tend to happen in threes, don't they?"

"Do they?"

"Time for you to return to Baker Street, Sherlock," his brother said. "The night is still young."

Sherlock watched his brother saunter slowly down the garden path from his parents' house; his own feet, however, were suddenly rooted to the spot, and he felt an odd light-headedness start to come over him. Mycroft paused to stub out his cigarette in one of their mother's ornamental urns, and glanced over his shoulder.

"See you back here on Boxing Day, brother mine," he said. "Unless, of course, events take a rather different turn."